Google's settlement offer has been accepted in their click fraud case. TheArkansasw Judge, made the decision to allow Google to pay out $30 million dollars to the advertisers’ lawyers and $60 million dollars in ad word credits to click fraud affected advertisers.

In a Califonia court, a similar offer is on the table for customers of Yahoo sponsored listings, (many of which are the same as the Google plaintiffs) who have lost money due to click fraud. However, the Yahoo settlement would give 100% of damages in Yahoo sponsored listing credits to the affected advertisers from 2004 to the present. Yet, both settlement offers deny any financial gain for the advertisers who lost money.

Under the Google & Yahoo settlements, thactualul funds will never be refunded. Instead the search giants expect that the users will just want moradvertingng on the sites which caused them to be financially damaged in the first place. Perhaps an even larger problem then Google applying only a small percent of the loss to more ad words is that industry analysts have estimated that click fraud is at a minimum 14% of all pay per click advertising. This means that the small amount of credit can be expected to be cut short by no less than 14%potentiallyly much more.

After the court granted Google's offer, a Google lawyer stated, "We look forward to continuing to manage invalid clicks effectively and provide our advertisers with an outstanding return on their investment." This statement seems to indicate that Google is taking proactive steps to limit this type of injury froccurringing again. It is unlikely though that Google will be able to totally eliminate this issue, and could easily find themselves in the same situation again, if something drastic is not shortly invented in the Google Labs.

The judge on this case said the settlement was, "fair, reasonable and adequate … approval of the stipulation and the proposed settlement embodied therein will result in substantial savings in time and resources to the court and the litigants, and will further the interests of justice."

The above blog was written by Mike Goldstein, Esq. - SEO Manager at Rock Coast Media.