The litigant sought class action status for his lawsuit after an investment of $136.11 failed to bring him conversions from parked domains.
Industry observers witnessed various lawsuits against Google over the past few years, as litigants made accusations over issues like click fraud and their rankings in the search results.
A recent lawsuit noted by InformationWeek finds Hal K. Levitte suing over his AdWords campaign, which ran in the summer of 2007. Ads that appeared on parked domains and on error pages generated some clicks, but no conversions.
“Levitte spent $136.11 for ads on parked domains and error pages, which works out to 15.3% of his $887.67 ad campaign,” the report said.
Once news of this legal kerfuffle emerged, industry observers weighed in with less than favorable commentary about Levitte’s action.
“So a man got 668 clicks on his ads through one portion of his Google AdWords, and zero conversions,” Andrew Goodman said. “And for that, it’s seen as good enough reason for a lawsuit. Ever heard of testing?”
“Although there is fraud on domain parking, this appears to be another manufactured lawsuit to milk Google for money,” Domain Name Wire said. “Only $136 worth of ads on parked domains is hardly a fair sample size. Perhaps he was advertising for a highly competitive topic with known high click prices.”
Legal keywords like ‘mesothelioma lawyer’ tend to merit substantially higher prices than most biddable possibilities. It seems highly unlikely a court will judge for this plaintiff for failing to be competitive in the market, but sometimes judges make odd decisions. We expect Google to do the usual ‘defend vigorously’ thing in the case.
