Yahoo and Coremetrics yesterday announced an agreement that intends to provide enhanced reporting and click protection for advertisers. Yahoo will immediately provide its search marketing application program interfaces (APIs) to Coremetrics so that advertisers may gain direct insight about click-through rates, conversions and other web-based behavioral information, using the Coremetrics interface.

Yahoo has agreed to extend its search APIs to other leading web analytics providers as well, including Omniture, WebTrends and WebSideStory, reports Search Engine Journal. Advertisers may choose to share information about click-through rates and conversions with Yahoo, so that it can combat unwanted clicks and improve traffic quality.

In the case of Coremetrics, Yahoo's search marketing APIs will be automatically integrated within the Marketing Management Center (MMC). With the integration, direct advertisers, agencies and search engine marketers will have access to Yahoo data via MMC.

"By partnering with four of the world's most trusted web analytics providers, we aim to not only help provide advertisers with more integrated campaign reporting, but also better protect them from unwanted traffic," said John Slade, senior director of Product Management, Yahoo Search Marketing.

"It's a common misperception that search engines have all of the information necessary to identify all unwanted clicks. The fact is, advertisers possess information in their web analytics data that is proprietary to their business and can help engines detect questionable traffic," Bryan Eisenberg, Chairman of the Web Analytics Association, is quoted by Search Engine Journal as saying.