Yahoo Settlement Acknowledges Click Fraud

Yahoo agreed to settle a click fraud lawsuit and gave a judge the responsibility of determining advertisers refunds. Yahoo will pay nearly $5 million in court costs and promises to work more closely on identifying click fraud.

Per the agreement there is no limit to Yahoo's liability, so it is unclear if it will cost the company more than the paltry $90 million that Google is required to pay as part of its click fraud settlement.

Having a second search engine agree to settle acknowledges the reality of the click fraud problem and hopefully will lead to more transparency in the accounting practices. Let's bring in an auditing firm (preferably one with a clean record) that understands Web traffic analysis to gauge just how messy today's record keeping is.