Click fraud auditing firms can't count, according to a report issued Tuesday by Google.

"We've seen media reports and data from consultants that didn't make any sense," says Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust & safety. "And we wanted to know why. So the report that we published today details the flaws that we found that explain these discrepancies. We're publicizing this information because we want to help the consulting firms fix these problems and make advertisers aware of the kind of distorted data they may release."

The 17-page report, released at a panel discussion at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Calif., claims that third party click auditing companies report fictitious clicks--clicks that were never made on Google AdWords ads--in their click fraud audits and thereby inflate the number of clicks and the click fraud affecting advertisers.

Find out more about Google's report on click auditing companies at InformationWeek.