Yahoo! and Click Forensics to offer an independent third party analysis of Yahoo! Search Marketing’s click quality

Click fraud has arguably been one of the most critical issues that the paid-search advertising networks have had to face over the past years. In a welcome announcement made at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, hosted a couple of weeks ago, Yahoo! along with Click Forensics said they had decided to come together to offer an independent third party analysis of Yahoo! Search Marketing’s click quality.

Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) and Click Forensics partnership may prove to be fruitful and useful to the industry as a whole. YSM has the second largest online advertising network whereas Click Forensics is the firm that led the fight against click fraud. It had earlier given an estimate regarding the click fraud activity; it found the same to be in a range between 14 to 21 per cent of the total clicks. Although the firm did not opt to distinguish between the networks of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, GenieKnows, Seavast (Kanoodle),Miva, Accoona and others, instead only providing broad figures and trends.

Of course, not all of the advertisers and search engine experts would agree with the findings. Irrespective of the veracity of the data, Yahoo! has taken steps to analyse and improve its Search Marketing’s click quality, which is a step in the right direction.