Google is Challenging the Click Fraud Data

Google accused three auditing firms that sell click-fraud detection services to advertisers of relying on flawed technology, reports the Financial Times. A Google report said its examination had "discovered some basic engineering and accounting issues across the industry" that have led to "dramatic overestimation of click fraud rates by these firms." Those firms' research is used by some advertisers to challenge billings from Google.

Two key findings of the report "explain the fundamental flaw we have seen in all of the reports we examined - fictitious clicks: events which are reported as fraudulent, but are never recorded or charged as ad clicks by Google", according to a post in the AdWords blog.For one, auditing firms counts such fictitious clicks when a surfer browses more deeply into an advertiser's site and then hits the back button, presses the browser reload button when on the landing page or opens a new browser window and causes a reload of the landing page, CNET quotes a Google spokesman as saying.