Search Marketing Sage

We have been reporting on Yahoo traffic quality issues for years, and have trumpeted that we thought is was wrong that Yahoo wasn’t allowing much in the way of transparency about its PPC traffic and wasn’t offering enough filtering options on its Search Network to eliminate what we believe are fraudulent clicks.

Techcrunch is reporting today that Yahoo is settling a 3 year old Class Action Lawsuit brought by Yahoo Search Advertising customers.

The lawsuit (PDF) alleges that customers contracted for targeted ad placements through two products, “Sponsored Search” and “Content Match” (and predecessor products provided by Overture and GoTo.com) and that Yahoo! breached its contract with its customers by allowing Yahoo! ads to be displayed in spyware, domain name parking sites (bulk registration sites), pop-ups, pop-unders and typosquatting sites. According to the message, which is reproduced on a dedicated website about the case, plaintiffs brought claims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, misrepresentation, civil conspiracy, and unfair business practices.

Interesting tidbits about the lawsuit:

During the course of the Action, Yahoo! has produced over 1.5 million pages of documents and hundreds of gigabytes of data. Yahoo! employees testified at deposition. The plaintiffs or class representatives did much of the same. Yahoo! has apparently entered into the proposed settlement to avoid further expense, inconvenience and the burden of drawn-out litigation.