Are the search engines getting better tracking click fraud?

It’s getting harder and harder for advertisers to get refunds for fraudulent clicks these days. Gone are the times when you could send in a simple spreadsheet with click times, numbers, IPs, and referrers, and get credits back. I think the main reason it is tougher is that the search engines are getting serious about their built in tracking systems. Which, in theory, is a great thing for affiliate marketers. If they can accurately track clicks and removed the fruadulent ones, that’s just one less task we have to worry about every day. I don’t think they are to the point yet where we can trust them without our own tracking systems in place though. I still track clicks and send in fraud reports. But I’m hoping for the day when the big 3 can do it on their own.

So what are the search engines using to track? That is, of course, totally proprietary info, with patents pending. But Yahoo for example claims to track each click based on 20 to 50 different data points. Among those are:

* IP address

* User session information

* User cookie information

* The network to which an IP belongs

* The user’s browser information

* The search term requested by the user

* The time of the click

* The rank of the advertiser’s listing

* The bid of the advertiser’s listing

* The time of the search

* The time of the click