• by Shankar Gupta , April 12, 2006

Analytics firm ClickTracks Tuesday posted record sales for the first quarter of this year, reporting an 83 percent increase in revenue over the same period in 2005, and a 22 percent increase in revenue over the last quarter of last year. For the entire year, the company's revenues grew 97 percent.

Although ClickTracks and analytics firms like it now face competition from the Google Analytics product--which the search giant made available for free after purchasing Urchin--buzz around click fraud may be raising demand for alternate solutions.

ClickTracks in February released a click-fraud detection tool with its version 6.1 software. The product searches for anomalies in time spent on a site, frequency of clicks from certain countries, the number of IP addresses, and other factors that could indicate fraud.

Last month, Google agreed to settle a class-action click fraud lawsuit with an offer to provide up to $90 million in ad credits to marketers who were charged with invalid clicks. Under the proposed agreement, Google will allow any advertisers who believe they have paid for invalid clicks at any time since 2002 to contact the company and apply for reimbursement. Normally, Google requires marketers to contact it within 60 days of the allegedly fraudulent clicks.