I received an email today about yet another class action suit involving pay per click search engines. This time, a slew of plaintiffs have alleged that MIVA and Lycos have not done enough to mitigate click fraud. I couldn’t agree more. MIVA has long been so overrun with click fraud that it’s not worth using for most advertisers. There are some companies that have turned tidy little profits with MIVA, some of my former clients among them, but it’s a terrible waste of money for most.

Reading further, we find that claimants will receive the settlement in the form of click credits on MIVA. I’m going to repeat that, in case you didn’t notice the fishy smell the first time. The PPC platform that is rife with click fraud (read: fake/worthless clicks) wants to settle a class action suit by giving free clicks (read: more fake/worthless clicks) to the claimants.

There’s going to be a court hearing in late April to determine whether or not this settlement is “fair, reasonable and adequate”. (It’s not.)