Judge Turns Down Google AdWords Class Action

An Adwords ad

A judge in San Jose, Calif., has refused to certify a class action claiming that Google's AdWords program deceptively charges for clicks advertisements that appear on error pages.

A group of advertisers filed the suit against Google in California's Northern District, claiming the AdWords program was deceptive, Courthouse News Service reported.

"All AdWords customers were given the choice of advertising in Google's search or content networks, yet Google never disclosed that regardless of which network they chose, Google would place their ads on parked domains or error pages," according to the court's summary of the claims.

A parked domain is a website that has been registered, but has not been developed. Such domains usually display a page consisting entirely of ads related to the content that the site's name would suggested might appear there.

The plaintiffs also claimed Google "purposefully published misleading AdSense policies which prohibited publishers from putting ads on pages lacking content," according to the court.

But U.S. District Judge Edward Davila found there was not enough commonality in the alleged omissions to warrant bundling the plaintiffs' individual complaints into a class action.

"While this question may weigh in plaintiffs' favor, the court is unconvinced that such commonalities predominate over questions affecting individual members of the putative class," Davila held.

"The question of which advertisers among the hundreds of thousands of proposed class members are even entitled to restitution would require individual inquiries," he added.