Google's proposed $90 million click fraud settlement is under review, but some are now calling for a neutral third-party auditor to sniff out just how much damage has been done in a pay-per-click
industry many believe to be rampant with fraud. Meanwhile, Google's proposed settlement does nothing more than cover that which has already happened; click fraud is not going to go away and there
could be more legal action if it's proven that Google and Yahoo are inadequately addressing the problem. Click fraud auditing companies, like ClickFacts, do exist, but the Googles and the Yahoos of
the world won't be happy to work with folks who claim that between 20 and 35 percent of clicks on Net ads are fraudulent. If we're only talking about search engine marketing, that would add up to more
than a billion dollars in fraudulent SEM transactions just on Google, many times more than the $90 million purse they're offering. For obvious reasons, the auditor idea is probably not going to gain
the support of the Web's biggest search engines; Google has already said it will fall back on its "we don't want to give up data our rivals could use to defeat us" stance. Yahoo says it's willing to
cooperate, but not until the industry agrees upon standards to measure click fraud. We all know how quickly and easily the Web industry comes together to agree on standards.
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