Big 3 search engines team up to combat click-fraud

by Darren McLaughlin

Click-fraud has been the topic of conversation a lot lately, and it’s really no surprise. Click-fraud is the Achilles Heel of search companies, and now 5 of them have teamed up to create an alliance to combat the issue. That shows just how serious the problem is, when bitter rivals can put aside their differences and combat a common foe.

Click fraud has attracted an increasing amount of attention amid class-action lawsuits and industry studies asserting advertisers have been collectively overcharged by more than $1 billion for bogus sales leads during the past four years.

Undoubtedly the lawyers are sensing just how huge of a potential market this could be. Google took in most of their $4.7 billion in revenues this year from their Google Adsense program, so if a high percentage of the revenue is in dispute, the numbers could easily reach into the billions.

Even potentially a bigger problem concerning click-fraud, is what it does to the credibility of the overall program. If advertisers don’t feel they’re getting their money’s worth, the system is imperiled. For this reason alone, the 5 search engine companies decided to team up and see what they can do to stop the practice.

It’s not easy to stop click-fraud:

“In some cases, the true intent of a click can be identified only after examining deep psychological processes, subtle nuances of human behavior and other considerations in the mind of the clicking person,” wrote Alexander Tuzhilin in a 47-page report submitted last month to an Arkansas state court.

What new technology they’ll come up with remains unknown. Surely they’ll keep much of the research quiet, for fear of alerting the very people they’re attempting to stop.