PPC Expert Witness Entity Map

Google Ads Account Forensics

What a Google Ads account records, what it quietly leaves out, and how long each part of the record survives.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ads

Relations:

• PART_OF → The Platform Record
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click

A Google Ads account is a system of record, and in a dispute it behaves like one. It logs who changed what and when. It reports impressions, clicks, cost and conversions down to the day. It holds the queries that triggered ads, the invoices, and enough settings history to show how campaigns were configured inside the retained period. Anyone with the right level of account access can pull all of it, which is why this page carries the verdict in the account . The complication is not access. It is time.

What a Google Ads Account Records, and For How Long — published by PPC Expert Witness

Microsoft Advertising Evidence

Microsoft's change history names the tool behind every edit. It is also retained six months, which changes the preservation math.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Advertising

Relations:

• PART_OF → The Platform Record
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click

Microsoft Advertising makes a trade that runs in the opposite direction from Google's, and understanding the trade is most of what an attorney needs from this page. Field for field, Microsoft's change record is the more useful of the two. It gives old value and new value in separate structured columns. It names the mechanism behind each change — whether an edit came from a person in the web client, from a script, from a bulk upload or from an API integration. It treats users as a tracked entity type, so permission changes fall inside the report's scope.

Microsoft Ads Evidence: 6 Months of Change History — published by PPC Expert Witness

Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic

What the account record supports in a click fraud claim, what has to come from your own logs, and what nobody can establish from either.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud

Relations:

• PART_OF → Fraud and Invalid Traffic
• RELATES_TO → Click fraud
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads

A click fraud claim has three separable questions in it. Was some of the traffic invalid — meaning traffic the platform itself judged illegitimate, or traffic behaving in ways no human user would. Was the advertiser charged for it. And who sent it, on purpose or otherwise. The account record answers the first two, partially and on the platform's terms. It does not answer the third. Google and Microsoft both filter traffic they classify as invalid before billing, both expose a count of what they filtered, and both issue credits.

Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic in PPC Disputes — published by PPC Expert Witness

Competitor and Trademark Bidding

Bidding on a rival's brand term and putting a rival's brand into the ad are different facts, and the account record separates them.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement

Relations:

• PART_OF → Conduct and Standard of Care
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads

Twenty years of paid-search litigation have converged on one distinction, and it is about the record rather than about motive. As reported in the federal appellate decisions, buying a competitor's trademark as a keyword is not, standing alone, infringement in the United States. Putting the mark into the visible ad — headline, description, display URL — is where the reported claims start to survive. The most recent appellate voice is 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. JAND, Inc. , No. 22-1634 (2d Cir. Oct. 8, 2024).

Competitor and Trademark Bidding in Google Ads — published by PPC Expert Witness

PPC Standard of Care

No licensing board or association publishes a standard for PPC management. The case gets made from the contract and the account record instead.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_care

Relations:

• PART_OF → Conduct and Standard of Care
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads

Start with the finding, because it reframes the engagement. There is no published, citable professional standard of care for managing a paid-search account. Not from a licensing board, an accrediting body or a professional association. No continuing-education requirement, no code of professional conduct with disciplinary teeth, no malpractice framework. Searching for one returns vendor training programs and unrelated credentials.

PPC Standard of Care: No Published Standard | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Agency and Client Disputes

Who owned the account, what the media actually cost, and what the handover left behind are measurable. Approval and markup are not.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_agency

Relations:

• PART_OF → Contract and Account Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads

An agency dispute divides cleanly in two, and the division decides how much of it an examination of the account can carry. On one side sit the facts the platform records: who created the account, which manager account holds owner status, every user who had access and at what level, every change with a timestamp and a login, what each campaign cost by day, what conversion tracking existed and whether it fired, and what condition the account was left in. Those are exportable, reproducible and not seriously arguable once produced.

Agency and Client PPC Disputes: The Evidence | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Affiliate and Lead Generation Fraud

Cookie stuffing, commission redirection and lead-source misrepresentation, and what the click record can carry

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

Relations:

• PART_OF → Fraud and Invalid Traffic
• RELATES_TO → Click fraud
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click

Two problems get filed as affiliate fraud, and separating them is the first useful thing to do with the file. Affiliate fraud is attribution theft: a party that contributed nothing to a sale manipulates the tracking so it is paid anyway. The canonical mechanism is cookie stuffing — dropping an affiliate tracking cookie into a browser with no click, so that if the person later buys from the merchant on their own, the affiliate collects the commission. Lead-generation fraud is misrepresentation.

Affiliate and Lead Generation Fraud Evidence | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Franchise and Cooperative Advertising

Ad fund characterization, territory spillover and internal auction competition — and the narrow part the data answers

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchising

Relations:

• PART_OF → Contract and Account Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Pay-per-click
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads

A franchise paid-search dispute turns on documents, not on data. Whether a cost was properly charged to a system advertising fund, whether a franchisee is owed an accounting of it, and whether a designated market carries any promise of exclusivity are all questions about what the parties agreed to. No export from an ad platform answers any of them, and no expert examination of an account will settle the case. I am not an attorney, and I do not read or opine on a franchise agreement as a legal matter.

Franchise and Cooperative Advertising Disputes — published by PPC Expert Witness

Paid Social Ad Data

What Meta's Ad Library and Ads Insights API actually hold, how long, and why a conversion count is not an audited number

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_marketing

Relations:

• PART_OF → Measurement and Attribution
• RELATES_TO → Attribution

Paid social is the hardest of the major channels to work with as evidence, and the reason is a split between what is public and what is useful. Meta's Ad Library is genuinely public and searchable by advertiser and by keyword, with an API for programmatic access. It is also narrow.

Paid Social Ad Data: What Meta Holds | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Conversion Tracking and Attribution

What the Conversions column actually contains, why it is not a count of sales, and what that means for a figure in a damages calculation

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_(marketing)

Relations:

• PART_OF → Measurement and Attribution
• RELATES_TO → Attribution
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads

The number in the Conversions column of a Google Ads report is not a count of events observed to happen. It is a blend of conversions Google observed and conversions Google estimated, and Google's documentation states it plainly: in the Conversions column, Google reports both modeled and observed conversions. That changes what the figure can carry. A count of observed events is a record of things that happened, subject to the ordinary questions about how they were recorded.

Conversion Tracking and Attribution as Evidence — published by PPC Expert Witness

PPC Damages and Lost Profits

The methods, what each one assumes, and what the account record establishes on its own, which is usually spend and delivery rather than profit

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damages

Relations:

• PART_OF → Quantum and Preservation
• RELATES_TO → Damages
• RELATES_TO → Attribution

Damages in a paid-search dispute usually arrive as one number when they are really two claims. Wasted spend asks how much money went into the account that should not have gone in: a misconfigured campaign, spend after a directive to pause, invalid traffic, spend outside the intended targeting, fees charged on work not performed. Lost profit asks what the business would have earned had the program run properly — which requires a counterfactual, and the counterfactual is where these cases are decided.

Proving PPC Damages and Lost Profits | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Preserving PPC Evidence

Retention windows by record type, what exporting each record actually involves, and what a preservation letter does not stop

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence

Relations:

• PART_OF → Quantum and Preservation
• RELATES_TO → Spoliation of evidence
• RELATES_TO → Google Ads

Paid-search evidence has a property that makes it unlike most electronically stored information in a commercial case: a party can shorten the retention period, and the platform will then delete the data on schedule, automatically, with nobody taking any further action. Analytics data retention is a dropdown. Change history has a finite window always moving forward. Access can be revoked in a click by whoever holds the manager account. That puts the whole problem at the front of the matter.

Preserving PPC Evidence Before It Ages Out | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Pay-per-click

Advertising sold on a per-click basis, and the billing model that makes the difference between a click delivered and a click charged for a question of fact rather than of opinion.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-per-click

Advertising sold on a per-click basis, and the billing model that makes the difference between a click delivered and a click charged for a question of fact rather than of opinion.

Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Google Ads

The advertising platform whose account record — structure, settings, change history, search terms and billing — is the primary documentary evidence in most paid-search disputes.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ads

The advertising platform whose account record — structure, settings, change history, search terms and billing — is the primary documentary evidence in most paid-search disputes.

Google Ads Account Forensics | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Click fraud

Clicks generated without genuine interest in the advertisement, and the category the platforms address through their own invalid-traffic detection and billing credits rather than through disclosure.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud

Clicks generated without genuine interest in the advertisement, and the category the platforms address through their own invalid-traffic detection and billing credits rather than through disclosure.

Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Attribution

The assignment of credit for an outcome across the advertising a person was exposed to, and a modeling choice made by the advertiser rather than a measurement made by the platform.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_(marketing)

The assignment of credit for an outcome across the advertising a person was exposed to, and a modeling choice made by the advertiser rather than a measurement made by the platform.

Conversion Tracking and Attribution | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Spoliation of evidence

The loss or destruction of evidence relevant to a proceeding, which in paid search happens by default on a published retention schedule unless the record is exported first.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence

The loss or destruction of evidence relevant to a proceeding, which in paid search happens by default on a published retention schedule unless the record is exported first.

Preserving PPC Evidence | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Damages

Monetary compensation for loss, and the part of a paid-search matter that is modeled from the record rather than read out of it.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damages

Monetary compensation for loss, and the part of a paid-search matter that is modeled from the record rather than read out of it.

PPC Damages and Lost Profits | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Fraud and Invalid Traffic

Where the spend bought something other than what it was billed for.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic
• INCLUDES → Affiliate and Lead Generation Fraud

Where the spend bought something other than what it was billed for.

Disciplines | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Contract and Account Disputes

Who owned the account, who controlled the spend, and what the agreement actually required.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Agency and Client Disputes
• INCLUDES → Franchise and Cooperative Advertising

Who owned the account, who controlled the spend, and what the agreement actually required.

Disciplines | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Conduct and Standard of Care

What a competitor did, and what a reasonable manager of a paid-search account would have done.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Competitor and Trademark Bidding
• INCLUDES → PPC Standard of Care

What a competitor did, and what a reasonable manager of a paid-search account would have done.

Disciplines | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

The Platform Record

What Google and Microsoft hold, what they export, and how long they keep it.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Google Ads Account Forensics
• INCLUDES → Microsoft Advertising Evidence

What Google and Microsoft hold, what they export, and how long they keep it.

Disciplines | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Measurement and Attribution

Where the reported numbers come from, and how much of a conversion figure was measured rather than modeled.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Paid Social Ad Data
• INCLUDES → Conversion Tracking and Attribution

Where the reported numbers come from, and how much of a conversion figure was measured rather than modeled.

Disciplines | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

Quantum and Preservation

Turning a disrupted account into a number, and keeping the record alive long enough to use it.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → PPC Damages and Lost Profits
• INCLUDES → Preserving PPC Evidence

Turning a disrupted account into a number, and keeping the record alive long enough to use it.

Disciplines | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

The Disputes

The kinds of search marketing work offered here — organic search, paid search, platform and market specifics, and strategy — each labelled with how it is engaged: a one-off audit, a fixed-scope project, a retained engagement, or advisory.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Click Fraud and Invalid Traffic
• INCLUDES → Competitor and Trademark Bidding
• INCLUDES → PPC Standard of Care
• INCLUDES → Agency and Client Disputes
• INCLUDES → Affiliate and Lead Generation Fraud
• INCLUDES → Franchise and Cooperative Advertising

The kinds of search marketing work offered here — organic search, paid search, platform and market specifics, and strategy — each labelled with how it is engaged: a one-off audit, a fixed-scope project, a retained engagement, or advisory.

The Disputes | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness

What the Data Shows

Answers to the questions a search marketing buyer needs settled before spending anything: what the work is, how to choose someone, what it costs and how long it takes, and how any of it is measured.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Google Ads Account Forensics
• INCLUDES → Microsoft Advertising Evidence
• INCLUDES → Paid Social Ad Data
• INCLUDES → Conversion Tracking and Attribution
• INCLUDES → PPC Damages and Lost Profits
• INCLUDES → Preserving PPC Evidence

Answers to the questions a search marketing buyer needs settled before spending anything: what the work is, how to choose someone, what it costs and how long it takes, and how any of it is measured.

What the Data Shows | PPC Expert Witness — published by PPC Expert Witness