Last updated: 20 June 2025

This article guides you through the simple process of setting up and using Polygraph. With clear, step-by-step instructions, you won’t get lost along the way. Getting everything up and running will only take a few minutes.

Step 1: Add the Polygraph tracking code to your website

Polygraph examines every ad click to determine if it’s genuine or fake. To do this, we need to analyze visitors after they click your ad and reach your landing page.

Simply add the following code to the <HEAD> section of your landing page:

<!-- Polygraph fraud detection -->
<script src="https://cdn.polygraph.net/pg.js"></script>
<!-- /Polygraph fraud detection -->

Some customers find it easier to add this code to the <HEAD> section of every page, not just the landing page. That’s perfectly fine! As long as it’s on your landing page, our system doesn’t mind if the code is also included on your contact page, about us page, or anywhere else on your website.

The code can also be added using Google Tag Manager. You can read more in our full article: How to use Polygraph with Google Tag Manager (GTM).

Step 2: Make sure your ads are using UTMs

We have a detailed article on UTMs titled What are UTMs and why should they be used?, but here we’ll cover everything you need to know.

UTMs let you track valuable marketing data each time someone clicks your ads. For example, utm_campaign identifies the campaign the ad belongs to, utm_source shows which ad network sent the click, and utm_term indicates which ad keyword was triggered by the visitor’s search terms.

Ad networks automatically add UTMs to your URLs. They typically look like this:

https://<your website>/?utm_campaign=<your campaign>&utm_source=<some ad network>&utm_term=<one of your ad keywords>

For instance, if someone searched Google for "click fraud" and clicked one of Polygraph’s ads, the URL might be:

https://polygraph.net/?utm_source=google-ads&utm_term=click%20fraud&utm_campaign=promo10

Polygraph requires your ads use utm_campaign, utm_source, and utm_term.

Adding UTMs to a Google Ads campaign is simple:

  1. In your Google Ads account, select a campaign, click Settings, then expand Additional settings.

  2. Click Campaign URL options.

  3. In the Final URL suffix section, enter:

    utm_source=google&utm_term={keyword}&utm_campaign={campaignid}

  4. Click Test if you want to preview the URL.

  5. Click Save.

To add UTMs at the account level so new campaigns use them automatically, follow these steps:

  1. In Google Ads, click All campaigns at the top left.

  2. Click Account settings, then expand Tracking.

  3. In the Final URL suffix section, enter:

    utm_source=google&utm_term={keyword}&utm_campaign={campaignid}

  4. Click Test to see the URL preview.

  5. Click Save.

That's all you need to do for Google Ads.

For Microsoft Ads, adding UTMs is even easier. Within your Microsoft Ads account, go to Tools, Preferences and turn Auto-tagging on.

To ensure Microsoft Ads sends bots’ search terms instead of ad keywords, add utm_term={QueryString} to your landing page’s destination URL in Microsoft Ads. You can prevent bots from seeing or clicking your ads by adding their search terms as negative keywords.

With this setup, Polygraph has everything it needs to analyze your ad clicks for fraud. You can view all fake clicks in the Polygraph Dashboard.

In summary

Setting up Polygraph is simple and takes just a few minutes. Just add the Polygraph tracking code to the <HEAD> section of your landing page and make sure your ads use UTMs.

If you need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.