I have received so many links to Tuesday’s New York Times article on click fraud “Per-Per-Click Web Advertisers Fight Costly Fraud” from people that my inbox is full.

Pay-per-click advertising is on the rise.  As reported in the article, this is the only form of advertising that grew during the economic debacle that was 2008.  The attraction of this highly measurable form of advertising is more keen now than it ever has been, as companies shift their marketing dollars to the most accountable form of advertising.

It’s no surprise that the lure of those dollars attract the nefarious, with 17% of all clicks in 2008 deemed fraudulent per Click Forensics, according to the article.  The search engines are trying to keep up. They continue to improve their click fraud algorithms and do catch a fair amount of it.  It’s not a perfect science, however, and while they do offer credits for fraudulent traffic, it is still incumbent upon the advertiser to defend themselves.

While click fraud is a serious problem, it is rarely reported on accurately. Click Forensics and other panelists at the Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC last year reported that much of the click fraud that Google and Yahoo experience is in their content network. Reporters are typically blind to the difference between the content and search networks and don’t distinguish between the two. Click fraud is also a pet topic for reporters since it sounds exciting.

As an agency, we have been monitoring click fraud for our clients since the day we opened our doors in 2003.  That’s possible because we track the performance of every keyword and monitor every click.  The data we receive are analyzed every day for patterns and activity that constitute fraud and we use those data to champion our clients with the engines.  We have had countless thousands of dollars returned to clients.

Is click fraud a problem? Absolutely. Is it going away? No. And so we constantly keep vigil and protect our clients.

(If you do not track your own PPC campaigns, then let me urge you to do so ASAP and to analyze the data you obtain.  There is an outstanding standalone tracking service called ConversionRuler that you should check out.)