Has anything changed for CharterAuction since being the lead story in the Wall Street Journal recently? Nope.

CEO Nate McKelvey describes his initial reaction to Google and Yahoo (Overture) crediting his account due to suspicious activity that, in the end, they were not willing to provide any evidence of beyond the fact that they considered it to be suspicious.

"Google didn't even offer me a refund... they credited my account, which I thought was peculiar," he says.

So, you're probably thinking (like me) hey Mr. McKelvey you need to do your own investigation and hire a lawyer. Well, he's done that and has gathered up damning information from his ISP (against one of his competitors) based on IP address. Even though, McKelvey wants Google and Yahoo to do something about the problem... offer something to control it beyond crediting his account for trivial amounts of clicks when, in fact, fraud is running rampant. One IP address sent about a hundred clicks through his Google and Yahoo ads within a few seconds, a telltale sign of fraud.

So why won't any of the search engines he's buying cost-per-click advertising traffic from give him basic fraud fighting information such as IP addresses of all ad clicks? The answer, as I see it, is clear. Doing so would lead down a path that would allow all advertisers to reduce fraud through taking their own legal recourse... and that's not good for business.

Who is listening to McKelvey? Lawyers looking to persuade him, and others, to join in a class-action suit against the search engines - that's who! It's only a matter of time for Google and Yahoo. They either deal with the fraud issue pro-actively or get nailed in a mega-class action lawsuit... forcing their hand.

Posted by Jeff on May 5, 2005 11:29 AM

http://www.affiliatecluetrain.com/archives/2005/05/google_yahoo_le.php