Google AdWords Class Action Settlement

[sun818]

If You Had a Google AdWords Account and Were Charged for Ad Clicks,
You May Be Entitled to Money

If, during the period from July 11, 2004 through March 31, 2008, you were a United States resident who had a Google AdWords account and were charged for clicks on advertisements appearing on parked domains or error pages, you may be entitled to payment under the settlement of a class action lawsuit.

[keyplyr]

For years I published Adsense on error pages until Google changed the rules. My error pages are developed with navigation and content and it seemed a logical place to put ads. I got a lot of clicks.

[robzilla]

Wow, that's still ongoing? I remember opting out of it at least a decade ago.

I wonder how they're going to backtrack all those ad clicks from parked domains and error pages, and what the ratio is going to be between ad dollars spent and settlement money received.

[bwnbwn]

No offense keyplyr but I hope once this is settled Google can go back and take all the money generated from this type of BS from the publishers. Putting a paid ad from a company that could be struggling with staying in business on an error page to me is theft.

I look at my website stats and see Oh the error page is kicking butt so let me create more, and more, and more to make me mo money. Then word gets out and you have billions of error pages with ads ripping the business people off, sorry man I find it low done and now if I want to get some of this money back I have to spend the time to research how much my company lost

What about the ones this type of activity broke and the business closed.

Collateral damage?

[edited by: bwnbwn at 12:31 pm (utc) on Jun 9, 2017]

[keyplyr]

bwnbwn - call it BS or theft if you like, but as I said, it was not against any Adsense rule at the time... and my error page has more content than many pages I see with ads pasted all over.

[bwnbwn]

Good point keyplyr but here is where the water gets real muddy. Was your error page a true 404 identified or was it a 200?

[keyplyr]

Was your error page a true 404 identified or was it a 200?

A page is a page. The server response sent depends on many things; UA, IP, type of request, what was requested, etc.

What about the ones this type of activity broke and the business closed

Regardless, publishers are governed by the rules just as advertisers are. You tell a publisher they can put ads on a dog and they'll do it, all the while advertisers bid for that spot on the dog.

The rules allowed things 10 years ago that they don't now. When we look back, it's easy to see why the rules were ammended.

And just a FYI - personally I didn't single out error pages to put ads on. Back then the ad code was just in the site-wide footer.

However, if you think Adwords owe's you money, I sincerely hope you get it :)

[ogletree]

Back in 2004 most people that paid money into the display network were ripped off in general.

Most people didn't even know they were using it.

You did not have all the options you do now.

Many people that just started using AdWords did not know they were opted into this by default.

If you set a high budget it would eat that up real fast. You had no control over where your ad showed.