Hello, everyone! I’m Yana Lyashenko, a Google logistician. Today, we’ll discuss two important topics: how to combat fake orders in Google Ads and what to do when conversions in advertising are distorted due to a large number of product returns.
Before moving on to specific solutions, let’s look at the context. It is important to understand in which cases you really need these tools and when you can do without them.
The first type of fake orders involves large sums of money.
Let’s start with fake orders in Google Ads. There are two possible scenarios here, and each requires its own approach.
How many calls and sales will I get by ordering contextual advertising from you?
The first is when competitors (or simply ill-wishers) place obviously unrealistic orders for huge amounts through advertising: $3 million, $10 million, $20 million. Such orders immediately catch the eye—it is clear that there is no real customer behind them.
To be honest, I don’t really understand the logic of those who do this. Apparently, they hope to seriously damage your advertising. But it’s important to understand one thing here: the more conversions you have in your account (for example, 100–200 per day), the less impact such fakes will have on optimization. Yes, a specific campaign may temporarily “slump” — it will become more expensive and start to perform worse. But over time, it will either stabilize on its own, or you will rebuild it, and everything will return to normal.
Does it go completely unnoticed? No. But to say that one large fake order will irrevocably ruin your account and you will have to move to a new one is an exaggeration.
Frequent fake orders for small amounts with low store turnover
The second scenario is much more dangerous. Imagine: you already have few orders, and your competitors start making fake conversions not in the millions, but in amounts similar to your average check. And they do it regularly.
Why is this a problem? Because such a “customer” looks like a real one in every way: the order amount is realistic, and their behavior on the website is typical. Google’s algorithms mistake them for your target audience and start looking for similar users. As a result, advertising is optimized for a fake buyer profile.
Strangely enough, one order for 5 million will hurt you less than a dozen small fakes for 2–3 thousand. The system will easily filter out a large order as an anomaly, but will accept small ones as normal.
Situations involving cash on delivery or partial order returns
In the cases described above, it is definitely worth adjusting conversions in Google Ads. But there are other situations when this is necessary.
For example, a significant portion of your customers order cash on delivery—and not all of them end up purchasing their packages. Or another common scenario: a buyer orders several items at once (say, sneakers in two sizes or a T-shirt in three colors) but only picks up one. The rest is returned. As a result, your advertising account records one order amount, but your actual income is completely different.
In such cases, conversion adjustment will help you see accurate analytics and understand the real profitability of advertising.
Nuances of conversion adjustment
Why is this important? Because distorted data affects further optimization. If you work with Performance Max or regular product campaigns based on target return on ad spend (tROAS), Google’s algorithms make decisions based on the conversions they see. Inaccurate data means inaccurate optimization. This is a critical factor that cannot be ignored.
Now for the second nuance. You can only adjust Google Ads conversions — those created directly in your advertising account via a tag. Your account may have different conversion sources: those imported from Google Analytics 4 or those created directly in Google Ads. So, adjustments only work with the second type.
How can you tell them apart? You import conversions from GA4 from analytics. And you create Google Ads conversions through Tag Manager—this is the very same “purchase tag” that I often talk about. Similarly, you can set up a tag for a call or other target action.
Unfortunately, this is bad news for website owners on Prom: Tag Manager cannot be installed there, which means that conversions cannot be adjusted. However, for other platforms, including Khoroshop, this can be done without any problems.
How to set up Google Analytics 4 to avoid fake orders?
For Google Analytics 4, there is only one reliable way to avoid distortions from fake orders: abandon classic Purchase event tracking and switch to offline conversion uploads.
How does it work in practice? Instead of recording the purchase when the order is placed on the website, you transfer the data from your CRM system. All transactions are recorded there, and each one has a status: “paid,” “cancelled,” “returned,” “fake,” and so on.
When an order receives its final status (e.g., “sold”), you send verified information with the actual amount of income to analytics.
Important note: the cycle from order to confirmation should not exceed 72 hours — this will ensure that the data is correctly linked to the advertising session.
This integration will require additional connector services between CRM and GA4. But you’ll get clean data for optimizing your advertising campaigns: no fakes, no unredeemed overlays, just real sales with real amounts.
The more orders you have per day, the more critical it is to have accurate analytics. If there are a lot of returns or refusals, the only thing you can do in GA4 is send a refund event. Unfortunately, this has no effect on conversion optimization in Google Ads. Refunds are only useful for creating attractive reports in analytics, although you can easily generate a similar report in your website’s admin panel or CRM.
By the way, in Universal Analytics (third analytics), it was possible to send negative transactions. In GA4, this option is not officially available. Theoretically, you can try it, but it requires testing and does not guarantee results.
Unfortunately, the situation is not flexible for website owners on Prom: without an external CRM system from which purchase events can be sent, it will not be possible to fully resolve the issue.
Two ways to combat fake orders
There are two effective ways to combat fake orders in Google Ads:
The first method is to send purchase data directly from the CRM system. Through internal or third-party integrations, you transfer complete order information: product IDs, names, amounts — everything you need for accurate tracking. Data can be uploaded either to Google Ads via Content API or to Google Analytics 4, depending on which integrations are available for your platform. If you have a self-hosted website, Content API for Google Ads usually connects without any problems.
The second method is to use a classic purchase tag, but then adjust or completely cancel transactions. This option is suitable for those who do not work on Prom. You record the conversion with a standard code, and then, when you realize that the order is fake or the amount has changed due to a return, you make an adjustment to the conversions. You can reset the entire transaction or simply change its value.
This is how your advertising account will be optimized based on the correct data.
Important: all other methods — blocking competitors’ IP addresses, device adjustments, and other specific techniques — have very limited effectiveness. Yes, they may help a little in the future, but they have almost no effect on past periods. Keep this in mind when choosing a strategy to protect against fake conversions.
Combating fake orders with a set purchase tag
If you use the Google Ads purchase tag, you have a convenient tool for adjusting conversions. Remember: this tag can be installed on almost any popular platform — WordPress with WooCommerce, OpenCart, Khoroshop, Shopify, Wix, and others.
How many calls and sales will I get by ordering contextual advertising from you?
By the way, I recommend that most online store owners switch to the purchase tag rather than relying on Google Analytics 4. Why? Because GA4 is getting worse at tracking user behavior over time and gives Performance Max a distorted picture — for example, it incorrectly counts returning customers. But that’s a separate issue.
Today we are talking about how to correct conversions that have already entered the system. Let’s say you don’t have the ability to set up integration with CRM, and you track orders simply in the site admin panel. You’ve found a fake — what should you do?
Google Ads offers two adjustment options (I will leave a link to the help section below the video):
RESTATE — change in conversion value. Use this when you need to reduce or recalculate the order amount. For example, a customer placed an order for 5,000 UAH, but returned some of the goods, and the actual revenue was 3,200 UAH. This type of adjustment affects the target return on ad spend (tROAS) strategy.
RETRACT — complete conversion cancellation. Suitable for fake orders in Google Ads that should not be counted at all. The system will reset this conversion to zero and exclude it from optimization. Affects the “Target cost per conversion” and “Maximum conversions” strategies.
How to adjust conversions in Google Ads?
Log in to your Google Ads account, go to the “Conversions” section, then to the “Downloads” block. Important: the conversions you want to cancel or correct must already be recorded in your account. Click on the plus sign and select “View templates” — you will need to download a template file to upload the data.
The good news is that you can upload data via Google Sheets. This is very convenient—you can set up automatic updates, and the information will be pulled into Google Ads without your involvement. For example, using scripts or APIs, you can upload data about fake orders from your CRM to a spreadsheet, and from there it will automatically be transferred to your advertising account.
Select the adjustment by order ID. Why is that? Because if you use the purchase tag, you already pass the transaction_id parameter, which is the order number. It is easy to find: it is displayed in the site admin panel.
An alternative option is to use Google Click ID (GCLID). But then you need to set up the collection of these tags on the website in advance, make sure the characters are capitalized correctly, and not change anything in this “abracadabra.” Otherwise, the system will not match the data and will return an error. Therefore, in most cases, Order ID is the most reliable option.
Which fields need to be filled in the template:
Conversion Name — the name of the conversion. Copy it from your account instead of typing it manually. This will help you avoid errors with Cyrillic/Latin characters or extra spaces.
Conversion Time — conversion time. Google requires a specific format: it is preferable to specify the hour and minute. If you work with multiple time zones (for example, you run ads for Australia, the US, and the UK from a single account), add Time Zone. For Ukraine, the standard format without specifying the zone is usually sufficient.
Adjustment Type — type of adjustment: RESTATE (change in amount) or RETRACT (complete cancellation). For fake orders, select RETRACT.
Adjusted Value — new value. For complete cancellation, enter 0 or leave the field blank.
Currency — currency in international format: UAH for hryvnia, USD for dollar, EUR for euro. Make sure that the currency matches the one used in your account. Sometimes, the payment currency is one (e.g., Czech koruna), and tracking is set up in another (euro) — keep this in mind.
Once everything is filled in, upload the file to Google Ads. If you use Google Sheets for regular adjustments, don’t forget to open access: in the sheet settings, add the email address specified in the Google Ads interface and grant editor rights. Otherwise, the system will not be able to retrieve the data.
Before the final upload, be sure to enable preview mode so you can check for any errors in the data.
When does it make sense to adjust conversions?
A value adjustment (RESTATE) makes sense when the actual income from an order turns out to be significantly less than the initial amount. Typical examples:
The customer ordered three pairs of shoes in different sizes, but only took one pair.
The buyer selected a bag in several colors but kept only one option for themselves.
Some of the items from the order were returned — they didn’t fit, weren’t liked, or the customer changed their mind.
In such cases, the system sees one conversion amount, while the actual income is completely different. Adjustments help to put the data in order.
But there is an important nuance here. Regular conversion adjustments only make sense under two conditions:
This is a constant, recurring problem for you, not just isolated incidents;
You have a sufficient number of conversions — at least 300, and ideally 500 per month.
Why is that? The more accurate data you provide to the system, the more stable Performance Max and other campaigns based on target return on ad spend will be. Google’s algorithms rely on statistics: the larger the sample, the more accurately the system determines the “average” buyer and the better it optimizes.
If you have 30–50 sales per month, you can, of course, cancel or adjust something. But this will not bring about any significant changes. Google did not really understand who to show your products to before — there was too little data. After adjusting the data, there will be even less.
Will this affect the situation? Yes. But in what way is an open question. With a small number of conversions, any changes can swing the results either positively or negatively.
The exception is if you sell goods with a high average check: furniture, appliances, jewelry. In this case, even one canceled fake transaction for a large amount can significantly affect the effectiveness of the advertising campaign, and the adjustment will be justified.
Conclusions
Let’s summarize. If you use the Google Ads purchase tag (and many have switched to it after problems with GA4), you have complete control over conversions. You can either cancel the transaction completely (RETRACT) or change its value (RESTATE).
By the way, adjusting the value is very convenient: you don’t need to calculate the difference or specify “minus so much.” Just enter the actual income amount, and the system will replace the old value with the new one.
I will leave links to the official Google reference below the video, where you can learn more about all the details.
It is best to set up conversion export from your CRM system via Content API. This way, only verified orders with actual amounts will be sent to your advertising account. This works for virtually any business.
But there is one important point: data must be transferred promptly, preferably within 72 hours. This is critical for GA4—otherwise, the attribution model will recalculate everything incorrectly. It is also better not to delay for Google Ads.
What should you do if you have a long transaction cycle? There are several options:
Send partial value as soon as the customer enters the funnel and is highly likely to make a purchase.
Link data transfer to transaction statuses: each stage has its own value. Once payment is reached, the full amount is sent.
This approach also helps optimize advertising campaigns and ensures stable performance of Performance Max for product-based businesses.
To protect yourself from fake conversions, you have two options:
Set up integration with CRM and transfer only confirmed orders to Google Ads;
Use the purchase tag and manually adjust or cancel transactions by uploading a file.
This is a basic set of tools that will help keep your Performance Max up and running and prevent algorithms from learning from junk data.
