Google Sued Over Click Fraud 285
tanveer1979 writes "A seller of online marketing tools has sued Google over click fraud, accusing it of failing to protect clients from spurious clicks over web ads. The suit claims damages of $5 million and is seeking class action status. Sites get money per click from the advertisers. Rival companies of the advertiser may employ people to repeatedly click on the advertisers link on Google costing them large amount of money. Google denied the allegations. From the article: 'We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously.'" Interesting turnaround.
It's a funny old world, innit (Score:3, Informative)
Otoh, this'll be even worse for google if Click defense manages to score a win in the courts.
Failing to prevent? (Score:4, Informative)
In other news, Sears is being sued for failing to conduct background checks on the purchasers of air conditioners. It seems foreign assassins have been dropping them out of windows and killing unsuspecting Americans.
Failing to prevent? I mean, come on. This only makes sense if Google signed a contract with the advertisers saying they would implement measures to prevent this.
Re:wait... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why sue Google over this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Terms of Service (Score:3, Informative)
It's about people working for companies that click on banner adds of their COMPETITORS. You can do the rest of the math yourself.
Not that it matters much, the whole case is pretty much moot anyway.
Re:Not much of a turnaround. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1-800 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.clickdefense.com/contact.html [clickdefense.com]
Google does try hard... (Score:3, Informative)
Valid issue, No standing. (Score:2, Informative)
However, there is a valid issue here. I would guess that Google is responsible for two things. 1 Notifying customers when they detected a non-trivial amount of fraud. 2 To make a good faith effort to combat this fraud.
Failure to perform either of these could open up Google to some amount of liability.
Re:Mod Up: Happy Activity for slashdotters (Score:4, Informative)
While I'm reluctant to post thier website as I don't want to give them more publicity, here [clickdefense.com] is the website of the company sueing (not those listed in google ads).
As I've said below, if you want to screw with them calling thier 877 number would be better as it won't hurt other companies, won't help thier court case, and 877 numbers actually cost more than a click
It is a problem (Score:2, Informative)
However, the ROI through Yahoo is consistently better. My clients are dropping Google left and right, and I strongly feel that this is due to the nature of adsense.
Ads provided by Google on affiliate websites are typically text based and appear to be designed to trick customers into clicking the ads, thinking they are part of the site they are currently on, and then the surfer just hits the back button because they never intended to leave the site they were on anyway.
My proof of this is in the stats. When someone comes to one of my customers' websites from Yahoo, their typical page views are 2-4 pages. When they come from Google, the page views are typically 1 (or just the homepage).
I don't feel that it is a click fraud issue for some of these smaller companies using adwords, rather it is Google banking on surfer error through the adsense program.
I would like to see the Google Adsense program more clearly render their ads on other websites so people know that they are actually clicking on ads. Yes, I know there is a tiny Google mark on the ads, but when is the last time you saw a surfer read everything on a web page?