Frequently asked questions

You embed a lightweight JavaScript snippet into your website. The script collects click data, sends it to ClickSentinel servers to score traffic quality (0–100), and detects bots, VPN, datacenter, and Tor in real time.

Yes. The Free plan is completely free with no credit card required — includes 10,000 events/month, 1 website, SEO Audit and 1 GSC property. Upgrade when you need more data and features.

Google Analytics measures sessions and conversions, but cannot distinguish bots/VPN/datacenter or score traffic quality. ClickSentinel focuses on Traffic Intelligence: detecting click fraud, protecting ad budgets, and providing real GSC data.

No. The script runs asynchronously (async), does not block page rendering, and has no impact on Core Web Vitals or user experience. Total script size is less than 5KB.

ClickSentinel detects: bots with known user-agents, VPN/proxy traffic, datacenter IPs (AWS/GCP/Azure/Cloudflare), Tor exit nodes, duplicate clicks (same IP within 5 minutes) and velocity anomalies (>10 clicks/hour from the same IP).

No. Traffic Intelligence and SEO Audit features work independently. Connecting GSC is optional to view real clicks, impressions, CTR data and discover keyword opportunities.

Yes. All data is stored securely. Full IP addresses are never shown in public reports. Google OAuth tokens are encrypted before storage. We follow strict privacy policies.

Yes. ClickSentinel supports exporting click logs (CSV), bad IP lists for Google Ads (.txt), SEO Audit reports (PDF/share link) and Agency Reports (PDF).

The SEO Audit crawls your site and analyzes four areas: technical (title, meta, canonical, headings, robots), content, security (HTTPS, headers) and performance. Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, FCP) come from the Google PageSpeed API. Each issue is prioritized with a fix recommendation.

Every plan includes unlimited SEO Audits. Audits are queued and processed in the background; score history is saved so you can track improvements over time.

Yes. Each audit has a public share link (share token) you can send to clients without requiring login. Full IP addresses are always hidden in public reports to protect privacy.

Go to the GSC section in the dashboard, click "Connect" and authorize via Google OAuth (read-only webmasters.readonly scope). Once your property is verified, data syncs automatically every day. You can also sync manually with a 6-hour cooldown.

Yes. We only request read-only access (webmasters.readonly) and never modify your website. OAuth tokens are encrypted before being stored in the database, and you can disconnect at any time.

Each click is scored on 15+ signals: IP reputation, IP type (VPN/datacenter/Tor), duplication, velocity, device fingerprint and behavior. The higher the score, the more likely the visitor is a real human.

As a rule of thumb, 80–100 is high-quality (real) traffic, 50–79 is suspicious and worth watching, and below 50 is likely bot/fraud. You can filter and export low-scoring IPs to exclude them from Google Ads.

Duplicate detection flags clicks from the same IP within 5 minutes. Velocity detection flags when a single IP generates more than 10 clicks per hour — a classic sign of bots or click farms.

Each IP is looked up via an IP intelligence service (cached for 24h) to determine the network, country and VPN/proxy/datacenter/Tor classification. Combined with cross-site IP reputation, the system scores the risk of every visit.

Yes. Each website has an IP whitelist — those IPs bypass tracking so they don't skew your data (e.g. your office IP, internal team, or testing tools).

In the click logs, filter by quality score or fraud flag, then export the IP list to a .txt file. Paste it into the IP exclusion list in Google Ads to block invalid click sources.

Monitoring takes periodic snapshots of a URL to detect downtime, status-code changes, content/metadata changes and configuration issues. Ideal for watching key pages or verifying a migration.

You configure alert rules across event types (click fraud, score drop, site down, and more). When a condition triggers, ClickSentinel notifies you via Email and Telegram, with a cooldown to prevent spam.

Each click/event the tracking script sends counts as one event. The Free plan includes 10,000 events/month, Starter 100,000 and Pro 1,000,000. This is a soft limit — events over quota are still recorded, you just get warned at 80% and 100%.

Tracking is never blocked — we don't want you to lose data. You'll receive warnings at 80% and 100% so you can consider upgrading. Quota applies across all websites in your account combined.

Yes. Billing is per-user, so you can change plans at any time. ClickSentinel is currently in beta — reach out and we'll help you upgrade or downgrade.

API access is available on the Starter and Pro plans (the Free plan cannot create API keys). Go to the API Keys section in the dashboard to create one; each user can have up to 10 keys. Keys are SHA-256 hashed and shown in full only once at creation.

The v1 REST API (authenticated with a Bearer token) gives programmatic access to statistics and click log data. All requests are rate-limited to protect the platform; see the API documentation for endpoint details.