In a surprise announcement on the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog, Yahoo! have revealed that they are creating a partnership with Click Forensics to tackle the thorny issue of click fraud within PPC advertising campaigns. This is quite an unusual move since both Yahoo! and Google have disagreed with the data published by the click auditing company, Click Forensics, due to differences of opinion about the definition and measurement of the data.

Now Yahoo! has taken a positive move to work with Click Forensics in a way that should benefit the PPC market as a whole. Yahoo! say that Click Forensics will act as an intermediary for advertisers and cooperate on specific advertiser issues when advertisers request help about potential click fraud events. Click Forensics will be able to provide Yahoo! with more information on behalf of the advertiser if there is a question about traffic quality, as well as any additional data that may help Yahoo! to update their traffic-quality measures.

There are likely to be some conflicts of interest in this arrangement, but a more open partnership between the 2 companies should be welcomed. Yahoo! have also announced that they will be make a Click Filter report available to advertisers, showing the number and percentage of clicks that have been discarded as 'fraudulent' - much the same as the report option currently available through Google AdWords.