A recent study by Clickforensics revealed that the Click fraud phenomenon showed a hike of 15% this year compared to the last year. Not only the increase, but the trend too is alarming.

Apparently, this type of a cyber fraud can be found all over the world but in some countries it is rampant. India ranks at number one by contributing 4.3 percent, followed by Germany with 3.9 percent and South Korea with 3.7 percent, as the Clickforensics study reveals.

Goliath Google's latest SEC filing points to a possibility that its future revenues could be hurt while trying to contain "accidental clicks" on Web advertising. The effect could be felt on Google’s near-term advertising revenues.

This year's filing entails the familiar language that the company would continue to take steps to enhance the relevance of the ads displayed on Google as well as its Network members' web sites. Furthermore, these steps would get translated into removing ads that generate low click-through rates or that send users to irrelevant or otherwise low quality sites, in addition to terminating Google Network members whose web sites that don't meet its quality guidelines.

Won't it be just wonderful that every click that we get on our sites would turns into a customer. Afterall we work hard only to get more customers. Every visitor is a potential customer, so it is important that every click that we get must turn into a customer.

But 'how' that is the question. YSM here has offered ten landing page tips to turn your visitors into customers:

As spending in the search marketing industry is on the rise, so are the click frauds and at rates which by no measures can be called as small, reports Click Forensics. Every time the results are made known it shows the deteriorating state of affairs in the SEM as far as click fraud is concerned, see: Click Fraud On The Rise: Click Forensics Findings.

The report from Ad Age published recently, reveals some eye-popping facts and figures about search marketing. You can read the complete report in PDF titled searchfactpack2007.pdf here.

There are a couple of interesting findings that the report brings to light:

Ask has announced the launch of the new PPC platform on 2nd October. The news came in the limelight after a blog posted at SearchEngineWatch.

There is an interesting article published by Forbes that highlights the ever increasing concern regarding click fraud. Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's click fraud czar on this occasion says that Google is throwing out less than 10% clicks to accommodate any invalid clicks so that advertisers are not billed for these fraudulent clicks. He explains:

Loren Baker suggests 11 more search marketing options beyond AdWords saying:

1. Search marketing role is based on the concept of search marketing share and distribution.
2. You can’t put all of your eggs in one Google basket and ignore the other 40% of the consumer market.
3. If you do not diversify your paid search campaigns beyond Google AdWords, you’re not only missing the boat - but losing your company money via inaction.

In an interesting post, John Ellis points out the "Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Pay-Per-Click Advertisers".

A brief introduction to the Seven Ways to score include:

• Separate Content from Search: "The separation provides much more insight into what is working, and more importantly what is not working."
• Control spending by adjusting bid amounts, not daily spend budget
• Create a negative keyword list
• Conversion matters, not click-through rate (CTR)

According to Click Fraud Index, as high as a quarter of all clicks for high priced search terms could be fraud. The report findings show that the industry average of click frauds has gone up from 13.7 percent in the first quarter of 2006 to 14.8 percent for the same period in 2007.

The figures for the content network are higher at 21.9 percent. But the highest rates of click frauds are for terms priced above $2.00. The industry average in this segment stands at 22.2 percent.