Google

Search is how Google began, and it remains at the core of the company today. Across more than 180 global domains, Google allows users to find information in multiple languages, including stock quotes, sports scores, news headlines, images, videos, maps, and more.

During the Google Click Fraud Settlement in 2006, Genacom was selected to develop and deploy the online claims platform managed by Gilardi & Co. The project required creating a robust database and website capable of handling hundreds of thousands of claim submissions in 22 languages, all under extremely tight deadlines.

Genacom successfully delivered a secure, scalable, and fully functional multilingual claims system on time, providing a seamless experience for users around the world.

The brief

In 2006 Google settled a class action over click fraud, the practice of generating fraudulent clicks on pay-per-click advertisements. The settlement created a fund for advertisers who believed they had paid for invalid clicks, and the claims administrator, Gilardi & Co., needed a way for hundreds of thousands of advertisers around the world to file, document and track a claim. The platform had to exist in every language Google advertised in, it had to hold up under the traffic of a widely publicized deadline, and it had to be trustworthy enough to carry a Google name on it. Gilardi chose Genacom to build and run it.

What we built

Genacom designed the claims application from the ground up: a secure database to hold claimant records and supporting documents, a public website for filing and status checks, an administrative console for the claims team, and the reporting the settlement required. The interface, the validation messages, the confirmation emails and the help content were localized into 22 languages, with right-to-left and double-byte scripts handled correctly and consistently. Every form field validated on both the client and the server, every submission was written to redundant storage, and the whole system was load-tested against a surge far above the expected daily volume so that a deadline-day rush would not take it down.

How it was delivered

The schedule was the hardest constraint. The settlement notice set the filing window, so the platform could not slip. Genacom ran the project as a compressed engineering sprint: architecture and data model in the first days, parallel development of the public and administrative sides, translation and QA running alongside development instead of after it, and a final week of security review, performance testing and rehearsal of the launch. The system went live ahead of schedule, and during the filing period the claims team reported no defects that affected a claimant. The executive who signed off on it put it simply: "Completed in 3 weeks and without any bugs we could find, simply amazing."

Why it matters to your website

Most Genacom clients will never need a 22-language claims platform. What the project demonstrates is the engineering discipline behind every nTier plan: requirements written down before code, validation and security built in rather than bolted on, testing under load before launch, and a team that can move fast without breaking things. The same people who delivered this run the hosting, security, monitoring and updates for the sites Genacom manages today, which is why a medium-sized business can have enterprise-grade reliability for a flat monthly fee.

Services involved

Custom application development, database design, multilingual front-end development, security review, load testing, hosting and launch support. If you have a deadline-driven platform, a customer portal or a system that has to work the first time, book a strategy call or read about custom web development.

Inside the three weeks

Week one was architecture and the data model. Claims data is sensitive and the settlement had to withstand scrutiny, so the schema, the audit trail and the access model were designed and reviewed before any screens were built. The team also fixed the localization approach on day one: every string in a translation table, every date, number and currency format driven by locale, and a QA pass planned for each of the 22 languages rather than a single English check. Week two was parallel construction. One group built the claimant-facing site with its multi-step filing flow, document upload and status lookup; another built the administrator console the claims team would use to review, approve, flag and export; a third wrote the reporting the settlement administrator needed to certify the process. Translations arrived as features were finished, so localization never became a final-week scramble. Week three was hardening: penetration testing of the public surface, load testing well beyond the projected peak, rehearsals of the launch and of the deadline-day surge, and a written runbook for the claims team. The platform went live early and stayed up through the filing window.

Lessons that shaped nTier

The Google project is where several Genacom habits became standard practice. Requirements are written down and agreed before code starts, because a three-week schedule has no room for rework. Security and validation are designed in, not audited in afterwards. Staging environments and load tests are mandatory before any launch a client's reputation depends on. And the client always gets a named engineer who was in the room for every decision, so support after launch is immediate. Twenty years later those are the rules every nTier website management plan is run by, whether the client is a global search company or a fifty-person manufacturer in Napa.