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MediaPost reports Google has been ordered by a U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Harold Lloyd in San Jose, California to hand over data on the metrics around the Google AdSense For Domains program.
AdSense For Domains and Error pages are domains that have little or no content that are sitting idle but have Google AdSense ads on them. This program was formerly known as DomainPark and has always been controversial in the SEM industry. Reason is, is because the ads only target based off of its domain and has little contextual relevancy. Back in the day, the parked domains ranked well in Google, thus creating a circular pattern of searches, to parked domains, to AdSense back to more searches on AdWords.
In any event, advertisers are suing Google via a class-action lawsuit. The court ruled Google has to share metrics that show the quality of sites with these ads on them, including conversion scores and "smart pricing" discounts for the ads.
What is funny to me is that Google claims these ads "perform as well as or better than ads on Search and Display Network sites." If they do, why not share those details with those paying for those ads?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
