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A New Tool to Prevent Click Fraud by Google

As an Arkansas judge is about to decide whether to approve a settlement in the click fraud case against Google, which is offering a $90 million settlement, Google is offering advertisers a tool, which will help to fight click fraud. The company has been trying to stop click fraud, or invalid clicks on Internet advertisements, which falsely increases the number of people reading ads and in turn drives up ad rates.

Small businesses have complained that Google hasn`t done enough to prevent the spread of the click fraud practice. Google, in turn, announced a new AdWords feature that allows advertisers to view click fraud reports. Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google says: "One of the controversial issues related to the topic of click fraud has been estimating how big the problem is. This tool will make estimating invalid click activity much easier."

The tool will make reports, which advertisers will pay for. The reports will show all invalid clicks on a particular account and will display invalid clicks that have been filtered out of AdWords` system. Google explains how it detects invalid clicks and allows advertisers to set up a schedule to receive the reports automatically. Users can also select manually a period of time they wish to examine.