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An Internet retailer that used a pay-per-click advertising service operated by Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is suing the Internet giant for more than $1 million, claiming it was overcharged by thousands of dollars as a result of click fraud that Yahoo did little to prevent.$1Million Click Fraud Lawsuit for Yahoo [informationweek.com]
Bigreds claims that many of the clicks were not from legitimate buyers but from affiliate Web site operators who received commissions from Overture and Yahoo based on the number of clicks their sites generated for advertisers."These clicks were not actual traffic, but were fraudulent clicks," Bigreds claims in court papers filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in New York. "Affiliates of Overture used software programs, employed people, and/or directed people other than actual customers to click on plaintiffs links from keyword search results," the complaint states.
and called a smaller ppc provider with an affiliate using illegal 302 redirects and trademarked names to get clicks.
Both were totally useless and I doubt would ever send a person that would convert. Just total garbage wasted money stealing.
carguy84
maybe he is paying credit card intrest rates on the spent money
[edited by: yobaby at 6:49 pm (utc) on April 16, 2008]
They allow search and content options, but what they really need is a Yahoo search only option. Then all these shady deals could not sign up as a search engines and generate that cheap traffic.
but from affiliate Web site operators who received commissions from Overture and Yahoo based on the number of clicks their sites generated for advertisers
Isn't this just the content network? Take 30 seconds to opt out of it no? Or am I missing something here?
It's the modern day equivalent of a bank without a safe.
Isn't this just the content network? Take 30 seconds to opt out of it no? Or am I missing something here?
I never use content on Yahoo and find parked domains in my logs that are part of Yahoo's search network.
I found that any site with search box can be a part of Yahoo's search.
I always wondered about low CTR on yahoo compared to other big two. Seeing my ads on Yahoo News, Yahoo that and Yahoo this, plus those sites that are nothing but fraudulent, I hardly use it today.
I’ll consider Yahoo only when Yahoo Search shows my ads on search.yahoo.com only, period. The rest should be clearly optional.
The 250 sites you can block get filled up almost immediately and we have also had problems with "search partners" who send visitors without referrers, which make them impossible to trace.
Yahoo will identify the traffic and refund it, but they will not identify the site that is passing the traffic so you can block it.
They just need to be thrown out of court once the MSFT deal has blown over.
I'll bet Google is having a cow over this as the MFA sites are a probably a large part of their income.
Um, i'm looking at this site
Inspired me to take a look too... The Copyright 2000 on their homepage is misleading, the design is clearly much older ;-)
$1,000,000 is an absolutely absurd number here. Hard to see it as anything other than a publicity stunt.
One PC, many simultaneous connections
Use AOL and get dynamically assigned IP’s on top of proxies and IP faking
Use rotating browser types (including your OS version)
New user, get Yahoo cookie
Click one - Search Yahoo regular index for unrelated item, cookie changes.
Click two – Search Yahoo for another unrelated item, cookie changes again.
Click three – Target click.
End (cookie gone – you appear to have stayed on the target site for ever).
If you are working off broadband, you are talking 20 connections per PC, 20 efficient fake users doing you bidding per PC. I suspect they now require a user to come back again to validate their pay per click use; easy enough to do.
In click pop days you would short click your opponents sites to make it look like their sites did not have relevant content (appear to stay on for 20 seconds or less – the number of seconds randomized), as Yahoo down-ranked for such short stays. Clicking for pay for links is actually simpler.
...
This website is a bad joke even for one made in 2000.
It's plain awful. It hurts the eyes. *rubs eyes for emphasis*
I couldn't tell click fraud from it being so bad if my... uh... premium depended on it
*smirk*
why is it that when it comes to a battle between small companies and one of the giants of search / PPC ... it's always the least credible people that sue?
btw
do you think they'll win?
...
do you think they'll win?
Looking at the website in question, do you think they have technical data to support their click fraud claims?
GREED!
I just got my Yahoo claim form in the mail today regarding this class action suit.
They should have taken the $17k and been happy with that offer. Usually in the past it has been terribly hard to collect any refund.
Last month I visited a Yahoo location and met with several VP's and the topic of click fraud came up. Reggie Davis (VP Network Quality) was very pro-fraud refunds via the use of their available tools and fraud investigations being offered. I spoke with a lead engineer who designed algorithms to prevent fraud (PhD in Math from UCLA) and I was quite impressed with the steps Yahoo takes to prevent and provide restitution for fraudulent clicks.
It would be difficult to convince a court that any kinds of visitors to this site could actually convert to sales.
I've just spent the last two months sending logs/referrer info to Yahoo for our account and have gotten nowhere. We spend about $200k a year and recently the click fraud for Yahoo's search network has gone through the roof (we don't use the content network as it's totally useless). Yahoo's search partners now include the fraudsters that Google bounced because of fraudulent clicks - now the fraudster have moved and been accepted by Yahoo. Sites like Sedo.com and Zanga.com are two of the hundreds we've discovered. Yahoo DOES allows advertisers to block sites on the search network but new fraudsters (and incarnations) keep popping up faster than we can block them. If Yahoo would allow advertisers to opt out of the partner network, as Google, does then our ROI would return to normal.
I truly suspect that the microsoft takeover put Yahoo in a position that it was looking for every $$ to make the books look great. Unfortunately, opening the flood gates to fraudsters only presents a short term gain. We've turned our Yahoo account off pending some form of overall partner site blocking or signficant refund from Yahoo. Neither of which appear to be in the foreseeable future. It's unfortunate because we've been with Yahoo's PPC when it was GoTo.com.
