Click Defense Files Click Fraud Lawsuit Against Google
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Written By Reprise Media | June 30, 2005 | Share This
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Just when you thought the spate of search-related lawsuits had eased up comes news of a class action lawsuit filed against Google by Click Defense, a retailer of online marketing tools (and abuser of cheesy stock photography on their web site, but we won’t get into that here).
An article from Reuters has more on the suit, which alleges Google failed to protect users of its ad program from counterfeit clicks, costing Click Defense upwards of $5 million dollars.
Click Defense Chief Executive Scott Boyenger said in an email that his firm has tracked fraud rates as high as 38% percent. Google says it credits advertisers who get hit, but Click Defense says that’s not enough. A Google spokesperson said, “We believe the suit is without merit and will defend against it vigorously.”
News like this is certainly worth paying attention to, but not as alarming as the media makes it out to be. SearchViews has said it in the past, and we’ll say it again - click fraud does not spell the end of the search advertising world.
F*ckedGoogle.com has the usual gloating, including the phrase “Goog just got served” (eww). Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch has more, including a link to the complaint filed with the US District Court. A longer piece on click fraud, including a look at Google’s
Fraud Squad’ is here.
Topics: Click Fraud |
Well this is typical of what we see, I have been complaining to Google about apparrent discrepancies for weeks now on some occassions their click rate exceeded our total hits on the page. Our host uses Urchin (google own them now) I have repeatedly asked Google for supportive evidence of the massive differences in CTR’s as opposed to what Urchin shows ACTUALLY happened. What respones do I get , nothing!They tell me THEY have looked into it and everything is fine. But still the rates are significantly different and they simply ignore the data and will not explain WHY there should be a difference.
IMHO their much vaunted Fraud squad is just a PR stunt, otherwise why not PROVE the billing (asked this of them six times now). Something very strange going on here!!!!
I agree. I have found some of the same problems with google. I often question the validity of many clicks as well as my hit counter showing something totally different and less than what google is saying we actually got. To this date, we have spent over $20,000 with google and have probably only received around $300 or less in credits for false hits.
At the same time, it has come to light that yahoo is being hit with many class action lawsuits about this very thing. We advertised with them for about two days and it took no longer than that to know that yahoo was a big fraud. I’m glad to see them in trouble with the law for stealing hard earned advertising dollars from various companies around the world. Let’s hope Google smells the coffee from their neighbor and do something about their program.