Readers have to understand how difficult it is for reporters to write about click fraud as there is very little corroborating evidence outside the information we ferret out of advertisers who complain to us about their experiences. Google and Yahoo are not known to be forthcoming with information surrounding their pay-per-click programs. Journalists rely on third-parties such as Click Forensics, ClickFacts other analytic companies (in this case, Fair Isaac) to supply us with information which in turn we supply to you the readers.

The numbers that came out of the Fair Isaac press release generally jive with those of Click Forensics and the index maintained by the Click Fraud Network which estimated a 14.8% click fraud rate at the end of the first quarter of 2007. Hundreds of other writers simultaneously experienced the same low-watt light-bulb moment I did hoping that Fair Isaac had provided a solid set of numbers to speculate from.

This story is more significant than we first thought. It is difficult to get information for some kinds of news stories when the most important source is stingy with information. Neither Google nor Yahoo want to give away trade secrets and if they address the click fraud problem too openly may have to do just that. But they want their advertisers to be happy and right now that isn’t the case. Well, not completely any way.

Conjecture can often times be wrong. But when you have three or four third-party sources conjecturing on click fraud and they are all in the same neighborhood then that conjecture, at least for journalists, becomes much more important. While Fair Isaac’s study is not completely accurate, as a preliminary study it does shed some new light on an old topic. First and foremost, FIC is a credible source:

They have years of experience in detecting fraud, first on credit and debit cards, and then on other fields, like insurance and provider fraud, and network assurance, which monitors signals over telephone networks.

As a credible source, they should be taken seriously.

Secondly, a preliminary report is often a way for researchers to detect interest in their study before committing to a full-scale study. In this case, that interest could have been assumed, which would beg the question that SEW asked: Was it really necessary for FIC to go public with its preliminary findings.

Another reason preliminary studies are undertaken is to see whether there is enough data to move forward with a full-scale study. If a preliminary study shows that there is not enough information available to draw adequate conclusions, or that the results of the study will not reveal anything worthy of reporting, then there is no sense in conducting a full-scale study. On thee other hand, if the opposite is true - that the preliminary study indicates something can be learned from the study - then it would be necessary to move forward with a full-scale investigation. I believe the significance of FICs preliminary study is just that. They are essentially putting the search engines on notice - we have reason to believe we should conduct a full-scale study on this matter.

That’s significant. It’s significant because Google earlier stated that it’s click fraud problem was less than 10%. Yahoo estimated between 12 and 15 percent. Another third-party source reported 14.2%. Who do we believe? It is clear that we need more third-party studies and that’s why FICs study is so signficant. If a full-scale study by FIC reveals a click fraud rate near that of Click Forensics then the search engines may not be able to hide behind the veil of secrecy any longer. Once the cat is out of the bag it will be necessary to feed it. The question will then be, Who does the cat belong to? My answer: The advertisers.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Search Engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.