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More Details of Google’s Click Fraud Settlement

posted on March 9, 2006


Verne Kopytoff of the San Francisco Chronicle is one of the first journalists to cover news that Google has settled the class action suit on click fraud for $90m.

Lost in the breaking news was how this affects Ask.com and Yahoo, both defendents in the same suit.

Ask.com, the Oakland search engine, and also a defendant in the class action, said Wednesday that it expects to be removed from the lawsuit because of Google’s settlement. Ask.com was part of the litigation only because it displayed Google’s ads.

The lawsuit also named Yahoo Inc. as a defendant. However, unlike Google, the Sunnyvale Web portal said Wednesday that it plans to defend itself vigorously against the accusations.

Considering the many billions of dollars Google has earned from paid search, combined with the fact that this is just a fund to cover new clicks – no actually money refunded and the entire fund may not even be used-up – it’s a great result for Google.


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  • http://www.seoposition.com Brian

    That does seem to benefit Google moreso than the tens of thousands who have advertised through their Adwords channel, only to lose unknown amounts of money through fraud clicks.

    Credits? If I were an advertiser overcharged by fraudulent clicks from Google, which I’m sure I am, I would opt for cash instead.

    Giving advertisers credits doesn’t really solve the problem and I’ve heard little being said from Google to combat the problem. And with these credits, what’s done with the credits not used by advertisers who are not actively advertising? I’d bet much of that $90 million will be recaptured back by Google if not used by their advertisers.

    Many articles like this one on CNN Money back in December 2004 discused Google’s click fraud problems, but it’s still not resolved. With all the click fraud companies out there, seems like Google could easily implement something to thwart fraudulent clicks, but perhaps they just don’t really want too.

    Of course, I wouldn’t want to put a dollar figure behind what Google would lose if click fraud was identified and stopped AS it happens within their network.

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