Something interesting arrived in today's mail. Yes traditional mail dropped off by a mail carrier. It was a "Notice of a Settlement" for a class action against Yahoo for Click Fraud.
The period covered by this class action includes January 1, 2004 to July 31, 2006. Take note that includes the period before Yahoo purchased Overture (at least to the best of my memory).
This seven (7) page document covers a log of material, but basically the outcome is even less exciting then the Google Settlement. There is no mention of how much everyone will get, but simply that Yahoo has to put in place a mechanism for companies who believe they were victims of click fraud to make a claim and then have it investigated by Yahoo and for it to become part of the final settlement.
Sounds like a lot of work to get back a few clicks.
Of course the lawyers did well again. They get $4,950,000 plus expenses up to $25,000 (US dollars of course). Not the same legal payout as Google got hit with, but still somebody is making money with all these law suits and it sure isn't the people who paid for all those clicks.
The only good thing to truly come out the click fraud legal actions (at least one can hope} is better tracking and monitoring by the Pay Per Click programs for click fraud so perhaps in the near future what you pay for in a ppc campaign will be for real web site traffic.
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