Most of you have heard about the click fraud issues with search engines and have heard that different entities report the problem at a different size. Google, for example, says it’s not a material portion of the clicks their clients get. SEMPO says otherwise and in fact calls the problem more endemic and insidious. SEM click fraud is only part of the issue, however.

The matter also entails addressing new technologies like Ajax and how clicks in environments running Ajax will be measured. Further, that brings up the issue of valid clicks versus invalid clicks and whether machine-generated clicks are valid in some cases (e.g., redirects driven by a previous user action).

Building on the work of the IAB in terms of standards of impression counting, the MRC task force is working to develop comprehensive guidelines for click measurement. These guidelines would hopefully be implemented by publishers and ad servers, as well as agencies and advertisers.