Google Ads gives you two IP exclusion lists, and each holds 500 addresses. That sounds like plenty until a click farm rotates through residential addresses, or you find that the list you built in the spring is now blocking people who might buy today. Here is how the two lists work, which campaigns each one reaches, and how to spend the slots.
The two lists
| Campaign list | Account list | |
|---|---|---|
| Limit | 500 addresses per campaign | 500 addresses for the account |
| Where | Campaigns → Settings → Additional settings → IP exclusions | Admin → Account settings → IP exclusions |
| Reaches | That campaign only | Every campaign: Performance Max, Demand Gen, Search, Shopping, Display, Discover and YouTube |
| Not available for | Performance Max, video, App, hotel and Smart Display campaigns | — |
Google merges the two. A campaign is closed to every address on its own list and on the account list, so a Search campaign can exclude up to 1,000 addresses in total. You manage the account list only from account settings; a campaign can't edit or remove its entries.
Sources: Google Ads Help, Exclude IP addresses (the per-campaign limit, menu paths and campaign types); Google Ads API, CustomerNegativeCriterion (the account-level limit).
Why a hand-kept list goes stale
An exclusion is tied to an address, and most addresses don't belong to one person for long. Home broadband and mobile addresses are reassigned. A mobile carrier can put many phones behind one public address. Residential proxy networks, which click farms and many bots use, route each visit through a different home connection.
So an entry added in March may block a real customer in October, while the source it was meant for has moved on. Every stale entry still takes up a slot, and you get no notice when the list fills.
How to spend 500 slots
- Account list: stable sources that should never see any of your ads. Datacenter and hosting addresses, where real shoppers rarely browse from, and known bot networks. It is also the only list that reaches Performance Max.
- Campaign lists: a problem in one campaign. A competitor who clicks your most expensive search campaign belongs there, not on every campaign in the account.
- Ranges only for datacenters. An asterisk in place of the last part, such as 203.0.113.*, excludes 256 addresses. On a mobile carrier or home broadband provider that also hides your ads from real customers.
- Both versions of an address. Google's advice is to exclude every version of an address you want to block, so an IPv6 address needs its own entry.
- An expiry habit. Remove entries you haven't seen again in a month, so the slots go to sources that are still active.
- Keep campaigns whole. Splitting a campaign just to get another list spreads its conversions thinner, and Smart Bidding learns from conversions.
Running the same campaigns on Microsoft Advertising? Its limit is 100 addresses or ranges per campaign, IPv4 only, so this list needs trimming there. How to spend Microsoft's 100 slots.
Free tool
Build your IP exclusion list
Paste addresses from a log, a CSV export or a report, in any layout. You get a clean list in the format Google Ads accepts, with repeats removed and the most active addresses first.
0 entries
Runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent anywhere.
An exclusion is not a refund
An exclusion stops your ads from showing to that address from then on. Google still charges for the click that first revealed the source, and it decides credits for invalid clicks separately.
What an exclusion can't do
It can't follow a visitor to a new address, and it can't tell a bot from a customer on the same network. That takes evidence about the visit itself: behavior, device and network signals. Our guide to IP blocking and person-based detection covers how the two fit together.
How AdProtektor manages the lists
AdProtektor connects to Google Ads through a manager account: you enter your Customer ID and accept one invitation, so there is no login token to expire. It then keeps your exclusion lists in step with what it blocks:
- Each block gets a list when it is made. The account list, which also reaches Performance Max, goes to sources that are automated or keep coming back: bots, datacenter and bot-network addresses, high-confidence threats, and an address that returns after an earlier exclusion.
- A first-time or occasional clicker goes on campaign lists, and so does a visitor who keeps changing address, so an address that changes within days doesn't take an account slot.
- When more sources qualify for the account list than it has slots, the highest threat scores keep them. The rest wait on the campaign lists of your Search, Display and Shopping campaigns.
- Campaign exclusions go to the campaigns you choose for each website. If you don't choose, AdProtektor picks them from that site's ad traffic.
- An address is never on both lists. When a block ends, or you unblock or whitelist a visitor, its exclusion is removed.
- Exclusions you added by hand are left alone. They still count toward Google's 500, so keep that list short.
- Every exclusion it adds or removes is logged.
The Google Ads integration page walks through the connection.
Five hundred slots are enough for the sources that come back. They will never be enough for the ones that rotate.
To see which sources are reaching your ads, start a free trial and connect Google Ads with your Customer ID.