spacecadet2 - 1:28 am on May 17, 2008 (gmt 0)

Not sure where BikingforJesus is coming from. <Last month I visited a yahoo location and met with several VP's and the topic of click fraud came up. Reggie Davis (VP Network Quality) was very pro-fraud refunds via the use of their available tools and fraud investigations being offered. I spoke with a lead engineer who designed algorithms to prevent fraud (PhD in Math from UCLA) and I was quite impressed with the steps yahoo takes to prevent and provide restitution for fraudulent clicks.>

I've just spent the last two months sending logs/referrer info to Yahoo for our account and have gotten nowhere. We spend about $200k a year and recently the click fraud for Yahoo's search network has gone through the roof (we don't use the content network as it's totally useless). Yahoo's search partners now include the fraudsters that Google bounced because of fraudulent clicks - now the fraudster have moved and been accepted by Yahoo. Sites like Sedo.com and Zanga.com are two of the hundreds we've discovered. Yahoo DOES allows advertisers to block sites on the search network but new fraudsters (and incarnations) keep popping up faster than we can block them. If Yahoo would allow advertisers to opt out of the partner network, as Google, does then our ROI would return to normal.

I truly suspect that the microsoft takeover put Yahoo in a position that it was looking for every $$ to make the books look great. Unfortunately, opening the flood gates to fraudsters only presents a short term gain. We've turned our Yahoo account off pending some form of overall partner site blocking or signficant refund from Yahoo. Neither of which appear to be in the foreseeable future. It's unfortunate because we've been with Yahoo's PPC when it was GoTo.com.