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Google's debut of the Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center closely follows the arrival of a similar service from Yahoo.

Google Opens Traffic Quality Center

Click fraud persists in plaguing advertisers and the search advertising companies that sell ad space. High-profile lawsuits have happened as a result of businesspeople contending not enough is being done to keep their budgets from being tapped with illicit clicks.

With trust occupying an important part of any online advertising product, Google and its competitors have to work hard to stay ahead of the various grifters, thieves, and assorted criminals who would loot their ad clients. They haven't always been very communicative about their work, claiming that the bad guys would profit from information about anti-click fraud efforts.

That position hasn't satisfied advertisers nor the many third party companies that attempt to track click fraud independently of the search companies. Google and others generally refuse to give up information on their anti-fraud efforts, citing the benefit of such transparency to those who would game the system.

Room for improvement in discussing the click fraud issue has existed for some time. Yahoo opened a Traffic Quality center last week, and now Google has followed suit.

Much of the information Google presents in its Ad Traffic Quality pages has been seen before. Google claims it proactively finds all but about .02 percent of what turn out to be invalid clicks. Advertisers who find and report invalid clicks can be reimbursed by Google after those clicks have been confirmed invalid.

Google suggested a way advertisers can help themselves against click fraud. "Advertisers should have a working definition of ROI that is trackable. For advertisers that are not selling products directly online, try to define some intermediate step (e.g. filling out a form) as a proxy for a conversion," they said.

Another section of the Traffic Quality center focuses on some of the technical discussions on click fraud. It includes articles by Google staffers about click fraud, and references to official and unofficial blogs by Google and by people like Matt Cutts and Shuman Ghosemajumder, both noteworthy Googlers on the topic of click fraud.