Monthly review

The monthly review is where you look across the whole month, tune protection based on accumulated data, clean up stale entries, and act on anything the weekly workflow flagged but didn't resolve.

Block out 45–60 minutes at the end of each calendar month. Same day every month works best — it makes month-over-month comparison easier and keeps you within Google's 60-day refund window.

1. Pull the monthly report

The report has exact numbers that dashboard charts don't show.

• Open Reports → Generate Click Report.
• Title: Monthly Review — [Month] [Year].
• Date range: the full calendar month.
• Generate, wait for status Done, download the CSV.

Key figures from the summary header: Total clicks, Bad clicks, Wasted spend, Savings, Good clicks. Log these somewhere persistent — 3-6 month trends matter more than any single month.

2. Month-over-month dashboard comparison

Set the dashboard date range to the full current month. Look at the % change indicators.

Also scan the Clicks Overview chart for recurring same-day-of-week spikes — those point at scheduled bot activity you can address with a time-based automation rule.

3. Tune protection settings

In Protection settings:

• Sensitivity — Up one level if fraud rose. Down one if you saw false positives.
• Strategy — Reconsider Automatic vs Manual based on month's signal (see Automatic mode and Manual mode).
• Action Mode — If you've been on Warn 30+ days and data looks stable, consider upgrading to Strict.

For each Manual check, ask: did this catch anything this month? Did anything legitimate get blocked? Adjust accordingly.

4. Review automations

In Automations, check trigger counts for the past month:

• Zero triggers → threshold too high, or the pattern is gone. Lower or retire.
• Very high triggers → verify the blocks were actually fraud, not false positives.
• Expired rules → renew or retire.

Common monthly adjustments: lower the click threshold on "Same visitor clicks repeatedly" rules if fraud is slipping; add a new rule for any pattern you identified in this month's Click Traffic.

5. Clean up the Blacklist

In Blacklist:

• Filter Status = Expired — review whether the source still needs blocking.
• Filter Status = Active entries older than 90 days — if the IP hasn't appeared in recent Click Traffic, it's probably safe to retire.
• Look for duplicates (same IP added multiple times by different team members).
• Pending entries older than 48 hours = sync issue worth investigating.

Permanent blocks older than 6 months are usually safe to retire unless the threat is clearly ongoing.

6. Ads Manager completeness

In Ads Manager:

• Sync from Google. Go to Space Settings → PPC Accounts → Configure → Synchronize to pull the latest campaigns from Google (Ads Manager's Refresh button only re-reads the cache).
• Compare ENABLED campaigns in Google Ads with what's shown after the sync. Any missing campaigns are receiving unprotected traffic.
• High-invalid-rate campaigns (from Google's own data) should have the strictest protection.

7. Team and space hygiene

In Team:

• Remove access for anyone who's left.
• Review role assignments — anyone with Admin who should be a Member?
• Cancel pending invitations older than 2 weeks.

In Space settings:

• Verify the Emergency contact email is still correct.
• Confirm the monthly ad budget is still accurate.
• Check that billing is healthy.

8. Refund assessment

Evaluate whether this month's wasted spend warrants a manual refund claim.

Check Google Ads billing for credits Google already applied before claiming. Only claim the gap. Full process: How to get a Google Ads refund.

Monthly summary log

Worth keeping (a spreadsheet works fine):

What happens next

• Back to Weekly workflow
• Launch checklist if onboarding a new account