We recently talked about being careful about who's reporting and writing about click fraud. The reason is that there are many companies who make money by offering services that supposedly help help you fight it. The problem was that many of these companies basically made up figures to 'scare' you into buying there products.
According to a new report from Click Forensics, which last month revealed the results from its first Click Fraud Index, the average click-fraud rate is approximately 14 percent as an average, far below the outrageous figures that have been thrown around that they were 20-35 percent.
Another interesting aside is that most of the fraud originates in the U.S. and Canada, far different than the warnings we also hear concerning uncertainty of foreign countries.
The exact rate of click-fraud found across all search advertising companies was found to be 13.7 percent, according to Click Forensics. Now in the area that means the most to the great majority of online marketers, Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG), they reportedly had far less fraud coming in at 12.1 percent, far below other smaller providers who had come in at 21.3 percent and 29.8 percent.
In the first quarter it was also reported that the average cost per keyword was $4.75 for the top words among the five largest search-advertising industries which entail: retail, financial services, health and fitness, technology and entertainment.
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