Not sure whether this is more appropriate here or in the adwords category, but I just found this interesting post on the Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/update-lanes-gifts-v-google.html What sort of ramifications will this have for webmasters running adsense? I presume we won't be having earnings deducted?
As someone who spends thousands on Adwords every year, I won't be persuing any refunds. I expect Google to do no evil but I don't expect them to stop all evil in the WWW, just most of it which they do. If you bounce over to the Adsense forum, you will be convinced that Google doesn't mess around and likes to do lifetime bans. Of course those telling their stories over there are typically kids that clicked their own ads in some not so clever scheme. Catching smart grown ups is another story but Google employees smarter grown ups that I trust will catch 99.99% of the bad guys..
This is the settlement Google negotiated to bring an end to a class action lawsuit brought against it, AOL and Yahoo for click fraud. If approved by the judge, AdWords advertisers can submit click fraud claims dating back to 2002 when the AdWords program started. Right now, there is a 60-day limit for click fraud claims. Google will only pay a total of U.S. $90 million in settlements and legal fees if the judge approves the negotiated settlement. I do nto see Google applying this to AdSense because it spans a period of time longer than AdSense. However, Google is a "for profit" company and the money will need to be recovered somewhere, somehow.
They should have never settled with those guys. Setting cookies, proxy blocking, Ip logging and switching ads is enough. Google has the best anti-click fraud system there is. Even If a person uses multiple proxies google doesn't show the same ads unless they convert to sales so I can't see how any one company could considerably be impacted by any google click fraud. The bottomline is that these people spend $8 or $9 a click (up to $60) to send traffic to their homepage instead of optimized landing pages and they get upset when the campaigns don't convert well enough for them to get back the thousands of dollars they spend a day. You've got big businesses losing money for themselves and their investors and then sueing google to weasle out of it. Why write better copy and make better landing pages, when you can sue google and get $90 million dollars. I think google should have done a little more hand holding and dumbing down information for the general corporate clones. I know they felt that they couldn't give away strategic information on how they were combating click fraud but these corporate guys just assumed that they aren't doing anything. That's much worse.
Nice post YoungSmeagol. Business is business and adwords if they are a part of your business, need to be treated like any other advertising method. If you advertise offline you dont get refunds for your advertising costs, unless you dont get your advertising. Obviously there are cases where it is applicable, but in most cases this shouldnt come into play. I am sure google will have a good verification in process for determining if it is click fraud or not. But some of the things these guys are coming out with for click fraud, well its going to be hard to beat. I have heard about entire "click-fraud" farms set up around the world. Not sure if it is true or not but wouldnt suprise me. Brad