Grad Student Gets Grant to Study Click Fraud

University of Louisville graduate student, Li Ge, has been awarded a $149,923 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to engage in research regarding data mining and click-fraud detection. As a die-hard University of Kentucky fan (Go Cats!), it's hard for me to encourage anything going on at the University of Louisville, dubbed around these parts as the "Evil Empire to the West." This bit of news, however, is something I can get behind. There's been so much debate throughout the blogosphere and SEO community concerning the actual threat that click fraud represents to SEM practices. Unfortunately, there is no tried-and-true method of click fraud detection to gauge such results. But wait, back up. What exactly is click fraud? From I'm not one to accept what Wikipedia says as gospel truth, but in this case the definition seems pretty accurate. Li Ge's project, the "Collaborative Click Fraud Detection and Prevention System" has been in development since May 2005. The system is designed to track actual, real-time user behavior in efforts to detect fraudulent clicks. His research grant will cover research expenses until December of 2007. According to an Adotas Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Joe is a staff writer for latest ebusiness news