Seems that some retailers have finally had enough to do about click fraud so much so that instead of complaining about it draining their budgets or reducing the effectiveness of online advertising they are doing something about it. The retailers instead of being proactive about managing their campaigns for click fraud, they are taking care of it the good ole American way by suing them. It appears a small retailer from Texarkana, Arkansas is asking a circuit court in Arkansas to certify the suit as a class action, which would allow many other companies to sue as well. Not only is the suit going after Google and Yahoo, but some others like Time Warner, Ask Jeeves, Walt Disney, Lycos, LookSmart and FindWhat.
As you know click fraud is a major issue these days undermining the search engines in many ways. Even many top SEM experts in the field without hesitation will tell you this and "spam" are two of the main battles search engines will fight in the next couple years. Even, Google's chief financial officer George Reyes told investors that click fraud is the biggest threat to the Internet economy currently. It will be interesting to see what happens with this lawsuit, whether it will be accepted or thrown out and how the search engines react. No word yet from Google or the above on the lawsuit.
There is some forum discussion on this at SEOchat. Related news articles here, here, and here.
