Everyone in this industry agrees click fraud exists, and everybody agrees that advertisers should not be billed for it. At the end of the day, the question becomes 'what constitutes a fraudulent click, and who works to determine that?' Up until this point, it's been the search engines making the determination without using the data on the advertiser's side. |
I've been on the phone with clients crying because the competition is running them out of business, at $20,000 and $30,000 a month, by continually clicking their ads. |
In some ways I think [this case] is a really good first step toward industry-wide acknowledgement that the click-fraud issue is a legitimate one. But does [this settlement] mollify the problem? No. It doesn't make any of the worries go away. |
Search engines are no longer giving up log data. |
We've seen a consistent downward trend in responsiveness to submitted activity. |