The PCWorld website reports on the new guidelines published in the US by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to help define what 'click fraud' is within pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and to lay down basic procedures for determining when an advertiser should or should not pay for a click. Promisingly, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all collaborated with the IAB on the production of these guidelines.

Click fraud remains a controversial area of PPC advertising, with different % levels claimed by various interested parties. The search engines say they have this issue largely under control but advertisers are often concerned about how effective these controls might be. The new guidelines - which can be downloaded here - now provide "the detailed definition of a 'click' and the standard by which clicks should be measured and counted, including the identification of invalid and/or fraudulent clicks".

This is a good move by the IAB and participants who created these guidelines and they should start to help the debate about, and the tackling of, the problem so that the PPC advertising market can move forward on a clearer understanding of the issue.