No Win Against Google For Party That Opted-Out Of Click Fraud Settlement

Google AdWords Contract Upheld (Again)–Feldman v. Google from Eric Goldman reports that Google has won a case against the one of the 556 plaintiffs that opted out of the Google click fraud settlement.” Here are some key points I want to pull out from this:

(1) Very few advertisers decided to opt out of the settlement, so this individual ruling does not impact many.

(2) Google won because the AdWords contract requires the case to be held in Google’s “home court” and this case was brought up in Pennsylvania.

(3) Eric Goldman says that since the judge ruled that this plaintiff is “bound by the AdWords contract,” it would imply others would be as well, and now Google can “invoke its risk management clauses (like the warranty disclaimers, limits of liability, etc.) to cut the economic heart out of the click fraud claim.” This sounds like a big deal to me.

There is still room for others to sue Google over click fraud, but from this, it doesn’t look like Google will lose much from additional suits.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.