Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

Detective sues Google over ad system

An US private detective is filing a lawsuit against Google, accusing it of charging users for posting ads through its AdSense system that they don't want. When David Almeida signed up for Google's main advertising product AdWords he believed that by leaving a second optional box blank he was only registering for ads on its search results pages.
 
But the AdWords registration process still registers users for AdSense, Google's system for posting adverts to third-party sites, when the user leaves the relevant box blank.
 
Instead users have to enter zero to avoid placing AdSense bids, which Almeida claims is confusing some of Google's advertisers.
 
Almeida's lawyer, Brian Kabateck, has filed documents with the Northern District Court of California, accusing Google of redefining the universally understood meaning of an input box left blank.
 
The documents said that because there was no option to opt out of content ads during the AdWords registration process, advertisers reasonably believed that by leaving the content ad CPC input blank they could opt out of having their ads placed on the content network.
 
Google, they added, had charged and continued to charge those advertisers who left this field blank for content ads on third-party websites.
 
Google has yet to confirm it has been served with the lawsuit.

Comment: