Google’s figured out a way to calm down the hype surrounding click fraud – let Adwords advertisers see for themselves which clicks Google has detected as invalid.

According to CNET, starting today Google will start revealing to advertisers the number of invalid clicks for their ads.

…advertisers will be able to see the number of invalid clicks Google found, as well as what percentage that represents of total clicks registered, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google.

So, anyone know exactly what Google considers to be an “invalid click”? I’m sure they can identify multiple clicks from the same IP, but what about the more complex zombie networks?

Reuters reports Yahoo has hired a top database expert to head-up a team studying social search.

Yahoo hired Raghu Ramakrishnan, 45, as vice president and Yahoo research fellow in charge of defining the strategy behind Yahoo’s “social search” system, based on his expertise in databases, data-mining and privacy-preserving technologies.

Gizmodo has details of Google’s launch of Traffic Maps for Mobile.

This service provides detailed directions, integrated search results, easily movable maps, satellite imagery and real-time traffic for 30 major cities on your cellphone.

To access this service, simply point your cellphone browser to www.google.com/gmm

Two noteworthy acquisitions today…

Avenue A/Razorfish has purchased Amnesia, an Australian digital agency.

Avenue A/Razorfish acquired the 8-year-old, full-service Amnesia based in Sydney for $3.7 million in cash, reports AdWeek. The small interactive shop’s clients include Xbox, Ikea and Disney. It has about 26 employees and expects $2-$2.5 million in revenue for the rest of the year.

Verizon acquires SEM firm Inceptor, and hopes to combine it with its SuperPages product.

The deal, explained Inceptor Spokesperson Marcia Castracane, “now gives us the financial backing to grow the business and also be a bidding tool for Verizon.” The Massachusetts-based company’s core product is a PPC bid management platform called BidCenter.

The Washington Post reports 51 plaintiffs in the recent Google click-fraud settlement have raised objections to the suggested $90 million deal.

Plaintiffs say Google has not done enough to stop click fraud, which drives up advertisers’ bills by falsely indicating the number of Web users who have “clicked” on an Internet ad to seek more information about a product.

Google adwords has released its Best Practices for their new video ads. These ads will appear in your content match results.

The real question is, is this the test before they start adding these video ads to the Google search results pages? If so, once they migrate to paid search video ads, what’s next?

People have been talking about actual “commercials” on the internet for a while, is this how it is all going to start?

USA Today looks at how Ask.com has increased its share of the search engine industry by rolling out clever TV ads.

It’s an interesting plan to go straight from dumb monkeys to the genius of Apostolos Gerasoulis. That’s how smart you can get folks, by switching to Ask.com.