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Yahoo Settles Clickfraud Lawsuit

Good article about Yahoo settling a clickfraud suit from Search Engine Watch.

A California judge has approved Yahoo's proposed settlement of a class action click fraud case brought against the company by Checkmate Strategic Group in June 2005.

Yahoo believes the settlement will cover all click fraud claims that have been filed against Yahoo, including a suit filed by Lane's Gifts and Collectibles in Arkansas last year against both Yahoo and Google.

The terms of the settlement include a cash payment of $4.95 million to plaintiffs' counsel and a provision that will allow advertisers to file a claim for Yahoo to investigate potentially fraudulent clicks back through January 2004. Yahoo will pay refunds to advertisers who file claims if it discovers evidence of fraudulent clicks.

"We're very pleased with the terms of the settlement," said Reggie Davis, associate general counsel for Yahoo. "We believe it's a reasonable and fair settlement."

What does it mean for Yahoo advertisers?

The cash payment is far less than the $90 million settlement Google agreed to last March to resolve the Lane's Gifts class action click fraud case. In that case, up to $60 million was allocated for credit to advertisers, while plaintiffs' council received $30 million.

The Yahoo settlement differs from the Google settlement in other ways, as well. Google is offering credit to advertisers, rather than cash refunds, with a cap of $60 million. Yahoo, by contrast, is offering cash refunds, and there is no ceiling on the amount it will refund if it finds evidence of click fraud, though the company is optimistic that the refund amounts won't be onerous due to the safeguards it has had in place.

Yahoo says it believes the favorable terms are due to the strong position it took maintaining that its proprietary system does a good job at protecting advertisers from click fraud. To bolster its position, Yahoo invited the plaintiffs' attorneys and their experts to meet with Yahoo's clickthrough protection team, examine its systems, ask questions and attend presentations to better understand the controls the company has in place to filter out questionable or fraudulent clicks.

Yahoo says that its clickthrough protection system has identified and not billed advertisers for billions of clicks during the past eight years, all the way back to the early days before Yahoo purchased Overture and its sponsored listing technologies. Clicks not billed for included obvious click fraud, but also other clicks that the company believed shouldn't be billed to advertisers (for example, blocked IP addresses, double-clicks, back browser clicks and so on).

Yahoo said that as part of the settlement it is taking five specific steps to combat click fraud:

1. The company is extending the claims period for advertisers suspecting fraudulent activity from sixty days to two and a half years, or back through January 2004. Yahoo will investigate all claims filed under this one-time extension and offer cash refunds to advertisers if it finds questionable activity.

Judge Taylor, a retired federal judge, will be overseeing the extended claims process. His role will be to ensure that Yahoo sticks to the agreed-upon process, and he will also be available to review advertiser appeals if they are not satisfied with the results of Yahoo's investigation.

2. The company plans to appoint a dedicated traffic quality advocate to act as ombudsman for advertisers.

3. Once a year Yahoo plans to host a panel of individual advertisers to tour the company's clickthrough protection headquarters, allowing them to ask questions and provide feedback. The company will also seek advice from this panel.

4. Yahoo plans to work with reputable third parties to develop an industry wide definition of click fraud, a list of recognized click bots, and take other measures to garner awareness of the issue and what's being done to combat the problem.

5. Yahoo plans to build a "traffic quality resource center" for advertisers, providing much more information about traffic quality, including extensive FAQs about the company's click-through protection methodology.

Full Article: Search Engine Watch

PPC Keyword Prices Fall In Q1

AFTER SURGING DURING THE HOLIDAYS, the price of purchasing keywords ebbed dramatically last quarter, according to DoubleClick's most recent quarterly report about search pricing.

The "cost-per-keyword" fell to around $30 in the first quarter--from around the yearly high of $59 last December, according to the report. Year-over-year, cost-per-keyword was relatively flat. To arrive at a cost-per-keyword, Performics combines cost-per-click with the volume of clicks; the figure represents the average cost to a marketer of purchasing a keyword for the entire month.

Read entire story at Mediapost Publications

Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings

Below is information on which search engines get the most traffic from Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch.

The comScore Media Metrix qSearch service measures search-specific traffic on the internet. qSearch data is gathered by monitoring the web activities of 1.5 million English-speakers worldwide (1 million in the United States) via proxy metering.

Share Of Searches: March 2006

The pie chart below shows the percentage of searches done by US web surfers at home, work and at universities in March 2006 that were performed at a particular web site or a network of web sites:

The qSearch figures are search-specific but not necessarily web-search specific. For example, a search performed at Yahoo Sports would count toward Yahoo's overall total. Also note that some companies own more than one web site. This means searches at different sites may be combined into one overall figure for the company's entire network. Here's a rundown with more details about this:

• Google: Shows searches at any Google-owned web site such as Google.com or Google Image Search.
   
• Yahoo: Shows searches at any Yahoo-owned web site including those of AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Overture. May show searches at some Google partners that show Google's domain in the URLs of their search results, as happens with Go.com.
   
• MSN: Shows searches at any MSN-operated web site such as MSN Search.
   
• AOL: Shows searches at any Time Warner-owned web site, including AOL Search and Netscape Search.
   
• Ask: Shows searches at Ask and any site within the Ask-owned Excite Network, including Excite, iWon, MyWay.com and My Web Search.
   
• Other: Shows searches that occur at other search sites.

Share Of Searches Trend

The chart below shows how the share of searches has changed over the past year.

SOURCE : Search Engine Watch

New Features at Keyword Discovery

Keyword Discovery is one of the best ways to do keyword research and see what keywords people are typing. It has a number of excellent features and they have added a few additional services.

New Features

• Domain Research. Keyword Discovery now provides a new service for domain name research. All keyword discovery keyword data can now be converted to domain name format and cross-referenced against a DNS registry database to check for availability. (Note: requires a separate domain research subscription)
  
• Search & Replace. A new Search & Replace feature now enables you manipulate keyword results. Use the Search and Replace icon below the search results.
  
• Translate. A new Translation feature can instantly translate search results or project lists to various languages.

Study: Top 4 Percent of Queries Matter Most

ClickZ takes a look at a new WebSideStory study that concludes the top 4% of site search keywords account for more than half of all site search queries.

Optimizing a site for the top 4 percent of search queries will improve site search results for half of all searchers, according to a study by the Patricia Seybold Group using anonymous data from WebSideStory's clients.

According to the April 2006 data, just 4 percent of all unique search queries made up more than half of all site searches. For e-commerce sites, the number of unique queries fell to just 2 percent.