An attorney representing plaintiffs in a federal click-fraud class action suit pending against Google in California claims the $90 million settlement Google reached last month in a related case filed in Arkansas fails to penalize Google or fairly compensate advertisers victimized by click fraud.
The most that aggrieved advertisers can expect from settling with Google is about a half a cent for every dollar lost to click fraud, according to Information Week.
According to Reuters, an Arkansas judge approved on Thursday a preliminary settlement worth up to $90 million between Google and advertisers who claimed the world’s leading Web search provider overcharged them for their ads.
An article in the School Library Journal explores the use of search engines in the classroom and during test taking. Some schools are allowing students to use a search engine to find information and answers while taking an exam in a classroom. While some schools do not allow “cheating with Google” many would allow students to use search engines for quizzes and take home tests (how would you stop them at home, anyway?).
Click fraud is a growing concern for advertisers and agencies alike, according to research by the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO).
Click fraud drives up the costs of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and is sometimes used by an unethical company to drive up their competitor’s marketing costs. Just another reason we believe the smart approach is to focus on the “organic” search results that aren’t subject to such nefarious tactics.
Attorneys have a pending class action suit in Arkansas against Google, Yahoo!, Lycos, AskJeeves, FindWhat.com, Buena Vista Internet Group, LookSmart, America Online, Netscape and Time Warner. The lawsuit accuses the defendants of overcharging advertisers for pay-per-click advertising and concealing the overcharges.
Pay per click (PPC) advertisers on Google don’t just have their ads displayed on Google search results pages. Their ads also appear on many other web sites that have content related to the subject of the ad. For example, the Sports & Recreation page of East Hanover Online contains Google ads for summer camps and recreation centers. Whenever someone clicks on one of those ads, a portion of their per click rate is paid to the owner of East Hanover Online.
Now, India has spawned an innovative business called ad clicking fraud in which thousands of Indians are paid to click on a website’s Google ads in order to increase the website owner’s revenue from Google for each click. They offer 1,000 clicks per day in return for 50% of the money earned for those clicks.
A number of industry experts are concerned that if this fraud can’t be contained, it may seriously jeopardize the future of PPC advertising, making high rankings in the natural listings even more important than they are today.
