Legal Issues in Search Archives

Bigreds, an internet retailer has decided to sue Yahoo for $1 million over click fraud starting back in 2002. Yahoo offered Bigreds $17,000 back, but Bigreds wants more and they are suing for over $1 million in damages and penalties.

I wanted to pull out some of the best comments on this lawsuit, which you can read more about at InformationWeek, from a WebmasterWorld thread:

Look if you are going to build your billion dollar business around PAYPERCLICK then you should probably have systems, people, backups for the most obvious exploit.

It's the modern day equivalent of a bank without a safe.

Um, i'm looking at this site, and I really don't see how any traffic would convert, regardless of whether it's fradulent or not. Sorry Red, but I'm thinking that maybe the lawyers are the only ones that are going to come out ahead here.

I don't really see the problem with advertisers bringing suits against garbitrage because the advertiser foots the bill for the middle man market they create.

Decide for yourself...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In the Copyright & Trademarks: What SEMs Should Know session from SES San Jose last week, adCenter announced they have a new policy on how they will be handling trademark complaints.

Instead of them being the go between, between affiliates and advertisers, they are kind of going to take a step back and let the two duke it out.

Microsoft then announced the change on their blog.

Microsoft adCenter will no longer attempt to mediate affiliate compliance by creating lists of trademark-owner approved advertisers who can bid on trademarked keywords. Support teams will be contacting those trademark owners who have provided affiliate documentation previously to explain this policy update and answer questions.

If you have a trademark issue, you now need to use this form.

WebmasterWorld moderator, Receptional, said:

Not sure this will upset agencies looking after client trademarks too much. This seems to me like the onus is on the advertiser to stick to their trademark rights, but trademark owners will still be able to protect their marks as and when.

Skibum adds an important point:

Microsoft is Microsoft so they can do whatever they want but this sounds confusing and inconsistent.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Privacy International released a report this weekend rating Google at the bottom of bottom, in terms of their privacy practices. They even published an open letter to Google over their practices calling for "an apology" for calling this report "a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft."

As one might imagine, with Google's popularity, this news did not wait for the weekend to break before articles started coming out. Every headline I was tracking for Google was about this report. The coverage is overwhelming, but let's have Techmeme help sort it out. Danny Sullivan took a different approach, after carefully analyzing the report he wrote Google Bad On Privacy? Maybe It's Privacy International's Report That Sucks calling for:

Overall, looking at just the performance of the best companies PI found shows that Google measures up well -- and thus ranking it the worse simply doesn't seem fair. But the bigger issue is that the report itself doesn't appear to be as comprehensive or fully researched as it is billed.

Frankly, about the only thing saving Privacy International from many more companies or services being upset over this report is that they singled out Google as the worse. That's almost guaranteed to make players like Microsoft and Yahoo shut their mouths and point at this silently as vindication they aren't so bad.

On that, Matt Cutts of Google wrote his own piece named Why I disagree with Privacy International. He said, "I personally feel strongly about protecting our users’ privacy. So I’m frustrated by a recent study that Privacy International did, and I want to know if I’m off-base in my reaction." Adding;

I think Privacy International should feel remorse about walking right past several other companies to single out Google for their lowest rating. But I think that there’s a larger danger here too. I believe this report could corrode earnest efforts to improve privacy at companies around the internet. Why? Because the bottom-line takeaway message that I got from the report is that a company can work hard on privacy issues and still get dragged into the mud. Consider: in the last year or so, other companies gave users’ queries to the government, leaked millions of raw user queries, or even sold user queries and still came off better than Google did.

The Techmeme coverage on the opposition to the report can be found here.

Now, let's take it to the forums.

WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums have larger threads on the topic. Here are some select quotes from members of those respective forums.

I assume any information I give google will be used to find profit. One area that really irks me on is Adwords. I assume that by using their "free" Analytics and ROI calculator that know exactly what my price tolerance is and will start to increase my costs per click seperate from my competitor, with this in mind.

What Google does with the data is less important than what governments can force Google to do with the data. Google's good intentions don't matter. Their policies - which may permit the data to fall into truly evil hands - ARE what matters.

This report is just plain BS

It is sad really, because I really believed that Google was fundamentally different

For some reason, I don't think this is the last we hear about this. I suspect Google will come out hard against this report. I suspect the debate to linger on for a couple weeks and then die down and no one will remember it until a new report is released.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread points to a Digital Chosun article that reports a Korean site is suing Google for banning them in AdSense, and not paying.

Google, the U.S. web search giant, faces a W30 million (US$1=W945) lawsuit in Korea. Humor University, a local humor website, announced on Sunday that it filed a suit against Google demanding W20 million in payments and W10 million in damages. Humor University said the American firm allegedly failed to pay for three months of online ads.

Google said they are not paying Humor University because the clicks were fraudulent and have banned the account. "Humor University said Google never provided evidence to back up those claims."

I doubt Google will lose this one, but this should be fun to chat about.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Big news last night, Google wrote they will be taking steps to further improve our privacy practices. What that means is that after 18 to 24 months, Google will begin to anonymize their sever logs to help protect it a lot better.

This has been a common concern over the past couple years. Danny pressed this issue with Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt in A Conversation With Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

Q: Danny brings the NY Times up about the woman who was found via token data from the AOL slip up. He said there are tons of privacy issues. What do you do to protect this? Government taking it, accidents, etc....
A: This is obviously a terrible thing. The data was not anonymized and it was a mistake. If Google were to make this mistake, it would be a terrible thing. They have lots and lots of systems to prevent this from happening at Google. They don't share everything in Google with everyone in Google. He describes a case where the government gave Google a subpoena that was over-broad, and they fought it in court. They take is so seriously that they fight it in court.

Q: Will Google destroy data they have?
A: Eric said they had this debate in Google. But they are take steps to prevent issues.

The AOL issue has undoubtedly pushed this concern to the front of the pack for Google. And I am happy that they have announced they will be doing this. Here is a PDF document of the log retention policy.

But this does not mean all your privacy will be anonymized. As Danny explains in detail you still need to be worried about several things including:

(1) Search History On Your Computer
(2) Search History & Your ISP
(3) Search History & Search Engine Server Logs
(4) Search History & Personalized Results Or Personal Search History Records

You can control number four, Google will allow you to do that. You can try to clean your computer for number one. Your ISP is your ISP and not sure what you can do about that. Same with number three.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

The big news over the weekend was that Microsoft to blast Google for its copyright policy via Reuters. Let me give you some quotes to some things up quickly.

In prepared remarks to be delivered to the Association of American Publishers, Microsoft Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin argues that Google's move into new media markets has come at the expense of publishers of books, videos and software.

"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs," says Rubin, who oversees copyright and trade secret law at Microsoft.

"We do this by complying with international copyright laws, and the result has been more exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers and producers of content."

Danny Sullivan, as always, has done an excellent job Dissecting Microsoft Slams At Google As Copyright Infringer, so read that as well.

But let's see what the search marketing industry things about this:

All those web pages that don't want to be indexed and want to stay invisible on the web can just do the robots text thingy. The rest of us will just pay no attention

I would like to see a government or "internet" service where original content owners can submit their property such as articles and images. This service would then provide the proof of original registration. Search engines would check there, either automatically or by request of the owner to be sure that they are not indexing duplicate copies of registered material.

We are living in the age of content theft. This theft is rampant, done in secret and almost unenforceable. I believe that this service could be supported by a small fee charged for each submission.

That is really weird that they would just stand up and say something like that. It almost seems personal. Google is making money because they are good at organizing data. Books should be set up like music. If you show books with advertising there should be a set fee that goes to the publisher/author like radio stations do.

The "your in unless you tell us otherwise" policy is pretty much the same as the phone book. Your home adress and phone numbers are published unless you "PAY" for an unlisted number! I can just see all the search engines jumping on that band wagon at some point in the future! Don't want us to cache your pages ... no problem! That will be $200.00 for the first year please and $100.00 for all subsequent years.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Google came out and finally gave us some numbers.

0.02 Percent of Clicks Pass Through Google's Fraud Detector:

Our Click Quality team investigates every inquiry we receive from advertisers who believe they may have been affected by undetected click fraud. Many of these cases are misunderstandings, but in most cases where malicious activity is found, the clicks have already been filtered out (and not charged for) by our real-time filters. Because of the broad operation of our proactive detection, the relatively rare cases we find of advertisers being affected by undetected click fraud constitute less than 0.02% of all clicks.

Invalid Clicks Account For Less Than 10% Of All Clicks:

Our invalid clicks rate – the activity rate – has remained in the range of less than 10% of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. At Google’s current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million/year in potential revenue foregone.

So, in a sense, click fraud is costing the industry $1,000,000,000 ($1 billion) per year.

Danny has an excellent break down on all of this, so I won't get into why Google released it and how this all makes sense. It is worth a read, so check it out.

Currently we have threads at both WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums, with WebmasterWorld having discussion in it. Here are some quotes:

totally misleading. How many advertisers can analyze (or choose to) the data and take the issue up to google?

Those 10% invalid clicks are identified as such by Google and are not charged to advertisers. What they are saying is that maybe 0.02% of those clicks are invalid *and* charged to advertisers. That sounds like peanuts and as long as advertisers have a decent ROI, I don't see what's the big deal, as long as Google is diligent with banning fraudsters. No advertising medium is 100% efficient.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday at Search Engine Land I reported Search Engines Do Not Have To Display All Ads Says Court based on Eric Goldman's post named Search Engines Defeat "Must-Carry" Lawsuit--Langdon v. Google.

In short, a court ruled that Google and other search engines do not have to carry any ad submitted to them. Specifically, Christopher Langdon was upset with a company or two and wanted to buy ads to complain about them (i.e. a "griper") but Google denied him. They would not approve his ads. So he took Google to court, and the judge ruled in favor of Google saying, "some of his [Langdon] claims "specious" and "frivolous." Eric them noted three things we can pull from this case:

(1) The First Amendment gives search engines the right to reject any ad they want.
(2) "Search engine decisions to reject ads is protected by 47 USC 230(c)(2) as a legitimate decision to filter "otherwise objectionable" content."
(3) "Search engines aren't state actors and are not bound by the First Amendment, so they do not deprive advertisers (such as Langdon) of First Amendment rights by rejecting their advertising."

But these are ads, flip it around to the free/organic results and Google has often denied to remove such listings. Why? Because they want their algorithms to handle it. Heck, there is a profession to handle such organic results named reputation management.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a nice amount of discussion on the ruling, so here are a few quotes:

Seems logocal to me. Otherwise an accountancy search engine (or directory) could be sued for not listing a shoe shop. That would be absurd.

I'm not constitutional scholar, but doesn't the first amendment keep the Government from preventing free speach? I don't think it applies to individuals or business.

First amendment is clearly a restriction/limitation on government powers. Google, despite all their power, is not the government.

This case, OTOH, is quite different to the questions about whether the SE's should censor listings out of their organic SERP's. The bar for censorship should be (and is) much, much higher in that arena. Though personally, I don't think it's high enough, given the arbitrary nauture of some of the decisions from the major SE's WRT listings they are unwilling to display, relating to both content and region.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This is fairly entertaining... Via a WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums threads, a blog owner received an email from a online store owner, requesting he lower his ranking for a keyword phrase the blog is ranking well for. In short, the store owner feels he should rank better than the blog, because he is selling the item on his site and the blog is only informational and not transactional. If this person knew anything about Google, he would know things tend to work the other way around.

The emails, without specific identifiable information, can we read in part one and part two. Let me quote part two for you, since I find it the most entertaining...

You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog.

Don’t forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches.

I have also contacted my lawyer about this issue, so you should expect a letter in the post very soon.

I expect a reply soon.

I won't quote from the forums, but I think they tend to agree with me on this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Seems like everyone is taking a stab at Google and YouTube's recent fortune - but that would have been expected. Everyone is talking about it now, UTube.com is suing YouTube.com for "site confusion."

What is the issue, the Guardian explains;

Universal Tube says it has lost business because genuine customers have had trouble accessing its site, and has filed a lawsuit asking YouTube to change its web address or pay the cost of creating a new domain name.

Because YouTube traffic at UTube.com caused the server to come down...

Ouch.

Forum discussion is pretty wild at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

In late July Google's $90 Million Click Fraud Settlement was Approved and we now have reports via various forums that Google advertisers are now receiving the payouts.

WebmasterWorld has a two page thread with some comments;

Got my $6.45 wohhooo! headed to McDonalds for a Big Mac on google.

After spending $480,000 over 3 1/2 years I see a $280 credit in my account for Oct 20.

I've spent $188,000 this year alone, and my payout is only $30. This is a joke. I bet I've had more click fraud than that in on hour.

Similar comments at other forums as well.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Affiliate4U Forums.

Steven Bryant wrote that Google Sued for AdSense Fraud. In short, Theresa B. Bradley, owner of bravacorp.com has sued Google for being terminated from the program after allegedly spending a hundred hours placing the Google AdSense code on her site.

Hold on a sec....

(1) 100 Hours to place ads on a site? I can attest that it can take less than 3 minutes to place AdSense code on millions of pages of a dynamic site. But it looks like her 24 page (or so) site is pure HTML, so let's say it took 3 minutes per page, to add the code? 72 minutes of work? What about economies of scale? :)

(2) She admittedly clicked on her own ads and as Jen clearly points out, it is "against the AdSense terms & policies, which states "Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs." So she is in violation of the agreement she signed.

JenSense and eWeek have great coverage of this.

Both WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums have long threads on the topic, even though the news was broke late last night. It is honestly a shame that this woman sued Google. She is destroying her name, in my opinion. Just look at all of the comments in the forums. They read all of the tone as;

Funniest damn thing I've seen in awhile.

Perhaps it is time for Google to file a counter-suit seeking damages for:
a) Damaging the good name of Google by implicating them in a frivolous suit
b) Breach of contract (the TOS)
c) Fraud (clicking ads herself)

Wow... honestly what a stupid woman. I can't wait for Google to own her in court.

It appears the 100 hours includes the time taken to review the ads, so she's suing google for the time she spent clicking her own ads :)

Some comments are worse. Everyone has Google's back on this and that is rare. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Earlier this month AOL Messes Up by Releasing Sensitive Search Data. Well, the other day they acted on that mistake by forcing the CTO to resign and firing the researcher who released the data, as well as his manager. AOL wasn't kidding when they said they will be "giving everything away for free."

Maureen Govern, who became technology chief last September, has left the company and her position has been temporarily taken by John McKinley, her predecessor. The researcher who released the data – that was aimed at academics researching search patterns but was widely copied across the web – and the researcher's supervisor have also been fired, according to people familiar with the matter.

Do you feel this move by AOL's top management to release a top manager and the two individuals closest to the slip up was good enough? Do you think those who decided to make AOL a free portal are more to blame?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night I posted at the SEW blog that Brazil To Close Google Brazil's Offices Over Orkut Issues? You see, Google and Brazil don't have such a great recent history. Orkut, Google's social networking platform, has received headlines that include;

- Aug. 16, 2006 :: Orkut Causing Trouble In Brazil Again
- Jul. 21, 2005 :: Drug Pushers Using Orkut Arrested In Brazil
- May. 25, 2006 :: Google Works With Brazil To Shut Down Orkut Communities
- May. 18, 2006 :: Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material
- May. 3, 2006 :: Google & Brazil Fight Over Orkut User Data Rights
- Mar. 10, 2006 :: Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime
- Mar. 9, 2006 :: Al-Qaeda Likes Orkut

Ouch! Well, I think Google has pushed Brazil far enough. The news is now everywhere; Reuters reports that Brazilian prosecutors seek lawsuit against Google.

Brazilian prosecutors asked a federal judge on Tuesday for permission to file a civil lawsuit against Google Inc., alleging it was withholding user information required for a separate criminal investigation.

The prosecutors want Google to pay a $61 million fine and asked that if it refuses to comply with its information request, its Brazilian unit be dissolved.

Should be interesting...

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread claims a Google AdWords representative sent him an email warning him not to use the add to Google Reader RSS button on his site. Why did Google tell this person to not have the button on his site? Well, because the Google Reader button has the Google logo within it, and you need Google's permission to use Google's trademarks prior to posting them.

Here are the exact words of the email, I believe;

It has come to our attention that your website is using Google's trademarks without our permission. We allow use of our logo only if we have granted express written permission to do so. Please remove the Google logo from your website until such time as you obtain permission and approval for its use.

Um, check out the Google Reader Blog, do you see the button they use on the right side?

What about Google's Help People Subscribe to Your Content page which has the button there for this specific use.

Obviously, this is a gross example of Google's representatives not being educated in Google's other properties.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Have you received an email notifying you of a settlement by Yahoo! with Checkmate? "A proposed Settlement has been reached in a class action proceeding alleging that Yahoo! breached its contracts with Class Persons and committed unfair business practices by improperly collecting revenue by charging and/or overcharging Class Persons for certain types of clicks." You have up until October 14, 2006 to say you want out of this class action lawsuit, and you have until November 20, 2006 to submit your claim.

More details and instruction at http://www.checkmatesettlement.com/.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Search Engine Watch Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

I wrote about it at the SEW Blog yesterday;

Techmeme is reporting a huge amount of concern over AOL releasing, then pulling, search logs done by 500,000 users over three months. The purpose of the release was to help search researchers better understand user behavior in conjunction with an industry event for search researchers happening in Seattle, SIGIR. The data was posted on the AOL research site, but has since been pulled.

Much more at SEW blog, Danny postscripted later on.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread notes of a BusinessWeek report that Ask, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are coming together to form standards on what is an "invalid click."

The Internet's leading search engines are teaming up with an advertising trade group to find a better way to identify and measure "click fraud," a scam that has raised doubts about the Web's trustworthiness as a marketing vehicle.

The initiative, announced Wednesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, will draw upon the expertise of Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -- the owners of the top online search engines -- to attack a problem threatening to erode their profits. Combined, the three companies control 86 percent of the lucrative U.S. search engine market, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Danny at the SEW Blog also covered this with a quick recap of the News.com story.

Definitions are incredibly important and without it, you won't know exactly SEMs and PPC Engines are trying to prevent.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Danny reports that the $90 Million Click Fraud Settlement has been approved. $30 million goes to the lawyers, $60 million goes to AdWords customers, in terms of credits. Danny says that "apparently around 500 companies choosing to opt-out" of the settlement and will go after Google solo.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I reported Friday afternoon at the SEW Blog on an Independent Report: Google Click Fraud Detection Practices Are "Reasonable". Bottom-line, the report stats that "click fraud detection practices that shows Google makes reasonable efforts to detect click fraud." What is also interesting is that the folks in the forums don't seem to care, well, as of yet.

There are no forum threads outside of one that I found at DigitalPoint Forums and that one doesn't have much feedback from forum members.

This 47-page report by Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin, Professor of Information Systems at NYU, has tons of clues about AdWords, that can benefits SEMs. Anyway...

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

I reported at Search Engine Watch blog on Monday that the Kinderstart.com case, where the site owners are suing Google for penalizing the site, may go to court. The case is that Google is a competitor, and Google banned KinderStart.com, for Google's own benefit. :) Yea, yea, I know. The forums are chuckling about it as well.

It is important to note, that although the judge wants to hear more specifics, that the case has yet to fully proceed and that KinderStart.com has a long way to go to win such a case.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Chris Sherman has the huge write up on Yahoo's settlement of the click fraud case. He describes;

The terms of the settlement include a cash payment of $4.95 million to plaintiffs' counsel and a provision that will allow advertisers to file a claim for Yahoo to investigate potentially fraudulent clicks back through January 2004. Yahoo will pay refunds to advertisers who file claims if it discovers evidence of fraudulent clicks.

Chris explains that the amount does not come close to the $90M Google Settlement but Yahoo is "offering cash refunds, and there is no ceiling on the amount it will refund if it finds evidence of click fraud," where Google offers advertiser credits.

Forum discussion on this settlement at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

The most ridiculous case I have seen in that past week, was brought to my attention via a DigitalPoint Forum thread. They link to articles at JournalNow and at The Inquirer that is named, "Google "hacked our website"."

The schools claim that Google's search engine spider grabbed information they shouldn’t have and posted it on the Interweb.

The data included the names, Social Security numbers and test scores of 619 students which are still available online when the page was removed by the schools.

There is no way Google can type in a username or password into a form box. Someone at the school must of left something open, some how. Either a URL was posted that contained a direct link to the information, via some sort of password embedded in the URL to enable access.

I agree, the judge is right, Google should remove this data from the index ASAP. "The temporary injunction, granted by the Honorable Richard D. Boner, calls for Google to remove any information pertaining to Catawba County Schools Board of Education from its server and index..." But "and alleges conversion and trespass against the corporation," is out right crazy.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A touch question at hand, does one join the class action settlement against Google on PPC fraud or not. Google is giving back $90M, $30M which will be going to the lawyers, the rest to the advertisers. How much will the average advertiser get back? That is the discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

The details for the settlement can be found at http://www.clicksettlement.com/.

Honestly, it is about you - do you want to just take it easy and join the settlement or do you want more from Google. Many want more and think the settlement is unfair.

Join the discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

On Friday at SEW Blog I reported that Google was being sued by Nassau County Legislator, Jeffrey Toback for profiting on the sale of child pornography. We have some discussion on Google AdWords showing Child Prostitution Ads from the past. So is Google really profiting with a smile? I doubt not, and I doubt Jeffrey Toback believe so also. He clearly said that this suit is a "is a proactive step to keep children safe." It will basically make Google more proactive, instead of reactive with these sort of ads.

The folks at WebmasterWorld forums are exploring a few sites.

(1) Google technical glitches with the AdWords system to allow these sort of ads to be shown.
(2) A great political move by an electoral candidate (i.e. fight porn against Google).
(3) The whole suit is ridiculous and dumb.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld has a thread named Class Action Suit Filed Against YSM which discusses a Washington Post report that Yahoo is being sued for "syndication fraud." Syndication partners are those who place Yahoo! ads on their Web sites and products. Most of the law suit is based on Ben Edelman's uncovering of PPC Ads Found In Spyware With Auto Click Fraud.

A class-action lawsuit filed Monday against Yahoo! Inc. and group of unnamed third-parties accuses the company of engaging in "syndication fraud" against advertisers who pay Yahoo to display their ads on search results and on the Web pages of partner Web sites. The suit claims that Yahoo displayed these advertisers' online ads via spyware and adware products and on so-called "typosquatter" Web sites that capitalize on misspellings of popular trademarks or company names.

Potentially more explosive is the plaintiff's claim that Yahoo regularly uses its relationship with adware and typosquatting sites to gin up extra revenue around earnings time, alleging that the company is conspiring to boost revenue by partnering with some of the Internet's seamier characters. From the lawsuit:

The article also mentions typo-squatting issues where people go to a Web address, that is a typo of the Web address they really want to go to. They see ads on the site and click on them. This is a big business and has always rubbed people the wrong way. For some reason, Google's Domain Park, just now is getting a lot of attention. We wrote about it back in early January under the title DomainPark - AdSense for Domains Sparks Huge Forum Debate.

Bottom line with this law suit, probably like with Google, Yahoo! will settle out of court for a relatively small sum. Who will win here? The lawyers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Danny Sullivan reported last week that the Traffic Power case against SEO Book filed last August has been dismissed. The appeal time for Traffic Power has passed, "the case was tossed out on February 13, so the 30 period for appeal has elapsed."

I suspect, Matt Cutts and Google's official confirmation of Traffic Power ban had something to do with it. But I do not have any confirmation from either side.

Forum discussion continued at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Search Engine Watch moderator Jeff Martin reports that Chinese Adwords Advertiser To Sue Google Over Click Fraud. The thread has a link to an article written in Chinese which was "loosely translated," into the following.

Mr. Huang, who has been using Adwords since 2004, normally pays 158 RMB per month. However, on 1/26/06, his Adwords charges suddenly run up to 8,000 RMB.

He sent an email to Google China and asked for investigation. Google replied that there was nothing wrong with the clicks and had no suspicion of click fraud. He then asked Google to provide supportive data and Google declined. He’s going to file a lawsuit, which will be the first lawsuit against Google in China.

With the recent refunds to US based advertisers for "invalid clicks" by both Yahoo and Google, it is no wonder non-US based advertisers want a piece of the pie.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Yesterday I reported over at the SEW blog about a Ben Edelman report. Ben Edelman uncovers how some spyware programs have Yahoo Search Marketing ads in them, and auto click on them, without the user's knowledge. You may want to check out his findings for yourself.

Ben is at WebmasterWorld forums, if you have any questions, he will reply to them there.

Other Forum Discussion at:

• Search Engine Watch Forums
  
• DigitalPoint Forums
  
• WebmasterWorld
  

There have been some major marketing initiatives recently using traditional offline advertising to drive traffic to a website, portal, or search engine. Ask.com has unveiled some new TV spots to get people to try their new technology. This past Sunday, as blogged by Rand and Barry, Yahoo and CBS News program 60 Minutes introduced a new partnership. What seemed to kick the year off, however, was Pontiac's clever use of the verb "google" to ask people to "google Pontiac" in its TV spots. In a search engine marketing stroke of brilliance (my opinion), Mazda purchased the keyword Pontiac, which led to a debate over the use of trademarked terms that has been covered here and elsewhere.

Bill Tancer from Hitwise pointed out at SES NYC 2006:

Did Mazda benefit from the Pontiac ad? Pontiac.com received 66.8% of the traffic from the term, and the second most visited site (3.4% of traffic) for the Pontiac search term was Mazda.

Search Engine Watch Forums Editor Elisabeth Osmeloski stared a good follow up thread to the Pontiac story the other day. She describes reading a recent article about the story in Adweek Magazine, and wonders if Pontiac paid Google to use their name as a verb (and the screenshot showing Pontiac typed into the Google search bar), and reminds us that Google was for a while very protective of its name, forbidding people to use it as a verb in the media. Danny Sullivan reports that Google swears they didn't get paid for the use, and quotes them as being eager to participate.

Not many more answers in this thread yet, but it should lead to an interesting discussion about Google's recent "kindler/gentler" attitude towards the use of its brand as a verb. Read at Search Engine Watch Forums.

In a class action law suit on click fraud against Google and other engines (Google's AdWords partners). Google and Lane's Gifts & Collectibles (the one who filed the claim) settled on $90 million settlement fund to be returned to US based AdWords customers with invalid clicks. The class action lawsuit does not seem to involve those outside of the US; Danny Sullivan said "To date, Google's had no lawsuits over click fraud filed outside the US." If you want the whole run down, I recommend reading Danny's SEW entry.

Let me pull out one comment that maybe Wall Street will understand, but probably wont.

The why answer seems a no brainer for me. A $90 million settlement, compared to Google's revenues, is cheap to get this particular issue resolved. It seems likely to buy an out from all potential cases going back for years. Compared to the estimated $260 to $290 million Google spent to resolve a patent lawsuit with Yahoo, this deal seems an especially cheap, smart one to take.

Forums are discussing this right now at:

• Search Engine Roundtable Forums
  
• Search Engine Watch Forums
  
• WebmasterWorld
  
• DigitalPoint Forums
  
• Cre8asite Forums