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Click Fraud Rate Climbs to 16.6% in Fourth Quarter »
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Click Fraud Rate Climbs to 16.6% in Fourth Quarter

The overall click fraud rate for the pay-per-click (PPC) industry averaged 16.6% in the fourth quarter of 2007, and the rate of click fraud for all of 2007 was up 15% over 2006 levels, according to Click Forensics, which cited data from the Click Fraud Index.

Key findings from data reported for the fourth quarter:

• The overall industry average click fraud rate rose to 16.6% for 4Q07. That’s up from the 14.2% click fraud rate in the fourth quarter of 2006 and 16.2% in 3Q07.

• The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks (such as Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, but also smaller players) was 28.3% in Q4. That’s up from the 19.2% average click fraud rate for the same quarter in 2006 and 28.1% for 3Q07.

• Q4click fraud traffic from botnets was 15% higher than click fraud traffic from botnets in Q3.
• In Q4, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from India (4.3%) Germany (3.9%) and South Korea (3.7%).

About the data: The Click Fraud Index monitors and reports on data gathered from the Click Fraud Network, which includes more than 4,000 online advertisers and agencies. Click fraud data is tracked and published on a quarterly basis for specific search providers, industries and trends.