Hello According to Google's income statement to investors (on the Google website), Google earned over $6 billion from advertising during 2005 ($6,065,003,000 to be precise), and has earned over $4.6 billion in the first two quarters of this year. My estimate is that over 95 percent of this comes from AdWords; other sources claim 98 percent. This means Google's AdWords counting technology was responsible for at least $5.7 billion last year. I am interesting in hearing from anyone who has spent money with Google who may have complained and :- Received a refund ? Received an admission that they were incorrectly charged ? Received no response whatsoever ? Did not receive a satisfactory reply ? I am planning to launch the largest law suit possible against Google for what I believe is their fraudulent AdWords activities. With the size of the revenues above there must be thousands of people /companies who cannot reconcile their clicks/results against what Google has charged them. Regards Jon
All that matters is return on investment my freind. I put $50 into AdWords and $200 comes out the other side. Why would I sue them? Heard that a million times - Why not file "the largest lawsuit possible" and then get back to us
Everything costs as much as people are willing to pay for it. If Google are charging people for clicks that dont exist, but people still pay for it, thats the same as Nike charging more for lower quality shoes, people pay more because it seems worth it. Why not sue Nike while you are at it?
There's rarely victimless crime. Click fraud is as insidious as any other form of crime. Worse, Google have until recently almost effectively condoned the practise. I have complained 3 times and had 1 refund. But to tell the truth its just such hard work proving your case. I've got round the problem by switching off Adsense from most of my client campaigns.
Pete, you never know for definite. But you're always exposed to degrees of suspicion. Each case I've reported has involved large numbers of repeat clicks originating from Eastern Europe or Asia.
If you are using Google Adwords and happy then fine and you need not participate in this discussion. For clarification I am not referring to click fraud. My company is spending in excess of $20,000 a month with Google Adwords and on every occasion we have queried the statistics and charges we have received refunds. I have emails from Google admitting they are having technical problems. I believe that the entire Google Adwords premise is fraudulent. I am able to prove it but of course I would not wish to prejudice my case by providing any further comments on a public medium. If you believe that you have had similar experiences and wish to provide copies of communication between Google and yourself then please contact me by email on legal@adwordscam.com BTW: you never have a double letter in any URL Jon
Like "Google.com", or "Yahoo.com"??? Yeah, I guess they were a failure because of their double letters.
Here is a link to a post I started a couple of months back regarding my click fraud nightmare: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=99081 Google addressed the matter immediately, refunded our money, and continued to monitor and refund money even a few days after I had sent the last incident report to them.
I don't see why people are going after Google all the time. Well, I do, it's where the money is these days. Anyway, you either decide to continue participating in Adwords because you are finding it appropriate to your business needs or you don't. The choice is yours. Personally, I'm small potatoes, but I work to increase my conversion ratios and so forth, and here and there I'm figuring out how to make a few dollars. Perhaps I'm just lucky, but while I'd like everyone who visits my site to never use the back button and always click on something that makes money, it happens anyway.
What guarantee would you like to provide ? I am willing to have my lawyer contact you and formalize our agreement. Regards Jon
It's very easy. The burden as the provider of the service is on Google to substantiate their charges and they cannot it's that simple. The impressions and clicks they charge for are not accurate at all. regards Jon