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The Interactive Advertising Bureau announced that a significant milestone has been reached in the "war on click fraud." In May, the organization released its Click Measurement Guidelines, and some of the top media companies have already passed the IAB’s audits.

These companies include Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, as well as Business.com. When we think click fraud, the major search engines tend to come to mind, but that is still not the entire picture, obviously.

"The three largest search engines represent more than 95 percent of all U.S. searches, which in the month of May 2009 equaled more than 13 billion searches. Completing those companies’ click measurement audits represents a significant milestone in the war on click fraud," said Joe Laszlo, research director of the IAB.

"However, these guidelines also serve a broader audience of advertising buyers and sellers, and the participation of the leading business search engine in these audits points the way for other publishers selling cost-per-click ads to be audited against the guidelines as well," he added.

It is good to know that the big three search engines were able to meet these newly established guidelines so quickly, although some may wonder if the guidelines go far enough. There are still plenty of other networks to worry about too.

"We applaud these member companies for swiftly adopting the IAB’s Click Measurement Guidelines," said IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. "We are confident that this initial group will be followed by many other organizations in our membership who recognize these guidelines as one of the most important ways to assure marketers that the clicks they pay for are real."

WebPronews summarized the IAB’s click measurement guidelines here. You can get more details by looking at the entire document on the IAB’s site.