Yahoo! Gets Serious About Click Fraud

14th August 2007

The Yahoo! Search Marketing blog announced the launch of a Traffic Quality Center to help combat click fraud and “build the highest quality ad network possible”. The new site address is:

Traffic Quality Center

Visitors to the site will learn how to submit a click investigation request, access tips and tools to detect click fraud and read news stories and articles about click fraud and best practices to protect their companies’ search marketing investment. Yahoo! promises to make information that sheds light on traffic quality issues from many different perspectives available on the site.

Changing More Than Perceptions

Will this actually change anything in the way they handle customer requests for click quality reviews? This question should be foremost in the minds of most search advertising professionals who choose to use the Yahoo! platform.

While the effort is noble, the fact remains that no online site will improve the advertiser experience of having to deal with less-than-intelligent Yahoo!Search Marketing representatives. Nor will the website increase the amount of money advertisers get refunded by Yahoo! due to fraudulent click on their account. It could in fact, very easily just end up being a soapbox for them to trumpet how conscientious they are about delivering quality traffic, but doing nothing concrete about refunding companies whose marketing budgets have paid for fraudulent clicks.

News Update: Google Catches Up

Two days after Yahoo! launched the Traffic Quality Center, their main rival, Google, have gone and launched their own version, called the Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center:

Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center

Looking at the lackluster appearance of Google’s offering, one might almost wonder if they didn’t just slap together something quickly and put it out there in an attempt to not be outdone by the competition!

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3 Responses to “Yahoo! Gets Serious About Click Fraud”

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Chan : 23 August 2007 at 8:26 am

Interesting post

Discussion on social networks & blogs

Paid Traffic » Paid Traffic August 14, 2007 12:49 pm : 14 August 2007 at 4:52 pm

[...] Yahoo! Gets Serious About Click Fraud It could in fact, very easily just end up being a soapbox for them to trumpet how conscientious they are about delivering quality traffic, but doing nothing concrete about refunding companies whose marketing budgets have paid for … [...]
Yahoo! Sharpens Its Claws To Fight Click Fraud | AccuraCast Search Daily News : 7 April 2008 at 2:26 pm

[...] The majority of fraudulent clicks are usually initiated by competitors trying to run up an advertiser’s ad budget so that their ads stop showing once their daily limit is exceeded and by publishers trying to earn more money from the content network ads shown on their site. Yahoo! use a click protection system and have claimed to discard as much as 12-15% of clicks registered on ads before billing their advertisers. Last August they launched the Traffic Quality Center to help combat click fraud and “build the highest quality ad network possible.” In a new endeavor against this menace, Yahoo! has teamed up with Click Forensics, a traffic quality management company that audits clicks received by an advertiser to fight against click fraud. [...]

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