To counter the growing concerns and debate about click fraud in a PPC advertising campaign, both Yahoo! and Google have just launched some information pages explaining what it is, how it is measured and what they are doing to combat advertiser's concerns. Yahoo! launched their Traffic Quality Center first, which was quickly followed within the week by Google's own Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center. Neither of these information pages contain much new information, but they have now combined it all into a user friendly 'information centre' to try to ease the concerns of advertisers.

Yahoo!'s pages include background information and news on traffic quality and what click fraud is as well as how it is combated (in very general terms), plus there are guidelines on identifying fraud, how to submit a click investigation request and links to other resources. As Yahoo! states, their "commitment to traffic quality is not new. In fact, since 1998, our Click Protection System has been up and running 24/7 with the goal of filtering out bad clicks—helping to ensure that you’re only billed for the clicks that count. Like all such systems, it continues to evolve with the marketplace".

Google's new pages follow a similar pattern, with an explanation of what click fraud is and how Google identifies it and responds to the problem. There is a technical section with links to articles and other resources, plus some multimedia features and FAQs, as well as guidelines for contacting Google about the issue. Google's resource centre doesn't quite have the polish and depth of Yahoo!'s yet and could just be a quick reaction to Yahoo!'s PR move, but it's a good start and a useful resource for advertisers to refer to if they are concerned about the issue with their PPC campaigns.