Monthly Review

The monthly review goes deeper than the weekly workflow. It is where you analyze trends across the full month, tune protection settings based on accumulated data, clean up stale entries, and take action on anything the weekly checks flagged but did not resolve.

Set aside 45–60 minutes at the end of each month.

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Step 1: Generate Your Monthly Report

Start by pulling a full-month data export before reviewing anything else. The report gives you exact numbers that dashboard charts do not show.

In Reports:

1. Click Generate Click Report
2. Set the title: Monthly Review — [Month] [Year]
3. Set start and end date to cover the full calendar month
4. Click Generate and wait for status to reach Done
5. Download the CSV

Key figures from the report summary header:

Keep a monthly log of these figures. Trends over 3 to 6 months are more valuable than any single month alone.

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Step 2: Compare Month-Over-Month in the Dashboard

Set the date range to the full current month and review the percentage change indicators on each metric card.

What to look for:

Also review the Clicks Overview chart for the full month — look for recurring spikes by day of week. Consistent fraud on specific days points to scheduled activity you can address with time-based automation rules.

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Step 3: Audit Your Protection Settings

After reviewing the data, evaluate whether your current protection configuration is still right.

In Protection:

Detection Strategy:

• If fraud increased month-over-month, move sensitivity up one level
• If you had significant false positives (legitimate clicks blocked), move down one level
• Review whether Automatic or Manual strategy is more appropriate for your traffic volume

Action Mode check:

• If you have been on Warn for more than 30 days and the data looks stable, consider upgrading to Strict
• If you moved to Strict and saw an unexpected drop in conversions, drop back to Warn and review what was blocked in the Excluded Clicks page

Network filters — review each:

Geographic protection:

• Open the Geographic Click Distribution map in the Dashboard
• If you see high click volume from countries you do not serve, add them to the restricted regions list in Protection settings

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Step 4: Review Automation Rules

In Automation Rules:

1. Check trigger counts for each rule over the past month
2. Zero triggers — threshold may be too high, or the traffic pattern it was built for no longer exists
3. Very high triggers — verify the blocked traffic is genuinely fraudulent, not legitimate users crossing a threshold that is too low
4. Review rule expiration dates — temporary rules may need to be renewed or retired

Common monthly adjustments:

• Lower the actor count threshold on Scout rules if fraud is slipping through
• Add country-level conditions to existing rules if a new geographic source appeared this month
• Create a new Custom rule for any specific fraud pattern you identified in Click Traffic that existing rules do not cover

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Step 5: Clean Up the Blocklist

In Blocklist:

1. Filter Status = Inactive — expired entries. Review whether the source is still a threat worth re-adding
2. Filter Status = Active — review entries older than 90 days:
   • If the IP or device has not appeared in recent Click Traffic, the source may no longer be active
   • Permanent blocks older than 6 months can often be retired unless the threat is clearly ongoing
3. Look for duplicate entries — same IP added multiple times with different notes
4. Review Pending status entries older than 48 hours — this may indicate a Google Ads API sync issue

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Step 6: Ads Manager Completeness Check

In Ads Manager:

1. Click Refresh to pull the latest campaign list
2. Compare your active (ENABLED) campaigns in Google Ads against what ClickFortify shows
3. Any missing campaigns are receiving traffic with no protection — investigate immediately
4. Review the invalid click rate column — campaigns with high invalid rates from Google's own data should have the strictest protection settings applied

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Step 7: Space and Team Hygiene

In Team Management:

• Remove access for anyone who has left the organization
• Review access levels — ensure no one has Admin access who should only be a Viewer
• Cancel any pending invitations that have been ignored for 2+ weeks

In Space Settings:

• Verify emergency contact email is still correct — critical fraud alerts go here
• Confirm monthly advertising budget figure is still accurate
• Check account status is Active and no billing issues are flagged

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Step 8: Google Ads Refund Assessment

At the end of each month, evaluate whether your wasted spend warrants a manual refund claim with Google.

Decision guide:

Before submitting:

1. Check your Google Ads billing transactions for automatic credits Google already applied
2. Only claim the gap between what Google credited and what ClickFortify detected as wasted

Follow the full process in How to Get a Google Ads Refund.

Important: Google only accepts claims for traffic within the last 60 days. Monthly review keeps you within this window.

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Monthly Summary Template

Use this to document and communicate your monthly findings:

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After completing your monthly review, continue with the Weekly Workflow for ongoing monitoring.