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Google Agrees to Pay $90mln on Click Fraud Lawsuit
Hitokiri writes "Google has agreed to pay up to $90 million to settle a class action lawsuit 'Lane's Gifts v. Google'. The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts earlier this year in an Arkansas state court and is designed to settle all outstanding claims against Google for fraud committed using its pay-per-click ad system back to 2002Google has made a statement on their blog."
Also, they say its not just for Lane's Gifts.
It is a 90mln limit based on how many people apply for backdated invalid clicks.
From the blog linked above:
For all eligible invalid clicks, we will offer credits which can be used to purchase new advertising with Google. We do not know how many will apply and receive credits, but under the agreement, the total amount of credits, plus attorneys fees, will not exceed $90 million.
liqbase
On the web, all you have to do is create different landing pages for each of your adverts. These are unique, and the stats speak for themselves.
Using decent server side code, it's also possible to distinguish which advertisement your actual purchasers arrived from, and this is quite prevalent amongst serious e-commerce businesses.
If your IT department isn't all that good, you can splurge big time on a very sophisticated WebTrends account, which will do all this stuff, and a lot more besides.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
1. It is possible to measure click fraud. There are certain statistics that can be used to calculate its effect quite accurately, even if they can't be used to determine it on a per-click basis.
2. This may be true but in the end the value of a click is the choice of the consumer. People clicking accidentally on a Google ad is no different from people "accidentally" hitting the remote in the middle of a Bud commercial and missing the second half of the 30 seconds. These accidental clicks are factored into the overall effectiveness of the ad.
3. Most small business might be in the honeymoon, but not large businesses. Most of these are looking very seriously at the bottom line, and finding it's lower than they expected.
4. At the per-click rates customers pay for certain terms, yes I believe it. Compared with other forms of advertising paid search is turning out to be an incredible value. The main question is how much Google and Yahoo can continue to fine-tune the targeting to squeeze out that much more revenue.
--- not a Google fanboy as such, but convinced online advertising is where the money is at.
Click fraud runs about 40% when noobs manage a Google Adwords account. Much of that comes from Adsense via the Google content network, because it's a way for webmasters to line their pockets at the advertisers' expense. Competitor click fraud happens too.
The ways to control click fraud are:
1. Set low bids on the content network. Click fraudsters pick on the richest bids.
2. Exclude sites from the content network that show below average conversion rates.
3. Use your own tracking URLs to double check Google's conversion figures.
4. Don't show your ads in cheap offshore locales. Some sleezebags have set up click fraud offices in these places where people are paid to surf and click on your ads.
Discount your bids to account for the cost of click fraud. As long as you are happy with your net cost per conversion, click fraud is just a cost of doing business. Your bids are lower, Google earns less. If Google wants to earn more, they should the eliminate fraud.