I received a very interesting telephone call early yesterday afternoon from a business owner of a lead generation website who had seen his PPC (Pay Per Click) ad spend on Google escalate in the last month or so from $4,000/month to $6,000/month with no detectible, corresponding 50% increase in business.

From beginning to end of the conversation his entire focus was on his concern that he was the victim of invalid clicks (a.k.a. click fraud).

Not coincidentally yesterday, Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal pointed out a lengthy Business Week cover story which was breaking yesterday about the very same topic.

Update: today's New York Times publishes its own article on the subject.

It's plausible that the business owner's (I spoke with) issue is not invalid clicks at all (or if so, perhaps less than suspected) but a less-than-analytics approach to his online marketing coupled with a surge of interest in his hot field. First clue: he had long ago opted *out* of the Google Content network. Further, he had Google's AdWords conversion tracker in place, but *not* Google Analytics.

Perhaps other real issues include a recent spike in competitive activity (driving his bid prices up) compounded by untested PPC ads, poorly performing landing pages, etc--all which could be analyzed in Google Analytics and then corrective action taken.

Further, he could also use Google Analytics to check on the click activity of potentially over-zealous competitors using the "Domains" or "Network Location" Visitor Segment Performance reports, had he suspected that problem.

The well spoken business owner wanted to know his options.

Here's what I told him: