June 1, 2008

Online Travel Industry Having Tax Problems

There seems to be a few cities in Texas that want the online travel industry to ante up millions of dollars in lost tax revenues - and there is a possibility this could move to the other states. Houston and San Antonio - guess Dallas would be next if the decider is towns with NBA teams - have filed suit against online travel companies for not paying the right amount of occupancy taxes dues.

"Hotels in Houston must remit to the city the hotel-occupancy tax of 7 percent, based on the price at which they sell rooms. The city uses the money to promote tourism and to pay off debt for Reliant Stadium, Toyota Center, Minute Maid Park and the Hilton Americas convention hotel".

'The city took in more than $57 million in the occupancy taxes in 2007," a Houston City official told the Houston Chronicle.

"On Tuesday, a federal judge granted San Antonio's motion for class-action certification in its lawsuit against 16 companies including Hotels.com, Expedia.com, Priceline.com and Orbitz. The San Antonio suit alleges the online companies collect hotel tax at the retail rate but only pay taxes on the bulk wholesale rate they are charged, " WebProNews reported

Obviously the travel industry is claiming increased costs will have an impact on tourism. That is absolutely true, while the local governement may not collect the taxes and does lose - the money comes in the pockets of those who visit and thus the average spend of the customers will be less. So maybe the local chamber of commerces should think about that and talk to the mayor.

Bookings will be down slightly because of higher prices - even though the prices will just increase across the board so people will not recognize the jump. Either way in a time of high gas prices actions like this will only hurt the travel industry as a whole. There are not many travel agencies left and few would be looking to invest in one right now.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 22, 2008

Ebay Suing Craigslist For 'Diluting Investment' In Company

Minority interest holder, EBay is taking Craigslist to court for actions that have yet to specify have "diluted" their investment, the New York Times reported.

NYT reported: “The recent actions by the Craigslist directors have disadvantaged eBay and its investment in Craigslist,� said Mike Jacobson, eBay’s senior vice president and general counsel, in a written statement. “Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions. We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay’s stockholders and preserve our investment.�

Sort of like the Coke commercial. What actions will be interesting to know given the wise stewardship the Craigslist officers have shown over the years. Though their continued mainly free service may not be popular with investors, it is a well-used and enjoyed destination for many web users.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:58 PM | Permalink

January 30, 2008

Is EU Softening On Online Activites, Acquisitions

Seems the European Union is becoming more sensitive to the workings of the internet. Recent rulings have changed their once strong position about its impact on Europe and its people.

Recent reports tell that they are ready to approve the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google - regardless of what had previously been thought to be a move closer to an online monopoly.

The latest is their decision not to make ISPs give the information of users who have used P2P software for sharing files, a battle that has been fought globally for copyright issues of music and film.

"The European Union's highest court ruled this week that Internet service providers in the EU do not have to give entertainment companies the names of Web users suspected of illegal file sharing.

Internet service providers only have to disclose the names of suspects in criminal cases, not in civil lawsuits, the EU court upheld.

EU countries generally provide consumers a broad range of privacy protections," AVN reported today.

It will be worth watching how these new decisions change the internet legal landscape in Europe.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:09 PM | Permalink

January 21, 2008

Ripoff Report Legal Problems: Dissection Of Culpability Online

Sarah Bird, a recent addition to the SEOMoz crew, has shown us that her legal education was not wasted. Her article today about the legal problems RipOff Reports faces is truly insightful.

The value in this piece of indepth analysis is what it can teach all website owners about what they are legally responsible for. Read it and take notes.

Posted by Frank Watson at 9:03 PM | Permalink

January 11, 2008

Is the AdWords Competitor-bidding Party Over?

1-800-Contacts is trying to force a legal ruling that could put a chill on the widespread practice of PPC advertisers bidding on competitors' trademarks.

According to this article in MediaPost:

IN THE LATEST EXAMPLE OF a marketer suing about search ads, 1-800-Contacts this week filed a lawsuit in federal court against LensWorld for purchasing search links triggered by the term "1-800-contacts." The company, which has brought several other similar cases, says it's trying to guard against confusion. "The worry that they have is that these advertising methods will make consumers think there's an affiliation between these other companies and our client," said 1-800-Contacts' lawyer, Bryan G. Pratt.

Many advertisers experience great conversion results bidding on competitor terms, so the impact on the search advertising community as a whole could be huge.

Posted by David Szetela at 8:17 AM | Permalink

September 7, 2007

Search Records Requests under Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional

Yesterday controversial elements of the Patriot Act were ruled unconstitutional by federal district court judge Victor Marrero. The Patriot Act, passed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, broadly expanded the government's powers to conduct anti-terrorism investigations. In its original form the Patriot Act granted the FBI, among other things, the power to issue “national security letters� (NSLs) that would compel search engines, ISPs, phone companies, libraries and other public sources of information to turn over their customer records. Because the Patriot Act also permanently barred targets from disclosing to their customers that information had been requested, we have no idea how many of these requests have been made to search engines. We do know that thousands of NSLs have been issued in service to counter terrorism efforts.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled portions of the Patriot Act unconstitutional. Marrero said the non disclosure provisions for NSL recipients violated their First Amendment rights (freedom of speech). He also ruled that the process for issuing the letters undercuts the role of the courts, a violation of the principle of separation of powers under the Constitution. This is not the first challenge to the broad provisions of the Patriot Act. A previous ruling in 2004 resulted in revisions when the Patriot Act was renewed this year that give recipients of the letters a limited right to challenge in court the non disclosure gag orders.

The NSL has been a popular counter-terrorism tool since it can be issued without court approval or subpoena. It has, however, been the subject of substantial controversy and criticism.

It is expected that the Justice Department will strongly challenge yesterday’s ruling. The lawsuit which resulted in this ruling was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and for those with a legal interest or extreme insomnia will find the entire report here on the ACLU site.

Posted by Amanda Watlington at 4:29 PM | Permalink

October 30, 2006

Judge To Rule By End Of Year On Kinderstart Case

Reuters reports that Judge Jeremy Fogel said he will take until the end of this year to rule on the Kinderstart case. The case was about how Kinderstart's ranking and PageRank fell and Kinderstart sued Google on numerous counts for the ranking drop. The judge recently said, "Assuming Google is saying that KinderStart's Web site isn't worth seeing. Why can't they say that? That's my question." So he will consider this and other questions in his ruling.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Publishers & Authors Consolidate Lawsuits Against Google

MarketWatch reports that a judge has consolidated two different cases against Google to make the process quicker and more "streamlined." Book publishers and book authors have joined together to battle Google on the legal from for copyright infringement allegations over Google's Book Search Project.

Postscript: Steve Bryant at eWeek reports that the Authors Guild v. Google case is postponed six months to January 2008. Steve said, "Doesn't that mean that Google, in the meantime, will continue to operate Google Books as normal, which is exactly what the Authors Guild wants to prevent?"

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:15 PM | Permalink

October 13, 2006

Google Wins Case Against Maughan Over Search Results Snippets

Eric Goldman reports that Google has won the Maughan v. Google case where Mark Maughan filed a suit against Google for the content displayed in the snippets area under a search results listing in Google.com. A search on Mark Maughan Accountancy currently shows the number one listing from www.dca.ca.gov/cba/discipline/ma-me.htm. The snippet looks like:

The complaint was that a search like the above and other variations of it "generates a list of websites 'suggesting' he was disciplined by the California Board of Accountancy for 'gross negligence' and accepting a contingent fee for the preparation of tax returns, which he says are 'veritable scarlet letters in the accounting world'."

Google won the case, and was also rewarded $23,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:20 AM | Permalink

October 3, 2006

Get 20 Years For Meta Tag Abuse

Via Google Blogoscoped, Meta tag abusers face 20 years in prison from The Register covers how a new law in the US might land some people using meta tags in trouble, if they are trying to mislead children.

Specifically, the law says "whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years."

Meta tag controls were added to the Stop Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Youth (SAFETY) Act. Now we all know, meta tags have almost no impact on the rankings of a page, but anyone putting those types of keywords in their meta tags most likely are trying to do it with the intent of improving their rankings for those keywords.

See also Danny's past post, New US Child Protection Law Might Make Webmasters Second Guess What They Write.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:35 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2006

Yahoo China Sues Hongyi's Qihoo For Unfair Competition

Reuters reports that Yahoo China is suing Qihoo, claiming that 360safe spyware software is prompting users to uninstall the Yahoo Toolbar. The spyware software claims that Yahoo's Toolbar is "malware" and is a risk to their computers. Joseph Tsai, Alibaba's chief financial officer, said that this is unfair competition, alluding to a former Yahoo employee named Zhou Hongyi who now heads up Qihoo. It is important to note that Zhou Hongyi sued Yahoo last month for defamation.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:30 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

KinderStart Issues An Amended Complaint Against Google

Eric Goldman wrote that KinderStart has issued a 63 page second amended complaint against Google. KinderStart lost their first case against Google back in July of this year - that case was, in my opinion, ridiculous. This new complaint is even worse. The 43(B)log summarizes the complaints, calling many of them "incomprehensible." Eric Goldman says "I expect Google will file a motion to dismiss, which the judge will grant, at least in part (at minimum, to eliminate the Violation of Free Speech claim). I expect Google to go on the counter-offensive and renew its anti-SLAPP motions."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:51 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

Former Yahoo China Head Sues Yahoo For Defamation

Reuters reports that Zhou Hongyi, the former head of Yahoo China, has sued Yahoo for defamation. Yahoo said they were about to sue Zhou Hongyi for "unethical business practices." Hongyi has a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, which was bought by Yahoo for $1 billion last year. To me, it seems like from the article, that Yahoo finds Hongyi to be a shady character, and Hongyi doesn't like Yahoo telling the public how they feel about him.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:20 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

Orkut Causing Trouble In Brazil Again

Komfie Manalo reports that Brazil has threatened to bring Google to court over their social networking application, Orkut, again. Yesterday, the Federal Prosecution Service of Brazil, said Google refused "to cooperate with authorities about user information" on Orkut. Google said in the past that they would work with Brazilian officials to shut down Orkut communities that were participating and helping criminals traffic drugs and distribute pedophilia. Google says they have cooperated with Brazilian authorities, stating, they have "provided information to eight investigations, and kept secret information regarding 60 other cases since June."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:33 PM | Permalink

July 14, 2006

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

Kinderstart has lost its case over lost rankings on Google, though the company will be allowed to amend defamation claims relating to its PageRank zero score. If it does by September 29, I suspect that reattempt will go down in flames as well. But the entire case exposes vulnerabilities Google has created for itself with mixed messages over how keyword ranking and Pagerank work.

Google Sued Over Site Penalty By KinderStart.com covers the case being filed back in March and provides a link to the actual suit. It was heard in court earlier this month, and you can review the transcript and analysis of that hearing.

Judge dismisses suit over Google ranking from News.com covers yesterday's ruling, where the claims against Google were dismissed. The judge gave leave for KinderStart to revise on some claims, apparently in particular on the idea that KinderStart was defamed by being dropped to a PageRank of zero as reported by the Google Toolbar.

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

"The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank," he wrote in a statement. "If plaintiffs show Google manually tampered with even a single Web site's PageRank, Google's entire claim of 'objectivity' of search results and rankings could collapse."

Sure. Fire away with that class action suit. Two class action suits over click fraud, where defendants have real monetary claims arising out of actual contacts with the major search engines, have netted around $60 million for advertisers for over four years worth of advertising activity. Assuming a somewhat nebulous defamation claim won, I can't imagine the settlement would be for much.

Keep in mind that by default, the PageRank meter is still not turned on, to my knowledge. Toolbar users have to specifically enable it. I've never seen any stats or breakdowns on who uses the PR meter, but that seems to be mainly site owners concerned about SEO, rather than typical web surfers.

Still, the case highlights a Google vulnerability. Google has argued in this case that ranking is subjective, an opinion that it offers about web sites. But go to its technology page, and you get this:

PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

So what is it, objective or subjective, or argue what's most convenient, as John Battelle raised earlier. The answer to me gets confused by Google's outdated information online plus confusion between PageRank and ranking.

Ranking, or keyword ranking, is where a site appears in response to a keyword search. It's supposed to be an objective decision made by using a computer algorithm to sort through factors, though not said is how some of those factors might have subjective decisions made over them.

PageRank is a numeric score that counts how important a page is based on analyzing the links pointing to it. It is one of many factors that Google uses to decide where a page should appear when you do a keyword search. In other words, PageRank is part of what determines keyword ranking, but it's not the only factor, nor is it the same as keyword ranking.

But doesn't Google say that pages with a higher PageRank appear at the top of the search results. Yes, and it says this incorrectly. That's right, Google's statement on this is flat out wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. WRONG.

Am I clear enough? But how can I say Google's official information is wrong? First, I can demonstrate it, as I've done before. Try this tool. Here's a search for cars. Notice how the movie Cars is ranked second. The home page for the site listed is a PR5, putting it above several pages ranking below it with a higher PR score. Got Firefox? Try Aaron Wall's new tool that makes seeing this type of thing even easier. End Of Demonstration.

Google has tons of things they've said publicly that get outdated like this or aren't explained properly by those charged to write up copy. In particular, Google has allowed PageRank to be a synonymous term to mean how a site ranks. You can see how this makes life confusing by the first paragraph in the News.com story about the case:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a "zero" ranking in the Google index.

Actually, I believe that two different things happened. KinderStart:

• No longer had good keyword rankings, not in the first page of results, but perhaps still buried further down unless it was banned completely. And if it was banned completely, that's not a "zero" rank but instead just called a ban.  
• Probably had a penalty put on it manually that produced a zero score in the PageRank meter.

The judge does not seem to be saying Google defamed the site through a lower keyword ranking. But he does seem to suggest that the PageRank score in the Google Toolbar meter might have that issue. From Eric Goldberg's nice write-up on the case (and he has a copy of the ruling there, as well):

Google’s statement as to whether a particular website is “worth your time” necessarily reflects its subjective judgment as to what factors make a website important. Viewed in this way, a PageRank reflects Google’s opinion. However, it is possible a PageRank reasonably could be interpreted as a factual statement insofar as it purports to tell a user “how Google’s algorithms assess the importance of the page you’re viewing.” This interpretation would be bolstered by evidence supporting Google’s alleged representations that PageRank is “objective,” and that a reasonable person thus might understand Google’s display of a ‘0’ PageRank for Kinderstart.com to be a statement that ‘0’ is the (unmodified) output of Google’s algorithm. If it could be shown, as Kinderstart alleges, that Google is changing that output by manual intervention, then such a statement might be provably false.

I'm actually surprised the judge doesn't seem to know that Google does indeed change that output by manual intervention. That's what the entire SearchKing case was about. First some background on that:

• Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease: From Feb. 2002, overview of the case that was filed against Google.  
• SearchKing Google Rank Restored and The SearchKing Google controversy revisited: From Nov. 2002, on SearchKing beginning to rank again for some terms but the PageRank score itself apparently not back to "normal."  
• Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit and SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied: From Jan. 2003, on preliminary injunction being denied.  
• Court dismisses Google search-fixing case: From June 2003, on a court ruling that PageRank is Google's opinion and that what's "normal" is whatever Google wants it to be.  
• Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR: In April 2006, SearchKing regained PageRank.

The case involved another US District Court judge ruling that yes, Google had manipulated the PageRank score showing for SearchKing and that it had a constitutionally protected right to do so, to offer its opinion this way.

Of course, the ruling confuses PageRank and keyword ranking as I've explained above often happens:

PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

Still, since the case was indeed focused about the PageRank meter, I suspect we're safe in knowing this was about PageRank scores getting protected status. And what the KinderStart case now tells us is that Google (and other search engines) also have the right to do keyword rankings however they like.

We'll see if the PageRank scores get challenged again. Certainly Google could short-circuit this by dropping the scores and the meter altogether (please do it). As explained, few people to my knowledge use them, and plenty of site owners are tired of newbie search marketers obsessing over them. PageRank was mainly a marketing tactic for Google that's long since been blowing up in its face.

If the meter doesn't go away, certainly Google needs to take a harder look at what it says about both the Google Toolbar and keyword rankings if it doesn't want to be vulnerable in future court cases (plus just be consistent with the public).

For example, what's a site owner told about a PR0 score:

A page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to it. Additionally, pages recently added to the Google index may also show a PageRank score of zero because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with subsequent crawls, so this shouldn't be a cause for concern. To learn more about PageRank, please see http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

There's no mention of the fact that you might have a PR0 score because Google has manually intervened to reduce it. And as for what it tells the general public:

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google's algorithms assess the importance of the page you're viewing.

Again, it's more than just the algorithms being involved. Human are making decisions that impact that score, as well.

In short, Google is continuing to make statements that PageRank is objective to the public, but in two court cases now, it has said the scores are subjective. One case as supported its right to make subjective cases. The other has supported a defendants right to challenge if those subjective opinions are fair or defamatory. We'll see what happens next.

Finally, the entire human intervention thing with PageRank scores brings back the issue of Google long saying there's no human intervention in keyword ranking, such as they used to say about censorship:

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand.

And similar to what they still say here:

Sites' positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don't manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

As I've written before, Google does indeed hand manipulate results, but not in the sense of trying to reorder them. Instead, it manually intervenes in terms of banning some sites or putting overall ranking penalties on them. There's even been updated attempts to help site owners know when they've been banned through the Google Sitemaps program.

Overall, Google's got plenty of mixed messages out there that don't help on the PR front and potentially leave it vulnerable on the legal front, as this case has shown.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:48 AM | Permalink

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

Kinderstart has lost its case over lost rankings on Google, though the company will be allowed to amend defamation claims relating to its PageRank zero score. If it does by September 29, I suspect that reattempt will go down in flames as well. But the entire case exposes vulnerabilities Google has created for itself with mixed messages over how keyword ranking and Pagerank work.

Google Sued Over Site Penalty By KinderStart.com covers the case being filed back in March and provides a link to the actual suit. It was heard in court earlier this month, and you can review the transcript and analysis of that hearing.

Judge dismisses suit over Google ranking from News.com covers yesterday's ruling, where the claims against Google were dismissed. The judge gave leave for KinderStart to revise on some claims, apparently in particular on the idea that KinderStart was defamed by being dropped to a PageRank of zero as reported by the Google Toolbar.

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

"The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank," he wrote in a statement. "If plaintiffs show Google manually tampered with even a single Web site's PageRank, Google's entire claim of 'objectivity' of search results and rankings could collapse."

Sure. Fire away with that class action suit. Two class action suits over click fraud, where defendants have real monetary claims arising out of actual contacts with the major search engines, have netted around $60 million for advertisers for over four years worth of advertising activity. Assuming a somewhat nebulous defamation claim won, I can't imagine the settlement would be for much.

Keep in mind that by default, the PageRank meter is still not turned on, to my knowledge. Toolbar users have to specifically enable it. I've never seen any stats or breakdowns on who uses the PR meter, but that seems to be mainly site owners concerned about SEO, rather than typical web surfers.

Still, the case highlights a Google vulnerability. Google has argued in this case that ranking is subjective, an opinion that it offers about web sites. But go to its technology page, and you get this:

PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

So what is it, objective or subjective, or argue what's most convenient, as John Battelle raised earlier. The answer to me gets confused by Google's outdated information online plus confusion between PageRank and ranking.

Ranking, or keyword ranking, is where a site appears in response to a keyword search. It's supposed to be an objective decision made by using a computer algorithm to sort through factors, though not said is how some of those factors might have subjective decisions made over them.

PageRank is a numeric score that counts how important a page is based on analyzing the links pointing to it. It is one of many factors that Google uses to decide where a page should appear when you do a keyword search. In other words, PageRank is part of what determines keyword ranking, but it's not the only factor, nor is it the same as keyword ranking.

But doesn't Google say that pages with a higher PageRank appear at the top of the search results. Yes, and it says this incorrectly. That's right, Google's statement on this is flat out wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. WRONG.

Am I clear enough? But how can I say Google's official information is wrong? First, I can demonstrate it, as I've done before. Try this tool. Here's a search for cars. Notice how the movie Cars is ranked second. The home page for the site listed is a PR5, putting it above several pages ranking below it with a higher PR score. Got Firefox? Try Aaron Wall's new tool that makes seeing this type of thing even easier. End Of Demonstration.

Google has tons of things they've said publicly that get outdated like this or aren't explained properly by those charged to write up copy. In particular, Google has allowed PageRank to be a synonymous term to mean how a site ranks. You can see how this makes life confusing by the first paragraph in the News.com story about the case:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a "zero" ranking in the Google index.

Actually, I believe that two different things happened. KinderStart:

• No longer had good keyword rankings, not in the first page of results, but perhaps still buried further down unless it was banned completely. And if it was banned completely, that's not a "zero" rank but instead just called a ban.  
• Probably had a penalty put on it manually that produced a zero score in the PageRank meter.

The judge does not seem to be saying Google defamed the site through a lower keyword ranking. But he does seem to suggest that the PageRank score in the Google Toolbar meter might have that issue. From Eric Goldberg's nice write-up on the case (and he has a copy of the ruling there, as well):

Google’s statement as to whether a particular website is “worth your time” necessarily reflects its subjective judgment as to what factors make a website important. Viewed in this way, a PageRank reflects Google’s opinion. However, it is possible a PageRank reasonably could be interpreted as a factual statement insofar as it purports to tell a user “how Google’s algorithms assess the importance of the page you’re viewing.” This interpretation would be bolstered by evidence supporting Google’s alleged representations that PageRank is “objective,” and that a reasonable person thus might understand Google’s display of a ‘0’ PageRank for Kinderstart.com to be a statement that ‘0’ is the (unmodified) output of Google’s algorithm. If it could be shown, as Kinderstart alleges, that Google is changing that output by manual intervention, then such a statement might be provably false.

I'm actually surprised the judge doesn't seem to know that Google does indeed change that output by manual intervention. That's what the entire SearchKing case was about. First some background on that:

• Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease: From Feb. 2002, overview of the case that was filed against Google.  
• SearchKing Google Rank Restored and The SearchKing Google controversy revisited: From Nov. 2002, on SearchKing beginning to rank again for some terms but the PageRank score itself apparently not back to "normal."  
• Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit and SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied: From Jan. 2003, on preliminary injunction being denied.  
• Court dismisses Google search-fixing case: From June 2003, on a court ruling that PageRank is Google's opinion and that what's "normal" is whatever Google wants it to be.  
• Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR: In April 2006, SearchKing regained PageRank.

The case involved another US District Court judge ruling that yes, Google had manipulated the PageRank score showing for SearchKing and that it had a constitutionally protected right to do so, to offer its opinion this way.

Of course, the ruling confuses PageRank and keyword ranking as I've explained above often happens:

PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

Still, since the case was indeed focused about the PageRank meter, I suspect we're safe in knowing this was about PageRank scores getting protected status. And what the KinderStart case now tells us is that Google (and other search engines) also have the right to do keyword rankings however they like.

We'll see if the PageRank scores get challenged again. Certainly Google could short-circuit this by dropping the scores and the meter altogether (please do it). As explained, few people to my knowledge use them, and plenty of site owners are tired of newbie search marketers obsessing over them. PageRank was mainly a marketing tactic for Google that's long since been blowing up in its face.

If the meter doesn't go away, certainly Google needs to take a harder look at what it says about both the Google Toolbar and keyword rankings if it doesn't want to be vulnerable in future court cases (plus just be consistent with the public).

For example, what's a site owner told about a PR0 score:

A page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to it. Additionally, pages recently added to the Google index may also show a PageRank score of zero because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with subsequent crawls, so this shouldn't be a cause for concern. To learn more about PageRank, please see http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

There's no mention of the fact that you might have a PR0 score because Google has manually intervened to reduce it. And as for what it tells the general public:

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google's algorithms assess the importance of the page you're viewing.

Again, it's more than just the algorithms being involved. Human are making decisions that impact that score, as well.

In short, Google is continuing to make statements that PageRank is objective to the public, but in two court cases now, it has said the scores are subjective. One case as supported its right to make subjective cases. The other has supported a defendants right to challenge if those subjective opinions are fair or defamatory. We'll see what happens next.

Finally, the entire human intervention thing with PageRank scores brings back the issue of Google long saying there's no human intervention in keyword ranking, such as they used to say about censorship:

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand.

And similar to what they still say here:

Sites' positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don't manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

As I've written before, Google does indeed hand manipulate results, but not in the sense of trying to reorder them. Instead, it manually intervenes in terms of banning some sites or putting overall ranking penalties on them. There's even been updated attempts to help site owners know when they've been banned through the Google Sitemaps program.

Overall, Google's got plenty of mixed messages out there that don't help on the PR front and potentially leave it vulnerable on the legal front, as this case has shown.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:48 AM | Permalink

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

Kinderstart has lost its case over lost rankings on Google, though the company will be allowed to amend defamation claims relating to its PageRank zero score. If it does by September 29, I suspect that reattempt will go down in flames as well. But the entire case exposes vulnerabilities Google has created for itself with mixed messages over how keyword ranking and Pagerank work.

Google Sued Over Site Penalty By KinderStart.com covers the case being filed back in March and provides a link to the actual suit. It was heard in court earlier this month, and you can review the transcript and analysis of that hearing.

Judge dismisses suit over Google ranking from News.com covers yesterday's ruling, where the claims against Google were dismissed. The judge gave leave for KinderStart to revise on some claims, apparently in particular on the idea that KinderStart was defamed by being dropped to a PageRank of zero as reported by the Google Toolbar.

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

"The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank," he wrote in a statement. "If plaintiffs show Google manually tampered with even a single Web site's PageRank, Google's entire claim of 'objectivity' of search results and rankings could collapse."

Sure. Fire away with that class action suit. Two class action suits over click fraud, where defendants have real monetary claims arising out of actual contacts with the major search engines, have netted around $60 million for advertisers for over four years worth of advertising activity. Assuming a somewhat nebulous defamation claim won, I can't imagine the settlement would be for much.

Keep in mind that by default, the PageRank meter is still not turned on, to my knowledge. Toolbar users have to specifically enable it. I've never seen any stats or breakdowns on who uses the PR meter, but that seems to be mainly site owners concerned about SEO, rather than typical web surfers.

Still, the case highlights a Google vulnerability. Google has argued in this case that ranking is subjective, an opinion that it offers about web sites. But go to its technology page, and you get this:

PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

So what is it, objective or subjective, or argue what's most convenient, as John Battelle raised earlier. The answer to me gets confused by Google's outdated information online plus confusion between PageRank and ranking.

Ranking, or keyword ranking, is where a site appears in response to a keyword search. It's supposed to be an objective decision made by using a computer algorithm to sort through factors, though not said is how some of those factors might have subjective decisions made over them.

PageRank is a numeric score that counts how important a page is based on analyzing the links pointing to it. It is one of many factors that Google uses to decide where a page should appear when you do a keyword search. In other words, PageRank is part of what determines keyword ranking, but it's not the only factor, nor is it the same as keyword ranking.

But doesn't Google say that pages with a higher PageRank appear at the top of the search results. Yes, and it says this incorrectly. That's right, Google's statement on this is flat out wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. WRONG.

Am I clear enough? But how can I say Google's official information is wrong? First, I can demonstrate it, as I've done before. Try this tool. Here's a search for cars. Notice how the movie Cars is ranked second. The home page for the site listed is a PR5, putting it above several pages ranking below it with a higher PR score. Got Firefox? Try Aaron Wall's new tool that makes seeing this type of thing even easier. End Of Demonstration.

Google has tons of things they've said publicly that get outdated like this or aren't explained properly by those charged to write up copy. In particular, Google has allowed PageRank to be a synonymous term to mean how a site ranks. You can see how this makes life confusing by the first paragraph in the News.com story about the case:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a "zero" ranking in the Google index.

Actually, I believe that two different things happened. KinderStart:

• No longer had good keyword rankings, not in the first page of results, but perhaps still buried further down unless it was banned completely. And if it was banned completely, that's not a "zero" rank but instead just called a ban.  
• Probably had a penalty put on it manually that produced a zero score in the PageRank meter.

The judge does not seem to be saying Google defamed the site through a lower keyword ranking. But he does seem to suggest that the PageRank score in the Google Toolbar meter might have that issue. From Eric Goldberg's nice write-up on the case (and he has a copy of the ruling there, as well):

Google’s statement as to whether a particular website is “worth your time” necessarily reflects its subjective judgment as to what factors make a website important. Viewed in this way, a PageRank reflects Google’s opinion. However, it is possible a PageRank reasonably could be interpreted as a factual statement insofar as it purports to tell a user “how Google’s algorithms assess the importance of the page you’re viewing.” This interpretation would be bolstered by evidence supporting Google’s alleged representations that PageRank is “objective,” and that a reasonable person thus might understand Google’s display of a ‘0’ PageRank for Kinderstart.com to be a statement that ‘0’ is the (unmodified) output of Google’s algorithm. If it could be shown, as Kinderstart alleges, that Google is changing that output by manual intervention, then such a statement might be provably false.

I'm actually surprised the judge doesn't seem to know that Google does indeed change that output by manual intervention. That's what the entire SearchKing case was about. First some background on that:

• Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease: From Feb. 2002, overview of the case that was filed against Google.  
• SearchKing Google Rank Restored and The SearchKing Google controversy revisited: From Nov. 2002, on SearchKing beginning to rank again for some terms but the PageRank score itself apparently not back to "normal."  
• Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit and SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied: From Jan. 2003, on preliminary injunction being denied.  
• Court dismisses Google search-fixing case: From June 2003, on a court ruling that PageRank is Google's opinion and that what's "normal" is whatever Google wants it to be.  
• Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR: In April 2006, SearchKing regained PageRank.

The case involved another US District Court judge ruling that yes, Google had manipulated the PageRank score showing for SearchKing and that it had a constitutionally protected right to do so, to offer its opinion this way.

Of course, the ruling confuses PageRank and keyword ranking as I've explained above often happens:

PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

Still, since the case was indeed focused about the PageRank meter, I suspect we're safe in knowing this was about PageRank scores getting protected status. And what the KinderStart case now tells us is that Google (and other search engines) also have the right to do keyword rankings however they like.

We'll see if the PageRank scores get challenged again. Certainly Google could short-circuit this by dropping the scores and the meter altogether (please do it). As explained, few people to my knowledge use them, and plenty of site owners are tired of newbie search marketers obsessing over them. PageRank was mainly a marketing tactic for Google that's long since been blowing up in its face.

If the meter doesn't go away, certainly Google needs to take a harder look at what it says about both the Google Toolbar and keyword rankings if it doesn't want to be vulnerable in future court cases (plus just be consistent with the public).

For example, what's a site owner told about a PR0 score:

A page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to it. Additionally, pages recently added to the Google index may also show a PageRank score of zero because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with subsequent crawls, so this shouldn't be a cause for concern. To learn more about PageRank, please see http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

There's no mention of the fact that you might have a PR0 score because Google has manually intervened to reduce it. And as for what it tells the general public:

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google's algorithms assess the importance of the page you're viewing.

Again, it's more than just the algorithms being involved. Human are making decisions that impact that score, as well.

In short, Google is continuing to make statements that PageRank is objective to the public, but in two court cases now, it has said the scores are subjective. One case as supported its right to make subjective cases. The other has supported a defendants right to challenge if those subjective opinions are fair or defamatory. We'll see what happens next.

Finally, the entire human intervention thing with PageRank scores brings back the issue of Google long saying there's no human intervention in keyword ranking, such as they used to say about censorship:

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand.

And similar to what they still say here:

Sites' positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don't manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

As I've written before, Google does indeed hand manipulate results, but not in the sense of trying to reorder them. Instead, it manually intervenes in terms of banning some sites or putting overall ranking penalties on them. There's even been updated attempts to help site owners know when they've been banned through the Google Sitemaps program.

Overall, Google's got plenty of mixed messages out there that don't help on the PR front and potentially leave it vulnerable on the legal front, as this case has shown.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:48 AM | Permalink

KinderStart Becomes KinderStopped In Ranking Lawsuit Against Google

Kinderstart has lost its case over lost rankings on Google, though the company will be allowed to amend defamation claims relating to its PageRank zero score. If it does by September 29, I suspect that reattempt will go down in flames as well. But the entire case exposes vulnerabilities Google has created for itself with mixed messages over how keyword ranking and Pagerank work.

Google Sued Over Site Penalty By KinderStart.com covers the case being filed back in March and provides a link to the actual suit. It was heard in court earlier this month, and you can review the transcript and analysis of that hearing.

Judge dismisses suit over Google ranking from News.com covers yesterday's ruling, where the claims against Google were dismissed. The judge gave leave for KinderStart to revise on some claims, apparently in particular on the idea that KinderStart was defamed by being dropped to a PageRank of zero as reported by the Google Toolbar.

KinderStart now apparently hopes it can enlist other PR0 sites to file a class action lawsuit against Google (info is supposed to be here, but site is currently down). The KinderStart attorney said:

"The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank," he wrote in a statement. "If plaintiffs show Google manually tampered with even a single Web site's PageRank, Google's entire claim of 'objectivity' of search results and rankings could collapse."

Sure. Fire away with that class action suit. Two class action suits over click fraud, where defendants have real monetary claims arising out of actual contacts with the major search engines, have netted around $60 million for advertisers for over four years worth of advertising activity. Assuming a somewhat nebulous defamation claim won, I can't imagine the settlement would be for much.

Keep in mind that by default, the PageRank meter is still not turned on, to my knowledge. Toolbar users have to specifically enable it. I've never seen any stats or breakdowns on who uses the PR meter, but that seems to be mainly site owners concerned about SEO, rather than typical web surfers.

Still, the case highlights a Google vulnerability. Google has argued in this case that ranking is subjective, an opinion that it offers about web sites. But go to its technology page, and you get this:

PageRank Technology: PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives. PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

So what is it, objective or subjective, or argue what's most convenient, as John Battelle raised earlier. The answer to me gets confused by Google's outdated information online plus confusion between PageRank and ranking.

Ranking, or keyword ranking, is where a site appears in response to a keyword search. It's supposed to be an objective decision made by using a computer algorithm to sort through factors, though not said is how some of those factors might have subjective decisions made over them.

PageRank is a numeric score that counts how important a page is based on analyzing the links pointing to it. It is one of many factors that Google uses to decide where a page should appear when you do a keyword search. In other words, PageRank is part of what determines keyword ranking, but it's not the only factor, nor is it the same as keyword ranking.

But doesn't Google say that pages with a higher PageRank appear at the top of the search results. Yes, and it says this incorrectly. That's right, Google's statement on this is flat out wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. WRONG.

Am I clear enough? But how can I say Google's official information is wrong? First, I can demonstrate it, as I've done before. Try this tool. Here's a search for cars. Notice how the movie Cars is ranked second. The home page for the site listed is a PR5, putting it above several pages ranking below it with a higher PR score. Got Firefox? Try Aaron Wall's new tool that makes seeing this type of thing even easier. End Of Demonstration.

Google has tons of things they've said publicly that get outdated like this or aren't explained properly by those charged to write up copy. In particular, Google has allowed PageRank to be a synonymous term to mean how a site ranks. You can see how this makes life confusing by the first paragraph in the News.com story about the case:

KinderStart, a directory and search engine for information related to children, sued Google in March after it fell to a "zero" ranking in the Google index.

Actually, I believe that two different things happened. KinderStart:

• No longer had good keyword rankings, not in the first page of results, but perhaps still buried further down unless it was banned completely. And if it was banned completely, that's not a "zero" rank but instead just called a ban.  
• Probably had a penalty put on it manually that produced a zero score in the PageRank meter.

The judge does not seem to be saying Google defamed the site through a lower keyword ranking. But he does seem to suggest that the PageRank score in the Google Toolbar meter might have that issue. From Eric Goldberg's nice write-up on the case (and he has a copy of the ruling there, as well):

Google’s statement as to whether a particular website is “worth your time” necessarily reflects its subjective judgment as to what factors make a website important. Viewed in this way, a PageRank reflects Google’s opinion. However, it is possible a PageRank reasonably could be interpreted as a factual statement insofar as it purports to tell a user “how Google’s algorithms assess the importance of the page you’re viewing.” This interpretation would be bolstered by evidence supporting Google’s alleged representations that PageRank is “objective,” and that a reasonable person thus might understand Google’s display of a ‘0’ PageRank for Kinderstart.com to be a statement that ‘0’ is the (unmodified) output of Google’s algorithm. If it could be shown, as Kinderstart alleges, that Google is changing that output by manual intervention, then such a statement might be provably false.

I'm actually surprised the judge doesn't seem to know that Google does indeed change that output by manual intervention. That's what the entire SearchKing case was about. First some background on that:

• Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease: From Feb. 2002, overview of the case that was filed against Google.  
• SearchKing Google Rank Restored and The SearchKing Google controversy revisited: From Nov. 2002, on SearchKing beginning to rank again for some terms but the PageRank score itself apparently not back to "normal."  
• Google Asks Court to Dismiss SearchKing Lawsuit and SearchKing update: preliminary injunction denied: From Jan. 2003, on preliminary injunction being denied.  
• Court dismisses Google search-fixing case: From June 2003, on a court ruling that PageRank is Google's opinion and that what's "normal" is whatever Google wants it to be.  
• Four Years Later, SearchKing Regains Google PR: In April 2006, SearchKing regained PageRank.

The case involved another US District Court judge ruling that yes, Google had manipulated the PageRank score showing for SearchKing and that it had a constitutionally protected right to do so, to offer its opinion this way.

Of course, the ruling confuses PageRank and keyword ranking as I've explained above often happens:

PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

Still, since the case was indeed focused about the PageRank meter, I suspect we're safe in knowing this was about PageRank scores getting protected status. And what the KinderStart case now tells us is that Google (and other search engines) also have the right to do keyword rankings however they like.

We'll see if the PageRank scores get challenged again. Certainly Google could short-circuit this by dropping the scores and the meter altogether (please do it). As explained, few people to my knowledge use them, and plenty of site owners are tired of newbie search marketers obsessing over them. PageRank was mainly a marketing tactic for Google that's long since been blowing up in its face.

If the meter doesn't go away, certainly Google needs to take a harder look at what it says about both the Google Toolbar and keyword rankings if it doesn't want to be vulnerable in future court cases (plus just be consistent with the public).

For example, what's a site owner told about a PR0 score:

A page may be assigned a rank of zero if Google crawls very few sites that link to it. Additionally, pages recently added to the Google index may also show a PageRank score of zero because they haven't been crawled by Googlebot yet and haven't been ranked. A page's PageRank score may increase naturally with subsequent crawls, so this shouldn't be a cause for concern. To learn more about PageRank, please see http://www.google.com/technology/index.html

There's no mention of the fact that you might have a PR0 score because Google has manually intervened to reduce it. And as for what it tells the general public:

Wondering whether a new website is worth your time? Use the Toolbar's PageRank™ display to tell you how Google's algorithms assess the importance of the page you're viewing.

Again, it's more than just the algorithms being involved. Human are making decisions that impact that score, as well.

In short, Google is continuing to make statements that PageRank is objective to the public, but in two court cases now, it has said the scores are subjective. One case as supported its right to make subjective cases. The other has supported a defendants right to challenge if those subjective opinions are fair or defamatory. We'll see what happens next.

Finally, the entire human intervention thing with PageRank scores brings back the issue of Google long saying there's no human intervention in keyword ranking, such as they used to say about censorship:

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand.

And similar to what they still say here:

Sites' positions in our search results are determined automatically based on a number of factors, which are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. We don't manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manipulate the ranking of any site in our search results.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our webmaster guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

As I've written before, Google does indeed hand manipulate results, but not in the sense of trying to reorder them. Instead, it manually intervenes in terms of banning some sites or putting overall ranking penalties on them. There's even been updated attempts to help site owners know when they've been banned through the Google Sitemaps program.

Overall, Google's got plenty of mixed messages out there that don't help on the PR front and potentially leave it vulnerable on the legal front, as this case has shown.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:48 AM | Permalink

July 6, 2006

Google Ombudsman? Search Ombudsman? Great Idea -- Bring Them On!

Back in 2004, Gary Stein suggested that Yahoo hire an ombudsman, a sort of impartial referee to handle disputes involving advertising programs. I thought it was a great idea. Today, Steve Bryant over at eWeek's Google Watch calls for Google to do the same thing. Again, great idea -- let's see the search engines all start hiring ombudsmen, in the way that many newspapers and others have done.

At a newspaper, the ombudsman is someone who the readers can appeal to if they feel a paper has been unfair or had a problem with coverage. The ombudsman investigates the complaint and reports back to the readers. As an insider, they have more access than an external investigator. But as the ombudsman, their responsibility is to represent the readers, not the organization.

Google's had a series of problems recently, as Bryant points out. Was Amazon accidentally knocked out on a search for its own domain name, or was it a glitch? Is Wikipedia Watch being deliberately downranked for a search on its own name, as founder Daniel Brandt feels, or is it another glitch?

An ombudsman is the sort of person who could investigate these things and report back. In fact, Google probably would need to employ a team of ombudsmen, given the many charges people point at it, often unfounded but still which need to be addressed.

Nor is Google the only one that should consider this. I don't agree with Bryant that Google is the closest thing we have to a Pope on the internet. But the idea of it being a paper of record is more true. But Google's not the only paper of record. Yahoo, MSN and Ask are all important papers, as well. I'd like to see them all establish ombudsmen.

At the very least, it will help take the pressure off the informal ombudsmen we already have -- Matt Cutts, Jeremy Zawodny and other search employees that often step up to do informal public relations and examinations of concerns. I don't want those bloggers to go away, but it would be nice to have an official person that searchers and publishers could feel are supposed to be looking into concerns.

Postscript: Google must temper its power or law makers will over at The Guardian has Jack Schofield talking about the idea of an ombudsman, as well.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:52 AM | Permalink

Google Ombudsman? Search Ombudsman? Great Idea -- Bring Them On!

Back in 2004, Gary Stein suggested that Yahoo hire an ombudsman, a sort of impartial referee to handle disputes involving advertising programs. I thought it was a great idea. Today, Steve Bryant over at eWeek's Google Watch calls for Google to do the same thing. Again, great idea -- let's see the search engines all start hiring ombudsmen, in the way that many newspapers and others have done.

At a newspaper, the ombudsman is someone who the readers can appeal to if they feel a paper has been unfair or had a problem with coverage. The ombudsman investigates the complaint and reports back to the readers. As an insider, they have more access than an external investigator. But as the ombudsman, their responsibility is to represent the readers, not the organization.

Google's had a series of problems recently, as Bryant points out. Was Amazon accidentally knocked out on a search for its own domain name, or was it a glitch? Is Wikipedia Watch being deliberately downranked for a search on its own name, as founder Daniel Brandt feels, or is it another glitch?

An ombudsman is the sort of person who could investigate these things and report back. In fact, Google probably would need to employ a team of ombudsmen, given the many charges people point at it, often unfounded but still which need to be addressed.

Nor is Google the only one that should consider this. I don't agree with Bryant that Google is the closest thing we have to a Pope on the internet. But the idea of it being a paper of record is more true. But Google's not the only paper of record. Yahoo, MSN and Ask are all important papers, as well. I'd like to see them all establish ombudsmen.

At the very least, it will help take the pressure off the informal ombudsmen we already have -- Matt Cutts, Jeremy Zawodny and other search employees that often step up to do informal public relations and examinations of concerns. I don't want those bloggers to go away, but it would be nice to have an official person that searchers and publishers could feel are supposed to be looking into concerns.

Postscript: Google must temper its power or law makers will over at The Guardian has Jack Schofield talking about the idea of an ombudsman, as well.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:52 AM | Permalink

Google Ombudsman? Search Ombudsman? Great Idea -- Bring Them On!

Back in 2004, Gary Stein suggested that Yahoo hire an ombudsman, a sort of impartial referee to handle disputes involving advertising programs. I thought it was a great idea. Today, Steve Bryant over at eWeek's Google Watch calls for Google to do the same thing. Again, great idea -- let's see the search engines all start hiring ombudsmen, in the way that many newspapers and others have done.

At a newspaper, the ombudsman is someone who the readers can appeal to if they feel a paper has been unfair or had a problem with coverage. The ombudsman investigates the complaint and reports back to the readers. As an insider, they have more access than an external investigator. But as the ombudsman, their responsibility is to represent the readers, not the organization.

Google's had a series of problems recently, as Bryant points out. Was Amazon accidentally knocked out on a search for its own domain name, or was it a glitch? Is Wikipedia Watch being deliberately downranked for a search on its own name, as founder Daniel Brandt feels, or is it another glitch?

An ombudsman is the sort of person who could investigate these things and report back. In fact, Google probably would need to employ a team of ombudsmen, given the many charges people point at it, often unfounded but still which need to be addressed.

Nor is Google the only one that should consider this. I don't agree with Bryant that Google is the closest thing we have to a Pope on the internet. But the idea of it being a paper of record is more true. But Google's not the only paper of record. Yahoo, MSN and Ask are all important papers, as well. I'd like to see them all establish ombudsmen.

At the very least, it will help take the pressure off the informal ombudsmen we already have -- Matt Cutts, Jeremy Zawodny and other search employees that often step up to do informal public relations and examinations of concerns. I don't want those bloggers to go away, but it would be nice to have an official person that searchers and publishers could feel are supposed to be looking into concerns.

Postscript: Google must temper its power or law makers will over at The Guardian has Jack Schofield talking about the idea of an ombudsman, as well.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:52 AM | Permalink

Google Ombudsman? Search Ombudsman? Great Idea -- Bring Them On!

Back in 2004, Gary Stein suggested that Yahoo hire an ombudsman, a sort of impartial referee to handle disputes involving advertising programs. I thought it was a great idea. Today, Steve Bryant over at eWeek's Google Watch calls for Google to do the same thing. Again, great idea -- let's see the search engines all start hiring ombudsmen, in the way that many newspapers and others have done.

At a newspaper, the ombudsman is someone who the readers can appeal to if they feel a paper has been unfair or had a problem with coverage. The ombudsman investigates the complaint and reports back to the readers. As an insider, they have more access than an external investigator. But as the ombudsman, their responsibility is to represent the readers, not the organization.

Google's had a series of problems recently, as Bryant points out. Was Amazon accidentally knocked out on a search for its own domain name, or was it a glitch? Is Wikipedia Watch being deliberately downranked for a search on its own name, as founder Daniel Brandt feels, or is it another glitch?

An ombudsman is the sort of person who could investigate these things and report back. In fact, Google probably would need to employ a team of ombudsmen, given the many charges people point at it, often unfounded but still which need to be addressed.

Nor is Google the only one that should consider this. I don't agree with Bryant that Google is the closest thing we have to a Pope on the internet. But the idea of it being a paper of record is more true. But Google's not the only paper of record. Yahoo, MSN and Ask are all important papers, as well. I'd like to see them all establish ombudsmen.

At the very least, it will help take the pressure off the informal ombudsmen we already have -- Matt Cutts, Jeremy Zawodny and other search employees that often step up to do informal public relations and examinations of concerns. I don't want those bloggers to go away, but it would be nice to have an official person that searchers and publishers could feel are supposed to be looking into concerns.

Postscript: Google must temper its power or law makers will over at The Guardian has Jack Schofield talking about the idea of an ombudsman, as well.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:52 AM | Permalink

July 5, 2006

Google Warns U.S. Legislators On Anti-Trust Complaints Over Net Neutrality

The Washington Post reports that Google has warned the United States, that if telecoms abuse net neutrality principles it backs, through a new law that might go through, it could consider an anti-trust action. If you want all the details, check out the Washington Post.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:46 AM | Permalink

Google Warns U.S. Legislators On Anti-Trust Complaints Over Net Neutrality

The Washington Post reports that Google has warned the United States, that if telecoms abuse net neutrality principles it backs, through a new law that might go through, it could consider an anti-trust action. If you want all the details, check out the Washington Post.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:46 AM | Permalink

Google Warns U.S. Legislators On Anti-Trust Complaints Over Net Neutrality

The Washington Post reports that Google has warned the United States, that if telecoms abuse net neutrality principles it backs, through a new law that might go through, it could consider an anti-trust action. If you want all the details, check out the Washington Post.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:46 AM | Permalink

Google Warns U.S. Legislators On Anti-Trust Complaints Over Net Neutrality

The Washington Post reports that Google has warned the United States, that if telecoms abuse net neutrality principles it backs, through a new law that might go through, it could consider an anti-trust action. If you want all the details, check out the Washington Post.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:46 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

New York State Sends Warning On Google Video Service

ResourceShelf notes a Red Herring article about the New York State Consumer Protection Board (CPB) warning parents about Google Video. The warning discussed that Google Video enables children to "easily access and view videos with sexual themes and off-color material" all for free. ResourceShelf also notes that the only video service mentioned in this warning is Google Video, not YouTube or Yahoo Video.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:18 AM | Permalink

New York State Sends Warning On Google Video Service

ResourceShelf notes a Red Herring article about the New York State Consumer Protection Board (CPB) warning parents about Google Video. The warning discussed that Google Video enables children to "easily access and view videos with sexual themes and off-color material" all for free. ResourceShelf also notes that the only video service mentioned in this warning is Google Video, not YouTube or Yahoo Video.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:18 AM | Permalink

New York State Sends Warning On Google Video Service

ResourceShelf notes a Red Herring article about the New York State Consumer Protection Board (CPB) warning parents about Google Video. The warning discussed that Google Video enables children to "easily access and view videos with sexual themes and off-color material" all for free. ResourceShelf also notes that the only video service mentioned in this warning is Google Video, not YouTube or Yahoo Video.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:18 AM | Permalink

New York State Sends Warning On Google Video Service

ResourceShelf notes a Red Herring article about the New York State Consumer Protection Board (CPB) warning parents about Google Video. The warning discussed that Google Video enables children to "easily access and view videos with sexual themes and off-color material" all for free. ResourceShelf also notes that the only video service mentioned in this warning is Google Video, not YouTube or Yahoo Video.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:18 AM | Permalink

May 25, 2006

Google Works With Brazil To Shut Down Orkut Communities

The Associated Press reports that Google has finally agreed to pull the plug on some communities within Orkut, Google's social networking software. Google has specifically agreed to shut down any community that violates Orkut's terms of service. This includes "any illegal or unauthorized purpose" such as;

+ Drug Pushers Using Orkut Arrested In Brazil + Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime + Google & Brazil Fight Over Orkut User Data Rights + Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

About time I guess.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:24 AM | Permalink

Google Works With Brazil To Shut Down Orkut Communities

The Associated Press reports that Google has finally agreed to pull the plug on some communities within Orkut, Google's social networking software. Google has specifically agreed to shut down any community that violates Orkut's terms of service. This includes "any illegal or unauthorized purpose" such as;

+ Drug Pushers Using Orkut Arrested In Brazil + Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime + Google & Brazil Fight Over Orkut User Data Rights + Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

About time I guess.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:24 AM | Permalink

Google Works With Brazil To Shut Down Orkut Communities

The Associated Press reports that Google has finally agreed to pull the plug on some communities within Orkut, Google's social networking software. Google has specifically agreed to shut down any community that violates Orkut's terms of service. This includes "any illegal or unauthorized purpose" such as;

+ Drug Pushers Using Orkut Arrested In Brazil + Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime + Google & Brazil Fight Over Orkut User Data Rights + Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

About time I guess.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:24 AM | Permalink

Google Works With Brazil To Shut Down Orkut Communities

The Associated Press reports that Google has finally agreed to pull the plug on some communities within Orkut, Google's social networking software. Google has specifically agreed to shut down any community that violates Orkut's terms of service. This includes "any illegal or unauthorized purpose" such as;

+ Drug Pushers Using Orkut Arrested In Brazil + Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime + Google & Brazil Fight Over Orkut User Data Rights + Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

About time I guess.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:24 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2006

Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

News.com reports and Bloomberg.com has more detail on Brazil's Attorney General seeking to charge Google Brazil for the distribution of "child pornography and racial materials" by Orkut users, Google's social networking software.

The Attorney General says that Google did not hand over the source of the materials posts, after being presented with a court order to do so. Google claims that the Google Brazilian unit has no responsibility for the content of Orkut, since Orkut content is hosted in the US, Google Inc. must be issued a court order. Google just does not have much luck in Brazil or with Orkut.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:47 AM | Permalink

Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

News.com reports and Bloomberg.com has more detail on Brazil's Attorney General seeking to charge Google Brazil for the distribution of "child pornography and racial materials" by Orkut users, Google's social networking software.

The Attorney General says that Google did not hand over the source of the materials posts, after being presented with a court order to do so. Google claims that the Google Brazilian unit has no responsibility for the content of Orkut, since Orkut content is hosted in the US, Google Inc. must be issued a court order. Google just does not have much luck in Brazil or with Orkut.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:47 AM | Permalink

Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

News.com reports and Bloomberg.com has more detail on Brazil's Attorney General seeking to charge Google Brazil for the distribution of "child pornography and racial materials" by Orkut users, Google's social networking software.

The Attorney General says that Google did not hand over the source of the materials posts, after being presented with a court order to do so. Google claims that the Google Brazilian unit has no responsibility for the content of Orkut, since Orkut content is hosted in the US, Google Inc. must be issued a court order. Google just does not have much luck in Brazil or with Orkut.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:47 AM | Permalink

Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material

News.com reports and Bloomberg.com has more detail on Brazil's Attorney General seeking to charge Google Brazil for the distribution of "child pornography and racial materials" by Orkut users, Google's social networking software.

The Attorney General says that Google did not hand over the source of the materials posts, after being presented with a court order to do so. Google claims that the Google Brazilian unit has no responsibility for the content of Orkut, since Orkut content is hosted in the US, Google Inc. must be issued a court order. Google just does not have much luck in Brazil or with Orkut.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:47 AM | Permalink

May 17, 2006

Belgian Company Suing Google Over Google Suggest Suggestions

Philipp Lenssen points to a press release that shows when you begin to type your search at Google Suggest on "ServersCheck" it brings up results for "ServersCheck Crack," ServersCheck Serial," and other suggested searches of illegal versions of the ServersCheck products. Is this just a ploy for ServersCheck to get some free PR? Google Suggest is used on the Google Toolbar and was added to the Firefox toolbar.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:46 AM | Permalink

Belgian Company Suing Google Over Google Suggest Suggestions

Philipp Lenssen points to a press release that shows when you begin to type your search at Google Suggest on "ServersCheck" it brings up results for "ServersCheck Crack," ServersCheck Serial," and other suggested searches of illegal versions of the ServersCheck products. Is this just a ploy for ServersCheck to get some free PR? Google Suggest is used on the Google Toolbar and was added to the Firefox toolbar.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:46 AM | Permalink

Belgian Company Suing Google Over Google Suggest Suggestions

Philipp Lenssen points to a press release that shows when you begin to type your search at Google Suggest on "ServersCheck" it brings up results for "ServersCheck Crack," ServersCheck Serial," and other suggested searches of illegal versions of the ServersCheck products. Is this just a ploy for ServersCheck to get some free PR? Google Suggest is used on the Google Toolbar and was added to the Firefox toolbar.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:46 AM | Permalink

Belgian Company Suing Google Over Google Suggest Suggestions

Philipp Lenssen points to a press release that shows when you begin to type your search at Google Suggest on "ServersCheck" it brings up results for "ServersCheck Crack," ServersCheck Serial," and other suggested searches of illegal versions of the ServersCheck products. Is this just a ploy for ServersCheck to get some free PR? Google Suggest is used on the Google Toolbar and was added to the Firefox toolbar.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:46 AM | Permalink

April 13, 2006

Traffic-Power Case Against SEO Book Dismissed

A bit of catch-up, Aaron Wall of SEO Book notes that the case against him filed by Traffic-Power.com was tossed out of court on jurisdiction issues. Traffic-Power has 30 days to appeal, but Aaron's hopeful this means the case is over. The case against Traffic Power Sucks has yet to be resolved, he also notes. For background on the Traffic-Power suits against both TrafficPowerSucks and SEO Book's Aaron Wall, see these past posts:

• Google Officially Confirms Traffic-Power Ban From Index
• SEO Book's Aaron Wall Sued By Traffic-Power Over Revealing "Trade Secrets"
• Traffic Power Suit Against SEO Book Moves To US Federal Court
• WSJ Dissects Traffic Power Complaints & Search Engine Bans
• SEO Book Files Legal Response To Traffic Power Suit