Google attempts to squash concerns about click fraud by proving that other people can't solve the problem any better than they can. It's interesting, not surprising, but really doesn't change the status of the click fraud issue at all.

In a new report on click fraud, Google's Click Quality Team claims that many of the 'click fraud detection services' used flawed methods and have their own technical problems which cause them to incorrectly diagnose and report on clickfraud. Mistaken reading of page reloads, and mistaken attribution of advertisers and networks are cited as errors the Google team uncovered.

If these click fraud detectors are selling snake oil, then Google is right to call them out. But just because these guys can't isolate and identify it, it doesn't prove or disprove the existance or extent of click fraud. It just proves that click fraud is very difficult to detect, which we knew. In any case, it's great to see Google engaged and talking. Like their recent invalid click reporting, it's another step in the right direction.

Now how about putting some tools in adsense to show click spikes, document the time interval between clicks from the same origin (and exceptions from these averages), and better yet lists of the URLs where clicks originated?

I don't believe Google or anyone can stop clickfraud, an if it's happening on distributed networks on at a slow pace and followed by some deeper clicks into the site, I doubt anyone can even detect much of it. But the anecdotal cases (or suspected cases) I've seen were batches of sudden clicks, and it stands to reason that the majority of these types of clickfraud are it's easier to detect than the slow, small, random clickfraud. If it didn't feel like Google (and Yahoo for that matter) were so unwilling to help with the big obvious stuff, it would be easier to give them more credibility and understanding on the broader and potentially larger issue.

(Via John Battelle's Search Blog)