Click fraud, the illicit manipulation of keywords-based advertising, is not something new in the Search Engine arena. We have heard numerous reports of one company clicking on a rival's search engine ads to drive up its costs. Who is watching whom? What are the measures being taken against this rising web epidemic?

According to a report published on wired.com website, “The other enabler for the explosion of spam content and click fraud is Google's roughly 60% stranglehold on Web search, which gives it a pretty effective monopoly. That's why I find the "self-correcting market" arguments regarding click fraud more than a tad naive. Markets don't correct without competition and information, and I don't think there's enough of either here to make a difference. Yet.”

There are bloggers and duplicate content sites hosted to maximize this click fraud profit on a regular basis. Bogus ad click or fraudulent clicking is tarnishing the image and return of profit margin for both service provider and seeker.

The problem is of grave concern and needs immediate concern. As summed up in the above article:

"The amount of click fraud is difficult to quantify; estimates of the proportion of fake clicks run from as low as 1 in 10 to as high as 1 in 2. In a widely cited recent study, MarketingExperiments.com, an online marketing research outfit, reported that "as much as 29.5 percent" of the clicks in three experimental PPC campaigns on Google were fraudulent. Whatever the exact figure, click fraud has become pervasive, and Google, Yahoo!, and the other major PPC firms have found themselves caught in a game of cat and mouse with its perpetrators. Even as the search engines shore up their defenses, click scammers are becoming more sophisticated, increasingly deploying complex software to disguise the origins of clicks. For now, the search companies and many of their clients maintain that the problem on their networks is under control. But some observers, like Holcomb, believe that click fraud is "a billion-dollar mess" that "has the potential of destroying the entire industry."

Do search engines need more transparency in resolving click fraud?