I noticed an Adwords account I am managing has targeted only the US and Canada but we had several thousand dollars worth of clicks in the last year from 89 other countries. I sent a note to Adwords support and they said it is to be expected. I used Google Analytics data and they didn't argue against it but said it was to be expected and it might be good clicks that just look like they are from far away, like an ISP based in Indonesia but the IP address and user are really in the USA. If you have dealt with this and got a credit, please let me know how I should approach them again on this. Thanks.
like Google said, it is to be expected. There is no way to tell where to original user is from since they may be using a proxy. If you want a credit you have to prove to them the clicks were invalid otherwise there is nothing you can do.
To get rid of this, go down to the provincial level in Canada and state level in the U.S. This dramatically decreases your foreign clicks.
Robert, the kind of traffic isn't the sort of user that would be using a proxy, it's small business owners that probably haven't upgraded the IE version that shipped with their PC. They probably don't know what an internet proxy is or why they'd use it. Thanks PPC-Coach, that's what they said but it seemed lame coming from them. It sounds pragmatic coming from you. Is there a chance that Google will over filter? As an exmple what if they can determine country but not state.