IT has for a number of years advertised on Google - a company famed for its search driven advertising options. These options involve advertisers paying for a variety of key words. When users generate Google searches utilizing these words, links appear in search results. These links direct the user to an advertiser’s website. The scheme only involves payment when a user clicks on a link and is redirected to an advertiser’s website. However simple the scheme, it is open to abuse that has been termed ‘Click Fraud’.

Click Fraud happens when someone clicks Google links knowingly and with no intention of doing business with an advertiser. Two key types of click fraud exist. The first is where an advertiser’s competitor continually clicks on an advert to drive up a competitor’s advertising costs and ensure their budget is spent. The other type of click fraud is through Google’s affiliate sites. Any advertisement that appears on a Google website creates revenue directly for Google. However, if an advertisement runs on a Google affiliated site, then revenue is shared with this site. Some affiliates are known to click on advertisements in a bid to drive up their own commissions. One possible route around both types of fraud would be for Google to log where clicks were made and indicate this on some form of billing. Google does not currently follow this procedure.

"Google is able to block spamming efforts from its own Google Gmail service and should do the same to protect its pay-per-click advertising clients. However, Google chooses to do nothing because substantive action would both invalidate the current paid search model and because a lot of people are making a lot of money from this," said AIT's Chief Executive Officer. AIT says it has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fraudulent clicks even though Google has the capability to detect fraud. "We have been watching this and documenting it for some time, not only for ourselves but for our customers from our network and several other networks, and we have the technical expertise to prove without a doubt that it is happening and that Google could do something about it if they wanted to" said AIT's Executive Officer.

AIT claims that addressing click fraud would have major implications for Google’s advertising revenue model. It also suggests that Google maintains a ‘conflict of interest’ when it alone provides policing against click fraud. AIT suggests that an advertising campaign focusing on North America which received numerous hits from around the world brought click fraud into their focus.

AIT claims that although Google is aware of click fraud, it has taken few steps to address it. AIT’s lawsuit (which they would like to reach class action status) questions Google's efforts to deter click fraud.