Google Rankings Suck? Sue Whoever's Above You!
from the legal-idiocy dept
We've seen plenty of stories over the past few years from people who don't understand how Google works deciding to sue the company over poor rankings, somehow believing that they have a legal right to high rankings. The courts have made it pretty clear that these lawsuits are a waste of time as Google is free to rank sites however it wants. However, the idea of suing over piss poor rankings seems to be spreading to other people as well. Last month we had the story of a company suing the search engine optimizer they had used four years ago after their rankings on certain terms dropped (long after he worked for them). The latest story may be even more bizarre. It started over the weekend with a blog post that got plenty of attention concerning a representative of a (nameless) company complaining to a blogger that his blog ranked higher than their company site on a certain term related to their business. They even asked the blogger to request that Google remove his blog from their rankings. The guy (understandably) told them this was ridiculous. Now, Slashdot points out that the company has responded to the blogger telling him not only that they've asked Google to remove his site, but that they've also contacted their lawyers, potentially to sue the blogger for his better rankings. It seems unlikely that any lawyer would take on the case, but these days, you never know. The company also claims that Google will clearly side with the company because Google wants businesses to rank higher since they're a business themselves -- which suggests the company doesn't know much about Google. It's clear that many companies rely way too much on their Google rankings as a way of driving business -- but it's amazing that they don't seem to understand that they don't have a right to any particular ranking, and they certainly can't sue people if they don't like how they're rated. Basing your business on your Google rankings is a business risk, and if it doesn't work out to your advantage, it's your fault as a business for poor strategic planning -- not those who happen to have done better than you in the rankings. Update: Some good comments suggesting that this whole story is a hoax, or perhaps an attempt to game Google on its own...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
possibly a hoax story
Anyway, the point stands that there's rather a lot of stories like this about at the moment.
Bear with me for a moment even though I may seem insane :)
Actually I think there may be some merit in the *general* idea that a site ranking can be hijacked on its keywords. I've noticed a lot of spamdex sites lately that rank very highly on certain keywords. When you look at them they are the same nonsense obviously written by a Markov chain Perl script which has basically scraped all the keywords from well known big sites and rehashed them into an attractive link farm.
I could imagine a business getting very annoyed by this, and if there was a way to prove that the spam site had been set up only to operate parasitically on the other sites keywords and was not actually related to that business, then maybe I could even agree that they should be challenged.
However, when your only complaint is that someone else in the same business as you has a better ranking then it's tough titty isn't it. If you want better ranking go and buy some Google Ads. Employing SEO's is throwing good money after bad imho, they are all charlatans and invariably their knowledge is useful only for a short time while they can exploit some short lived trick. Google are improving their algorithms all the time and they seem to get fairer and fairer towards real content. Maybe the problem with these whining businesses is that they don't actually have any content worth speaking of.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Need Answers
What is the search term?
What is the name of the company?
Should we be skeptical about this whole thing until we have some verifiable information?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
legit?
1) will not name the accuser, and
2) Just recently mentioned wanting to start a viral campaign.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You gotta be kidding!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Who wrote this crap!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I believe it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I believe it
You're advertising their service for them for free!
This comes down to meglomania again, an unreasonable expectation of control, and poor boundaries understanding of what one does actually own and have control over.
A driver in speeding car believes that they "own" the piece of road immediately in front of their vehicle, it's really interesting to watch psychology studies of road rage happening.
I can just imagine the fools you speak of getting all hot and red reading Google and thinking "Hey, we OWN those WORDS!"
Most 3 year olds have developed to the stage where they realise you cannot own words or ideas, after puberty I think many people start to regress again in our country.
Anyway if I lived in a town called XXXXXXXXX, I'd want all the free publicity I could get, what with always being at the end of the searches. Why don't you all move to AAAAAAAA ? :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm suing.
www.myspace.com/bboyneko.com
BTW, let me know what you think of my page. I know I blocked the default MySpace adds, but I've gotten away with it so far :D
Anyway. My Lawyer informs me, that since my MySpace is crucial to my job's income, I might just have a case. Guess it's time to see what comes of it!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I'm suing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I'm suing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lawyers ...
C'mon, lawyers are scum. There's probably a bunch of 'em licking their piggy jowls at this.
... if it's for real. The company complaining sounds at least unrealistic.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
For the record...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Read Google's Spam Engineers Blog
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
SOME COMPETITORS DO THIS ALL THE TIME
This is really not that far fetch. Google's spam chief has a VERY POPULAR blog. You'd be shocked at how may readers actually post their complaints about other competitors on that blog attempting to get them banned from the Google SERPs :-O
Many even double-post to Google directly, then complain on the blog when Google did not ban the competitor they 'outed'
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Google's blog fetish
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Google's blog fetish
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Although the major SEs produce millions of results on hundreds/thousands of pages, the user rarely looks further than the first few pages.
If your listing comes up after the second page, you're screwed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
googlebombing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]