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Google Sued over Page Ranking
OrangeHairMan writes "Google.com is being sued by SearchKing.com because Google "purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially." There's a page on SearchKing.com's site too." Does anyone besides me find this hilarious? My favorite part is that the name of the site is "Search King".
Case closed.
I am a Karma Library.
search envy..
Natural-Selection Be
Name says it all. It is owned by google..
They expect google to never change it? In return for what? Do they have ANY business relationship with google, other than the obviously parasitic one?!?
FOAD..
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
It's only funny if it gets thrown out of court, like it should. If they win or google settles, that would not be funny at all!
Ah... I always wondered what Homer did after the PlowKing fiasco....
How stupid do you have to be to think you have a chance suing google over improving their technology?
Oh, wait, this is the same company that sold placement on a site they didnt have any rights to..I think I just answered my question
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Since they already seem to be in the financial doldrums, it is a good time for them to change their name. I suggest: Suc King.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
i find it hilariously stupid as well :)
was this guy on crack when he called his lawyer?
I can't see this possibly going through, even the stupidest of judges would have to grasp the concept of Google's search ranking
Everyone knows that google backs Homer's Mr. Search.
."
"That name again is Mr. Search . .
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
SearchKing, Oklahoma's premiere parasitic link-farm
vs
SearchKing is one of the pioneers in developing portal and search engine software and services
Guess which report has which statement? :)
"Due to the high value associated with PR, Massa claims in his lawsuit that the purposeful reduction of SearchKing and its related web sites' rankings has damaged the company's reputation and diminished its value."
Yea, much better PR doing it this way.
Can google not do whatever the hell it wants with its own site ? If google wants to give sites with the word "Sluts" a +90% page rank... it's perfectly free to do so. The "Whores" have no right to complain.
I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
// Screw you search king!!
if(q[i]="Searchking") {
q[i].rank = q.bottom - 1
}
"In a much-too-common case of a big organization monopolizing the marketplace, an Oklahoma City e-news company is taking its battle with Internet- giant Google, Inc. to the courts." Yeah, fight the power. I wasn't aware google was a 'monopolizing giant'. Let's home the DOJ takes them down!
I am a filthy pirate.
As a direct result of this /. and other sites linking to SearchKing to run this story the page rank(tm) on goolge will fly up. (given that its based, in some way, on the number of sites that link to a page)
SearchKing will then be able to say, "ha we complained and google fixed it!"
Spell checker (c) creative spelling inc. (aka my dyslexic brain)
IIRC, these guys were previously featured in a Slashdot article for taking advantage of their relatively high standing in the pagerank algorithms by selling prominent links on theif front to the highest bidders for the express purpose of raising their rank in the search results?
I wonder if he can provide faster nudity.
--
pants ahoy
Okay, SearchKing (that is soooo cheesy, IMHO) is a search engine, correct? And Google is a Search Engine too, right? Does Toyota advertise for Honda? Is there something here I missed, or is this whole thing just plain stupid?
I mean, really, this guy/company is stupid. Of course, "no publicity is bad publicity", just look at Acclaim...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
So, is this a pay search engine, or are people paying him to rank their sites higher? If so, then everyone else with a web page should sue search king for "purposefully devaluing" their sites.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
Is it just me, or does "SearchKing" sound like Popeye attempting to say "searching"?
By this article being posted to slashdot, and others picking up on the story and posting more links to SearchKing, won't their rank go up automagicly?
Maybe they were only after publicity to begin with?
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
just wondering how much loot our frinds google have. it's becoming a more common occurance to see their name involved in stupid lawsuits such as this; clearly they either have to pay laywers or give in - giving in would ruin the integrity we've come to love and respect. surely this is hurting google?
SearchKing: We sell banner ads based on...
Judge: Case dismissed.
SearchKing: But, but, but...
Judge: You want to pay the defendant's costs? Great! Keep talking.
I was thinking along the same lines when LawMeme said "The King does have a point: when your "business" consists of shoplifting and the corner store installs a security camera, you're going to go out of business quickly enough that an injunction is your only hope."
-Major Kusanagi, Section 9
Go to http://www.google.com/linux and type in "windows". I'm really wondering whether the first hit is here as an eastern egg or not ;)
To be in the same grammar style as the original:
All your searches ARE belong to us!
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
click me!
mod me up
Maybe Google will save Searchking's life, and then they'll join forces; not even God can stop them combined!
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
1) Make sure Google is faced with the possibility that it might have to reveal the details of its page ranking algorithm in open court. Might make for a quick settlement.
2) Quick publicity for Search King! They consider themselves a publicity company, after all.
Makes perfect sense to me, especially if you can get an attorney willing to take the gamble. Given the current glut of attorneys, this wouldn't seem to be much of an obstacle.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
I'm suing this "Search King" for copyright infringment. I don't know what else I should sue him under, but he is blatently stealing MY idea for success.
I'm suing so-called "Best Buy" because they are devaluing my business "Buy King". Not only did this JERK steal my business name, but he stole my whole business plan.
funny... it seems that Search King is using Google.com's search result and now they sue them?
Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
:) Troll? Very.
And what Massa wants, Massa gets
My sig sucks.
Is that about how everything is working here?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
results for "php" on searchking Note that the first page of results has nuthin to do with php, or its development, hell it doesnt even return php.net (php's homepage). Meanwhile Google's results return very informational and useful sites, and clearly define which results are paid for. I suppose this is just a window into the obviuos.
Jon Bardin
No, it's pathetic that Google actually will have to waste money defending against such a frivolous suite. I did find this funny though...
on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites
So, it was an arbitrary ranking, that purposefully targeted him and his customers? I would have thought that arbitrary and purposeful targeting would be mutually exclusive.
I guess he never gave any thought to the possibility that his work sucks. It's always somebody else's fault, isn't it?
They should have used their own search engine to find out why--
1 Google
Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites
Country US
http://www.askthevoid.com
Clearly, this is a move by Google designed to hurt not only SearchKing, but the general consumer!
all your search are belong to us!
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
*in scratchy hunchback-type voice* Yes, Massa... I will do your evil bidding, Massa..
for using Google's good name for free advertising!
Is it just me, or does this wreak of a cheap PR campaign for SearchKing?
Has anyone even heard of searchking before this article?
Maybe searchking will be able to sell enough casino ads to pay Google for the rights to use thier name in a pointless law suit that is really just a cheap advertising campaign!
Two words for the wonderful people at Google : COUNTER SUIT!!!
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
So at what point (if any) could Google be considered part of the infrastructure of the Web... If they just outright stopped linking to a given site, is that still their right? Could they ever get widely enough used that it would no longer be their right to arbitrarily influence page rankings? (I see a whole fleet of lawsuits lining up unless the Judge slams this one hard...)
Just picking nits 'cause my coffee hasn't kicked in and because your post is perfect in intention but sloppy in its execution.
That is, "All your searches are belong to us!
Nitpicky cheers,
msq
after google throws this case out the door, they should lower the pagerank even more.
Check out the paragraph on integrity.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,570. Search took 0.17 seconds.
Google when tweaking pagerank managed to reduce the searchking.com pagerank, what does that tell you:
Don't abuse the system, don't get raped.
thanks, that makes sense. :-)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
From the motion filed:
First of all, I'm sure this is majorly redundant, what did they expect? Google is not a peace-loving group of coding hippy monkies. It is a for-profit company. I liken this to someone writing a book report, and then someone else trying to sell the book using the book report as advertisment without asking the report's author for permission.
...and one more thing:
That itself speaks volumes!
Slashdot - Come for the creative thought, stay for the lesbians!
Google is so large, so good, and so dominant that outside of specific topic search engines, there is really no choice. As such, altering the ranking of a site on Google will affect the monetary valuation of a business tied to that site. Google management can be punitive (SearchKing) and can even censor (Scientology. That much power in the hands of an uncontrolled agency just cries to our government to be managed. SearchKing's suit might just turn the government's ear.
"Early rising is a vice, Ira; it'll stunt your growth and shorten your days." - L. Long
Enter a motion for SearchKing to submit its legal contract between it and Google, where Google has a legal obligation to rank SearchKing at any particular ranking.
Can't exactly produce that now, can he?
Whoever this company is, they're trying to generate news just for the PR. Check link for contact:
http://www.searchking.com/news/skad.htm
Instead of message submit or email address, you get an ad for themselves selling ad space because he recognizes the exposure he'll get for the lawsuit.
Someone please call this company and tell him he is an idiot. I think he doesn't know.
Google's rank technique doesn't leave much for "tweaking"
From SearchKing press release
Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially. Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
Hate to tell you Bob, an action cannot be arbitrarily ("determined by chance") and purposefully ("intentional") committed.
Way to go you...CEO!
No, Vern. They just let him in.
Springfield's "Mister Plow" sued the City of Springfield for taking business away from him.
The "Plow King" declined to comment.
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
More like Search Queen!
... and they appear to be ragging it!!!
Re: PageRank by Judicial Decree? SearchKing Sues Google
by bobking on Sunday, October 20 @ 16:26:58 EDT ...
This letter is intended for James Grimmelman, who had the by-line for the SearchKing sues Google article here . It was difficult to find a contact address and if this is not the correct way of reaching him and you have a way, please send it to me or forward this to him.
Thank You Bob Massa CEO SearchKing, Inc. *******************
Just a question James.
Did it ever occur to you to maybe ask the person you're writing about for his views BEFORE insinuating I was a parasitic link farm?
If you take your web presence seriously, and accept that the words research.yale.edu means something, doesn't that put a responsibility on you to be open-minded and fair? To at least try to report objectively?
Have you even looked at the site? Read any of the SearchKing forums or tried to contact me for my opinion? If no, then shame on you.
Regardless of whether I'm just a loser who is whining about his placements or an honest businessman who has spent over 6 years building a reputable online presence with a real concern that could have far reaching effects on the further of search engines and maybe even e-commerce, wouldn't your own work be better if you at least tried to hear and present both sides?
Respectfully
Bob Massa CEO SearchKing, Inc.
I don't know what is funnier - his rant or the fact that his username to post is "bobking." All Hail King Bob!
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Call me crazy, but I seem to think that it's Google's perogative to rank their search results any way they seem fit. They find the data, store the data, organize the data, why are they not allowed to display the data anyway they see fit? After all, the search engine market will decide which engine reigns supreme, remember altavista?
-Runz
SearchKing is sueing slashdot.org for purposely linking to their site with the intent to crash the server. This is a common business tactic used by slashdot to disable it competition. How exactly slashdot competes with SearchKing, I have yet to figure out.
SearchKing had this to say about the suit: "Thank god for lawsuits, or we'd never make any money."
RobMalda had this to say: "There's no law against taking over the world." Rob then skipped away grinning and laughing an evil laugh.
Note For the Humor-Impaired: This is a PARODY. To my knowledge, none of the above actually happened. These statements do not necesarrily reflect anybody's views, PERIOD. If you have a problem with this post, perhaps you should remove yourself from the internet.
SearchKing began business as an Internet search engine and web hosting company in 1997, approximately a year before Google's inception.....SearchKing is one of the pioneers in developing portal and search engine software and services.
So, if by pioneers you mean "jumped on the bandwagon during the dot-com craze rather than actually being a 'portal pioneer' like Yahoo in 1994," you are correct.
But you still ain't got no case!
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
PageRank states its pupose. I got a kick out of this.
"Integrity
Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank). A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search. "
haha, no one can buy a higher page rank. Isn't this what they are doing in the long run? Sheesh, what a sore lus3r...
and Pee with Forrest Newman!!!
be be boop boop be be be boop boop!!!!
-1 (THRALL)
Well, Searchking's business model consists of making people pay them to spam google for them, by making non-paid documents coming up lower. What Searchking doesn't get is that I'm not interested in being spammed by their customers, I'm interested in good search results. It is comforting to see that Google penalizes sites that tries such tactics, because it means that I get better search results. Go Google!
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Blow Search mught want to sue Search King for stealing all of their clients
I own 2 websites that do not even show up in the first few pages of this guys search engine. If he wins I think I should sue him for "purposefully" devaluing MY website. Since he is a semi local company maybe I could even hire his own lawyer... Now that would be just too much karma....
I think that anybody with a legal background or an interest in law might like to take a look at the documents filed. They are rather brief.
Documents
This sounds to me like a plubicity stunt to try and get users.
http://phreakinb.com
..It would seem the "L" is not the only thing that is green.
_______
Death wish, n.:
The only wish that always comes true, whether or not one wishes it t
Due to the high value associated with PR, Massa claims in his lawsuit that the purposeful reduction of SearchKing and its related web sites' rankings has damaged the company's reputation and diminished its value.
If SearchKing had been the only site whose pagerank changed, I might say they had a case. Unfortunately, several sites had their rankings changed by the new algorithm. It doesn't appear to have been a systematic attack directed only at him.
The following quote made me burst out laughing:
Massa explained [...], "High PageRanks don't come easily. The webmaster had to do a lot of work to get enough people linking to him to give him that ranking. They deserve to be paid for that effort."
They found a way to cheat the system and cause google to give results that overvalue their pagerank, and it took effort to implement it for new pages. Because cheating the system isn't easy, they deserve to be paid? I just don't get it.
1. sue google for lack of exposure, thus giving your no name search portal tons of news exposure and free advertising
2. ???
3. Profit!
In this case I find the whole story absurd. This may sound extremely arrogant but when an Internet company has to rely as heavily as they claim on a search engine then I don't think much of said company to begin with. You don't attract customers by being mentioned in a search engine alone, you get customers (and keep them) by offering good products and service.
As to the "drop of the PR"; "From February of 2001 to last month, SearchKing's PageRank was seven, within 30 days of launching PR Ad Network's services, our PageRank dropped to four". So? When I take a look at the description of this google service (PR value is determined several ways, including calculating the number of web pages (links) pointing to a particular page and how relevant they are to the topic at hand.) then this is simply a logical happening of events.
IMO its comparable to measuring an average speed; when you take a quick stop you'll notice the speed drops quite heavily and then its not easy to get it back to the same amount it was. In this case something new was introduced which had some influence (3 points) on the rating. In time it will rise back to the old value (allthough I have some doubts now :)).
For now we'll see how good these people really are. Pardon me for laughing if their boxes don't survice a /. effect :-)
SearchKing is one of the pioneers in developing portal and search engine software and services.
Which might mean something if they didn't also say
SearchKing began business as an Internet search engine and web hosting company in 1997.
Sorry, if you ask me, all the pioneering work was done prior to 1997.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
This is why the tech bubble burst people! Bad business plans. Risking your entire business on the ranking your competitor gives your pages? What was this retard thinking?
1. Make search engine
2. Post ads for it on high google page ranked sites
3. ???
4. Profit!
-- iCEBaLM
Ive never even heard of Search King until now. I did a couple of sample searches, and got all commercial sites at the top of the Search King Results, and got usefull information at the top of Googles results. I did like a quote from the page about the suit.
"when your "business" consists of shoplifting and the corner store installs a security camera, you're going to go out of business quickly enough that an injunction is your only hope."
That probably wasnt the best analogy they could have used seeing as they are comparing themselves to shoplifters, and complaining about Googles "security camera", but I think its appropriate...
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
My son created a Final Fantasy page in 1996. It hasn't been updated since then. We have not had an account with the ISP since 1997.
His page is listed in the 7th position after doing a Google search.
Maybe it's a popular page after all these years.
Odd ain't it.
xbox modchip makers can sue Microsoft for changing the design of the xbox, which isn't compatible their existing products?
:-)
I hope that the company who wants to take google to court get f**ked royally. I really do.
Google should counter-sue for tarnishing it's good name and all the 'bad publicity' they've generated in the press
Learn to read. The lawsuit is not about Google taking over the search market. It's about alleged practice to drive them out of business in the advertising market.
SearchKing has forums. I like this post best. It is from the SearchKing himself, Bob King. It is a defense of his actions. It seems that he's taking heat for this on his own site.
Care to give him your take on it?
This stupid lawsuit pissed us off so much that we are now blocking pradnetwork.com and searchking.com from all of our DSL and dial-up customers in protest -- we hope others follow suit. Massa and his whiny group of losers he employs can all go fuck themselves.
hey, goohoo is not parasitic! how dare you!
It's PLOW KING!
Oh, wait. Wrong medium, no Homer...
DOH!
-"I ate what?"
Google indexes 2.5Billion web sites, and I swear all you get for the first 1500 results on any topic is corporate sites w/ a *lot* of advertising.
I spend most of my time doing computing research, and I'm happy to use a low key engine like Lookerup for research on development, computing, IT stuff etc.
When it comes down to generic searches that *aren't* for technology, you'll laugh but my own ISP has a better search algorithm than google.
I've always loved google, but recently they're just spidering too many of the wrong resources ; or they're not weighting the right resources properly. Go with a specific engine for what you're doing - and you'll get the information you want faster. I mean, "installing apache web server" - I don't need 8,000,000 results for that, 10 would be just fine cuz I'm only gonna read 2 or 3.
-WebMonkey
...is that the case goes to court, and the judge throws it out WITH PREDJUDICE, meaning the merits of the case are so unworthy that there's no right to appeal. Let's hope horseshit like this gets nipped in the bud pronto-like.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I figured that Homer had a new business plan after compuglobalhypermeganet was sabatoged by Gates and his goons.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
Lawyer tells Search King that Google is here to see them.
Google : Mr. Simpson?
Search King: You don't look so rich...
Google: Don't let the haircut fool you, I am exceedingly wealthy.
Search King: [quietly to the lawyer] Get a load of the bowl-job!
Google: Your Internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can't figure out what, if anything, Search King does, so rather than risk competing with you, I've decided simply to buy you out.
Search King and their Lawyer quietly discuss this proposal.
Search King: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Google: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
[Googles' lackeys trash the room.]
Search King: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Google: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane laughter]
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I think #3 would be "Sell Banner Ads".
Is this a subtle troll or just rubbish?
Google has viewers because it has integrity and quality. If it abuses its position, it first loses integrity and quality and then loses viewers. No government intervention needed.
This isn't comparable with monopoly cases, hell, this isn't even a market liquidity case (i.e. Ebay is dominant because it is dominant, it doesn't pay to auction elsewhere because everybody auctions at Ebay...). Anybody clever enough can set up a server farm and get viewers if they have a Google beating engine quality.
On the legal side, this might be an unfair competition case but its difficult for a competitor (A) to claim that a company's (B) actions within B's business are unfair as they stop A's manipulation of B's business... You have to have clean hands as well to succeed with unfair competition claims.
...where the ethically-bankrupt claim their fortunes by passing blame for their own failures.
Google has a big responsibilty on the net. If they start to downgrade web pages for strategic or political reasons, then we should begin to look for another search engine, as it's no longer doing its job.
They want ratings on google, let's give it to 'em...
If we could blog a bunch of links into google containing "Lawsuit Crazy Morons" and link to search king's site...
This would be something like the "talentless hack" trick (mentioned some time ago on slashdot). In fact, we could do this for a number of sites... who wants to blog Microsoft up as "absolute evil?"
Right there, you said it King. You have no way to control someone else's own business. If you don't like it, fcsk you.
Later he goes on saying, "In the event the PR of a page with an ad changed, we would simply adjust the pricing or adjust where the ad was being displayed at the advertisers request."
I suppose you will sell your services at a real low price, very shortly :)
Sorry to reply to my own comment, but I feel like I gave this guy way too much credit.
An even better analogy to the description he uses in his own press release is that of a car thief that specializes in stealing and stripping Hondas announcing that he's one of Honda's few competitors, and that he has the right to sue Honda if they improve their alarms and anti-theft devices.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
That SearchKing just forwards a search to Google, parses the output and makes it look like a different search engine?
I entered the name of the company I work for into Google and did the same for SearchKing. Lo and behold, the results were identical. (The only differences being a few links returned by Google were to PDFs -- SearchKing stripped them out.)
Try it yourself:
Google search for "slashdot"
SearchKing search for "slashdot"
There is a slight discrepancy with the first link returned, but other than that, they're the same.
Nice... sue the company that powers your rip-off business...
J
As this kind of lawsuit concerns the life of this company on the Matrix, this link may give some info on how this company ran up till now:
Wayback on SearchKing
SearchKing, on their site, say they are a competitor to Google.
This is untrue.
SearchKing place adverts on sites highly rated by Google.
So Google do all the work (and pay the costs) of maintaing a huge database and creating the pagerank values, and find they get no revenue from it (in extremis), since someone else is taking their advertising revenue.
If Google did not exist, SearchKing *could not place ads on highly rated sites*.
SearchKing is therefore not a competitor, since they could not function without the existance of Google. It does not offer a competing service, but a *dependent* service.
SearchKing is in fact a parasite, living off of and harming the host.
--
Callas
From the SearchKing (can anyone say that with a straight face?) press release regarding the suit (bold font added):
/.'d.. I think that's about my daily recommended dose of irony for the day...
Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network, filed a lawsuit today against Google on the grounds the organization arbitrarily and purposefully devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his business to suffer financially. Massa is asking that the court grant preliminary and permanent injunctions against Google.
from dictionary.com:
arbitrary - Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle
purposeful - Having a purpose; intentional
From what I can tell, it's pretty tough to do something arbitrarily and purposefully.
I wanted to go back and read more of the page.. but it seems that this web hosting site has been
One or two parties dominate any given election, along with one or several "minor parties".
But in addition there are usually a handful of "minor-party candidates" who have no real party: individuals with time on their hands and some particular axe to grind.
Democracy is darwinian. If enough people agree with you, by joining the party, your axe-grinding becomes public policy; if not, not.
So too with search engines. If people agree with you by using your service, then you become a household name; if not, not.
-kgj
What I really dig about this kind of post, is reading through all the little explanations of Company X's activity that Slashdot posters will come up with.
Try and picture this - it's as if one farmer sued his neighbour, who made Ford parts out of plastic, and then sprayed graffiti on the underground to advertise the competitor who changed from plastic to steel, that made his farm go out of business because the wool his sheep produced made the jumpers that the plastic press operators wore to keep warm in the winter. You see? No press operators==no money==no jumpers==no sheep.
Is this kind of stuff really simpler to understand than just saying what SearchKing does? Can't people post without having to dream up amazing parallel scenarios?
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
They could call it a "Whopper" of a search engine. Wonder if Burger King will come in and sue Search King if they did that?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Next, Searchking will be suing slashdot.org for purposely and arbitrarily lauching a devious attack on the website that prevented their customers from accessing it.
Stupid like a fox!
I met this Bob guy (Mr. Searchking) in Vegas a year or two ago (at an Internet marketing conference, yes) - he's a cool guy, funny, and actually had intelligent advice to give.
I think the point he is trying to make is that Google is inherently a commercial entity as they provide business referrals. They also value those referral sources relative to one another, and that value determines the number of referrals they are able to push.
Bob King decided to buy/sell pagerank as a commodity, since it has value, and is there. Very American no?
When Bob did this, Google decided to lower the value of his site. What Bob is arguing is that Google did this arbitrarily, not naturally, and that his business (which was in the business, I presume, of convincing people they can attain a high pagerank on google for you, you know Search Engine Optimization) is damaged by being assigned a low pagerank. Which obviously it is. I wouldn't hire and SEO firm with a PR of 4, and neither would you anyone with a clue. Bob knows this.
In a way Bob has a point, if not a case within that point.
Consider that Google has to make money somewhere, and the only way they seem to be able to do that is by selling advertisemet involving inflated PageRank scores or those extra links at the top of each search page (with the rest of the services Google offers being simple marketing).
In that case, both companies are in the same market, with roughly the same business strategy - their primary source of income is revenue for selling advertisement, and they attract customers to this advertising using various services, with Internet search being one of the main ones.
Could searchking want the king of search engine's code? go to court and get the code!
Is that they were upset about not getting enough traffic.
/.ed
Now searchking is
Ask and ye shall receive =)
"SearchKing began business as an Internet search engine and web hosting company in 1997"... Wow, I've never even heard of them until this Slashdot blurb. I heard of Slashdot, Google, and all the other "cool" website by word of mouth because they were really good sites. I wonder if SearchKing is just mad because they're not as popular as Google? Could be.... It's too bad they have to resort to the courts though.
-- Knuckle Blood : Official Lube of Team Rusty Nuts.
Thus Search King is suing Google for manipulation, because Google is protecting their own business against Search King's manipulation. Where can I place a bet on the outcome of this lawsuit? :-)
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
"Mr Search, that's my name, that name again is Mr Search!"
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I did a search on SearchKing to find out why it sucks, but none of the hits were relevant. I guess that's why SearchKing sucks!
But wait, there's more! I searched for the same thing in Google and found this site, which is part of SearchKing. It may not explain why SearchKing sucks, but I think it might answer the question, "What are these guys smoking?"
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
...if SearchKing is pulling this "RIAA" or "MPAA" act for a hidden reason. Think about it... even if their page rank were purposefully dropped, it'll probably be right back up there tomorrow with all of this publicity and links from pages talking about the lawsuit.
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
Try looking up "Internet Search" on this site.
Hmmm, no link to google on page 1
How about page 2, um, nope
Oh the irony - phorm
IT IS A PUBLICITY STUNT. Nothing else, "search king" has no real case. They are just making alot of noise to boost hits. hugh
Sadly, there are plenty of other companies like SearchKing out there practicing a wide variety of techniques to achieve higher search listings purely for marketing purposes. The whole attitude of the search engine optimisation industry is that the only thing that matters is how high their own sites (or those of their customers) rank.... quality search results are irrelevant.
It's sad to see that a technology which started out as such a revolutionary way for users to find information is being so corrupted by those who don't care about the primary reason people use search engines, which is to find the information most relevant to them.
Google is leading the way in providing the high quality results, in contrast to the majority of the other major search engines who willingly compromose the quality of their service for advertising purposes, and for that I respect google highly. I can only hope that they will continue to fight these sorts of activies by improving their technology to effectively prevent search engine spamming becoming a more serious problem, and they are certainly doing a great job of this so far.
The whole search engine optimization industry sickens me. I wish these people would put their efforts towards more useful endevours such as improving the quality of content on sites, or making them better organised/easier to navigate/more accessible. These are the real problems that need to be solved, and will be of actual benefit to end-users.
Not that I think PageKing has any ground to stand on, but I do think that it would be great if there was some sort of court certification that Google's ranking mechanism is in fact unbiased as it is claimed by their Marketing and PR. That is, that there isn't code like:
If domain is 'pageking' Then
PageRank = 0
End If
Truth in advertising is a good thing. Now, for those claiming government intervention is bad (or that it is Google's algorithem and they can do with it as they please) there are two facts: (a) Google claims that it is a unbiased algorithem, (b) People depend upon this claim when using the service. Thus, while Google is free to change their algoirhtem, they should be constrained to do so in accordance with what they have advertised. Just like when I order a product I expect it to operate as advertised.
So, I'm hopeful that the court case goes forward and that it can set a precident that on-line services can be challenged if someone thinks that it operates with a different spirit than as advertised. That said, I also hope the Judge awards Google appropriate attorney fees after Google wins.
not that I htink P
If you are basically admitting your product/service doesn't work, to the point where you are taking legal action with the failure of your service as the basis of the suit, then all your customers should be demanding a refund.
At least I think they should.
Wax on, wax off baby!
"When your site it gets no linkage
and your hit count shows some shrinkage
dig for 209.217.135.144
send a ping!
Mr. Google is a loser,
And I think he is a boozer,
So you better make that call to the Search King!"
Hey Barney, what about a Spanish version:
"Senor Google no es macho,
Es solamente un borracho..."
--Linda
I realize this is very off topic, but after reading the articles, and some of the Massas' ->'massa mesa' postings. ALL I can imagine is JarJar. Man now that is bad PR. ;-)
Bad mental image.
Why would anyone using Google be using it to look for a different search engine?
This one is beyond my comprehension...
Karma: \Kar"ma\, n. [Skr.] (Buddhism) One's acts considered as fixing one's lot in the future existence.
I can't believe this one. He's basically admitting that he's not being totally honest. Can't wait for the SEC to ask for his accounting records! Maybe those do not tell the whole story either...
If this guy is the CEO of SearchKing, he won't be for long. He's basically admitted to misleading the public, a fact which will probably severely damage his credibility in the eyes of the courts.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Apparently, you can find... highly handy things on SearchKing too: check out their weed search service.
we discovered a new way to think.
I've been yahooing/altavista-ing/metacrawling/googling (in that order, chronologically) since 1997, and lived in Oklahoma City since then, and I've never heard of these people before now.
I suspect they've got a lot of work ahead of them to prove devaluation. :)
Google uses Python as its base language. Check out the leading quote on the Python web site.
Here's what I posted in my web log when this story broke a couple days ago:
SearchKing runs an elaborate baiting scheme of fake Web pages that link to each other, to try to convince the Google robot to rank its clients' pages higher than you or I would think the pages deserve. Google updated its algorithm to better resist the scheme. SearchKing loses money because of that; SearchKing sues.
I think this is actually less clear-cut than it sounds. SearchKing are bad actors - they were trying to cheat, they don't have a right to do that, it's okay for Google to tweak its algorithms to avoid them, that much is clear. However: what everyone is going to say about this is that Google is a private company and they have a free-speech right to rank pages however the heck they want, and I'm not sure that's actually true. I think there could be situations (not this one, but) where it would be okay for a company to sue Google for ranking them too low.
The reason is that Google is in a monopoly position. Let me say that again: Google is in a monopoly position. It really is. If your Web site gets delisted by Google, or penalized by Google's page ranking algorithm, you don't have the option of saying, "Oh, well, people will find us in some other search engine." It doesn't work that way - everyone uses Google, and if you're not in Google, you're nowhere. Just like everyone uses Microsoft Windows, and if you can't run under Microsoft Windows, you can't run anywhere. Linux, sure, but if you can't run under Windows, you can't run in a large enough number of places that you have a big problem if you were counting on running under Windows. The Google monopoly is actually more solid than Microsoft's because it's not tied to specific independent companies (Intel, etc.) for support.
Google's monopoly means that it does not have complete freedom to rank things however the heck it wants to, the way a smaller search engine might. Google has responsibilities that come from its monopoly. Microsoft cannot legally design its operating system to deliberately screw up its competitors' applications. (Okay, they do that, but they do it illegally.) Google, similarly, should not be allowed to tweak its ranking algorithm in ways that are sneaky and bad. I don't think that penalizing SearchKing is sneaky and bad... but it's easy to imagine that Google could do things that would be sneaky and bad. We just have to trust them not to, and that gives me the willies, especially because Google could do all kinds of things that we'd never know about.
For instance, Google could decide to advocate a political party, and rank that party's pages higher than others, always. Maybe if you searched "Democrat" you would get the Republican anti-Democrat site before the actual Democrat site. (I name U.S. parties because it's more plausible that Google would care about them.) They have plausible deniability, because they could claim that the ranking comes from an objective ranking scheme based on how many links there are, and "Oh, well, I guess there were a whole lot of links to the Republican Web site". That would be sneaky and bad. Google has already shown a willingness to tamper with their search results for reasons that have nothing to do with page relevance, in the xenu.net affair. Granted they were between a rock and a hard place on that one, legally, but I'm not sure they made the right decision, and it's a step that puts them on a slippery slope.
Suppose Google quietly made a site disappear; or, better yet, they just make it appear a few notches lower on the list than it otherwise would. That's a very real harm to the site because people only look at the top few links in the search results; losing one position on the list translates into a loss of a large amount of mindshare. If it was a small site that would normally appear low on the list anyway, would we ever know there was manipulation going on? That's why Google's monopoly frightens me - PageRank is secret, we can tell that overall it seems to work fairly, but they could make a large number of individual exceptions to fair ranking and we, the users, would just chalk that up to "Oh, the algorithm isn't perfect". Google could manipulate its results a whole lot and we would have no way of knowing. We just have to trust Google to be honest. Just like we have to trust censorware companies not to put their political and social agendas into the blocking lists. You know how far I trust censorware companies.
I don't think that Google is abusing its monopoly yet - certainly not in the SearchKing case and probably not anywhere else either. But I do think Google has a monopoly, I do think that monopolies are very dangerous, and I think the Google monopoly needs to be watched. I don't think we should be fooled by their open-source heritage and their cute holiday graphics and so on. Google is a large U.S. corporation that's making a lot of money from their monopoly on an important part of the computing business, we have very little way of knowing whether they are acting honestly, and they have incentives to act dishonestly. This is a dangerous situation. Who will be the Linux to Google's Microsoft?
Oh, and hey, they decided they wanted everyone to come to them first for Internet news reporting too. When Conrad Black did that with Canadian news papers, a lot of us were kind of concerned; but when it's the Web, and it's Google, it's all good, and we all like it, because Google Is Cool. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I think it's great that the article mentions that "Search King" was founded "approximately a year before Google's inception", even though this information is irrelevant.
.I wanna be popular too!"
You can practically hear the guy whining, "I was here first, waahhh. .
It's all going according to
Unless you want to help them sue Google. And/Or help them line their pockets just before they go out of business... SearchKing.com has anticipated getting a lot of press from sueing Google.
Either they have a true(in their eyes) grievence with Google. Or they have planned for a lot of press to come from the lawsuit. From what they have listed on the page have linked, it would seem that they just wanted the press.
I used to be somebody... until I gave the account away...
A search for "search king" (w/o the quotes) does not show searchking in the first page. I know, I know, there is a space in between search and king in my search but I still think they should sue.
I sued /. for not automatically modding my posts higher. Then I realized they did (+2 bonus) and lost my shirt.
I tried doing a few searches there to see if they are truely an alternative to Google as their owner claims. The searches featured ads prominently and only the most obvious hits for real information. The other problem is that rather than ads being separated out from real information, it's intermingled with it. This makes it difficult for "joe user" to find valid info for their searches. More than likely all they will find are products and services that are vaguely related to their searches. In many cases this doesn't help anyone. The real answer would be to establish two different kinds of search engine categories. Those that operate like Google and Altavista and bring you reliable info for your search, and those that are geared towards goods and services. I think it would be great if I could go to a search engine and type in "Oil Change", +Nissan, +City and get a list of oil change shops in the city I am in along with customer ratings and maybe a Mapquest link. Or, I could do "Hard Drives", +Maxtor, vendor=OL (online only) and get a list of web dealers for hard drives along with customer rankings, etc... Maybe even a link to BBB reports. Now, if SearchKing did that, then maybe their PageRanks wouldn't be so low. I highly doubt that Google ranks them low to keep them from competing, it's just that they are currently a pretty crappy search engine.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I just searched for MMDC (my own site) on SearchKing and the results seemed to be lifted directly from Google:
:: Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas ... ...
:: Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas ... ...
Google's index of my site:
MMDC Tokyo
Aug 29, 2002 - 11:43 PM, MMDC Tokyo, Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams, Main Menu.
mmdc.net/ - 47k - Cached - Similar pages
SearchKing's:
MMDC Tokyo
Aug 29, 2002 - 11:43 PM, MMDC Tokyo, Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams, Main Menu.
What are the odds that they both crawled my site at exactly the same minute on the same day?
These clowns are pathetic.
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
If they win, I'm sueing these guys for purposefuly and constantly down-grading my comments!
"Lace -- the final Brazierre. Oh hurry up; I'm a busy man. Ugh, this high-speed modem is intolerably slow."
Comic Book Guy's download of his ultimate Star Trek Voyageur adventure with Captain Janeway is interrupted by a banner advertisement for Homer Simpson's new venture: The Internet King.
"Hey, what the? Huh, the Internet King. I wonder if he can provide faster nudity."
Then I see stuff like this and realize: There are some really stupid people in the world, and no matter what I do, they would sue me. And there's not a damned thing I could do about it, but take it into account and have a legal defense budget. And if I were to cut corners on that budget, I would be truly fucked.
Maybe it'll discourage me enough, and maybe it won't. But I damned-well know that it is enough to keep some people out.
Thanks for your contribution to the GNP, lawyers. I suppose people spending $n on lawyers and court fees, instead of $n on producing stuff, is just as good, eh? Increase n and you've got economic growth!
From Salon's Aug 2002 article Meet Mr. Anti-Google:
From this Sept 5 2002 story Engine Trouble in the Guardian:
If they get back up to that 79% number and hold it for any length of time, legally, that makes them a monopoly. No matter how much we may like Google today, it's a lot of power for one search engine to be able to have. It seems like a matter of time if they keep gaining share before they start abusing that power. Microsoft was innovating when they were at war against 1-2-3 and Wordperfect just as Google is today against Overture. With AskJeeves, Inktomi and Altavista looking like they'll go away soon, we will see Google to keep 'innovating ' making the little guys not show up in their search engine anymore?
As much as we may love them now, remember who they're trying to serve: their venture (vulture) capitalists.
Since they don't include a link to him in IE.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
...Don't want to get sued by these clowns...
-- My Weblog.
as the subject says
Wouldn't it be funny if SearchKing got all its business by stealing all the customers from Mr. Search...
Mr. Search, that's my name
That name again is Mr. Search.
Quoth the zombie, braaaaaaaains
The defense mechanism needed in a link-based search engine is to identify groups of sites which link extensively within the group, but have few links from outside the group. The problem is that this is likely to identify as a group any set of sites devoted to a single but obscure subject where most of the people involved know about each other. It's hard to do this on topology alone, although it might turn out to be possible.
The users are stupid if they enter bad search words. Like "searchking". So sue them! :-)
Or isn't it your browser's problem - it is not showing their page? Or just a computer because it can't find any good pages? Sue every[body|thing]!
One has to wonder if this Search Kink company is run by (or perhaps related to) Daniel Brandt
The similarities are eerily spooky..
If google singled these specific sights purposefully, then that is not fair. It might even be argued that google has special limitations on them if they are deemed in a monopoly position (they are certainly the largest, do they get over 90% of the search queries?).
I don't want sites marketed by searchking to be over-ranked because of the artificial pr boosting, but I don't want sites under rated because they chose SK to promote them instead of some other search spam company.
You may find that the most common use of 'arbitrary' is;
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
It's right here.
He clearly thinks that he is not doing anything wrong and claims to have tried to raise the issue of page rankings and his business model with Google...
From his own forums section.
Your search engine is very good at detecting things like link farms and hidden tricks. I'm certainly not asking for any special treatment. If I, or anyone in my network, tries to take advantage by lying, cheating or stealing, I would expect them to have to suffer the consequences the same as anyone else. I'm only asking that you look beyond the webmaster world posts and see that these niche sites need the respect and the income that a high PR deserves. They work hard and the reason they have those high PR's is that they don't spam. Please don't penalize them for trying to capitalize on the fact that Google rewarded their efforts.
He is certainly trying to imply by this post and others, that Google is unfairly targeting him because he has chosen to use their page ranking system to help set the prices he charges for ad space on the web sites that he hosts for his customers.
His most recent post tries to explain some of the reasons for his suit.
He claims to not be inflating rankings at all and just using the rankings to set his ad fees. If that is the case, he may have a claim but I guess that is for the lawyers to decide.
If he is manipulating rankings, he deserves to go down in flames. If Google is 'picking' on him cause he is trying to earn more from Google's rankings but he is not 'cooking' the numbers, he may have a case. Read the posts. The web site operators appear to benefit from the higher rankings by getting more for the hosted ads. Just compensation for good work building good sites. Hard to say this is clear-cut without seeing Google's response.
I have to use this cause I can't afford a real sig...
From a PR standpoint, suing Google is absolutely brilliant. The monies to hire a lawyer and file a few bogus suits far outweigh the amount of traffic and attention that SearchKing will generate as a result of this suit (Let's be honest -- how many hits did they get as a result from /.? From other news sites? From other blogs?). Even though a large majority of the attention garnered will be negative, it's still attention. In the PR world, negative attention is almost always better than no attention at all. As a result of all this, they will undoubtedly receive a fresh influx of clients.
On the other hand, SearchKing has just publicly admitted that they've violated Google's TOS ("You may not use the Google Search Services to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales."). Considering how much of their business is built on exploiting Google's PageRank feature, I predict a sudden decrease in the ability to deliver what has been sold. Sweet, sweet justice.
--
"I don't really love computers, I just say that to get them into bed with me." --Terry Pratchett
What about gun control, the education system, or the two party system?:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Why don't we all /. his server so he sues us too!?
Common sense is not so common.
I had a business plan to [do things] on or relating to [target]. [Target] stopped me from [things], so [target] is responsible for my business plan failing.
Now we have a generic formula for lawsuits, filling in 'things' and 'target' we can get all of these:
- increasing PageRank and Google
- complaining about and MacDonald's
- abusing and You
- drug running and Government
The parallels are great.//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Unlike Microsoft, Google doesn't lock you in with its search platform or force you to purchase Google Office so that you can communicate with the idiots who have already purchased Google Office and think that everyone's just as idiotic.
The moment Google turns eeeeeeeevil, we can all switch to, uhm, Altavista. Actually, Altavista is already eeeeeeeeevil, so we'd have to switch to some non-eeeeeeeeevil company.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
With a phrase like "If You Can't Find It Here
for little blue man, so I say koochi-koochi too.
(My point is: SearchKing merits to be shut down
and perish as all those spam-houses).
You mean there are people who use other search engines than Google? Who are these people and why has nobody told them about Google? :-)
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Well, since their business *depends* on Google and they earn money thanks to (and at the expense of?) Google, it seems that Google might have a case at suing SearchKing to give them a share of the money that Google could have earned by allowing paid increases of link priorities. Since they have not done so (thereby dramatically increasing their integrity and popularity), it seems very unfair that other companies should do it instead of them and even profit from it.
see a Text Widget
on its PageRank technology. And just because you're not a monopoly doesn't mean you can engage in unfair trade practices. As for waiting for Google to turn evil, if they are punishing their competitors by intentionally lowering their results, I'd call that evil.
What if slashdot refused to allow me to post on its site because I run SlashdotSucks? Don't you think that would be an unfair trade practice?
--Did google arbitrarily take actions to modify SK's page rank with malicious intent?
--If they did, that is against the law and I have a right to sue for protection.
No Bob, the question is - are you protected by the law if google arbitrarily takes action to modify SK's page rank regardless of intent?
Let's at least get the question right first.
Searchking.de is not the banned site. The banned site is Searchking.com.
The guys at SK think Google has manualy degraded them, and hundreds of innocent parners sites, as a penalty for seling tex based ads, as a way to improve its Google PageRank(TM).
It is not alegally an algorithm problem. Is one big company banning and smashing a number of smaller companys who dare to sell what Google may only Google has the right to do: put you on top of the result search, paying for Google Adwords ads.
I personally belive SK has done a lot of stupid things, one of them suing Google. But I also think we should be more aware of who the Google Guys realy are: agressive ad dealers, who may think are the only guys arround entitle to put a price to who important our sites are.
search search king for search engines and google is #3, behind such "popular" engines as
g ?at=se arch&keyword=search+engines
calclicks and magiccity...yeah I've heard of them before. But most interesting is that Search King lists themselves as #4...
so whatever..
here's the link
http://www.searchking.com/servlet/SearchKin
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I know we all would like the internet to be an open network available to all without censorship. But do we want to achieve that through government regulation? The internet is simply a network of public and private hosts and who is to say that any business is not allowed to conduct their business in a manner of their choosing on that network?
To me that should be the consumer not the government. If you are unhappy with the service that Google provides, don't use Google. And if they choose to black list your site, as a private institution that is their right. No court is going to go an Ad agency and tell them that they have to publish an advertisement. Why should a search engine be any different.
My $0.02
Anyone else reminded of that time when Homer became the Plow King?
Moreover, it looks like Search King stole their "go" button from about.com a while ago. No very professional if you ask me.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Actually, the scariest thing for me was the daily poll on the Searchking site: "Should convicted terrorist be automatically given the death penalty?". 37% of people who responded said yes!
People are so damn clueless...
So, if General Motors started selling cars with windows that suction cups couldn't stick to, could the companies that make those stupid signs/stuffed cats/radar detecter mounts sue GM?
It's a fine point, but it's more than just semantics.
Antitrust law deals with proving that a given entity used their monopoly to crush competitors, not to prove that the monopoly exists in the first place. That's almost always a fait acompli.
Did a search at SearchKing for 'google owns you'
... er, interesting
The first result is
here are the results
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Searchking.de is not the banned site. The banned site is Searchking.com [www.searchking].
It is not alegally an algorithm problem. It's about one big company banning and smashing a number of smaller companys who dare to sell what Google may only Google has the right to do: put you on top of the result search, paying for Google Adwords ads.
The guys at SK think Google has manualy degraded them, and hundreds of innocent parners sites, as a penalty for seling tex based ads, as a way to improve its Google PageRank(TM).
I personally belive SK may has done a lot of stupid things, one of them suing Google.
But I also think we should be more aware of who the Google Guys realy are: agressive advertising dealers, who may think are the only guys arround entitle to put a price to who important our sites are, with the power to ban your site.
those fools are all retards
somone hack em for all of us
5i9|\|3d, 5|\|ip3ri|\|di59ui53
I'd give it the same chance of succeeding. BG-"Buy him out boys!"
If I get asked to fix one more windows install, I'm gonna loose it
I like to think that this suit is my fault. Let me explain. I have complained to Google more than once about these and other similar leeches and their link-farm ripoff crapola. So I flatter myself to think that Google changed their ranking in response to my complaints. I just hope they don't expect me to contribute too much toward their legal costs . . . .
Google has most definitely depricated Search King in their results page. Enter the name into the search box and see what kind of crap comes up. Search King is definitely more deservant of a higher ranking than the other results.
"If I am have legal right to use..."
Bob King fail english? That's unpossible.
SearchKing will next go after slashdot for providing a link to their site, which in turn brought enormous traffic that caused a DoS and loss of website capabilities which hurt their company financially.
I find it hillarious that SearchKing.com only has a google page rank of 4/10, where as my $5 shareware application homepage (link) has a page rank of 5/10 !
;-)
*singing "God Bless America"*
Search for google on SearchKing and look at the pagerank bar on the google toolbar.
"If someone gives you an evaluation of your site without your requesting it or giving permission for it, and then the company distributes that evaluation to the public for free, does that evaluation belong to you or to the company giving it? Do you have the right to consider the evaluation a value to you or only to the person giving it?"
So, if I went to see, say, Resident Evil (which I did), and then I post in a forum "God, that movie sucked so bad I walked out of it," (Which it did and which I did), by this logic, that post now becomes property of Sony?
Does this mean Sony can sue me now? Wow, they could get both my dollars. I better not post that anywhere.
best web host ever
At the most basic level, this has to do with freedom of speech. Through their search results, and the ranking thereof, Google is simply publishing an opinion. It may be an opinion generated by computer algorithms in the form of search results, but it is still an opinion. SearchKing has about as much right to sue Google over this than some movie producer has to sue a reviewer for a bad movie review.
samrolken
The Internet King episode aired in February 1998.
Comic Book Guy: Oh, Captain Janeway. Lace: The Final Brassiere. Oh hurry up, I'm a busy man. Ugh, this high-speed modem is intolerably slow. [The download is interrupted by a banner ad for the "Internet King", with a little picture of Homer wearing a crown.] Hey, what the? Huh, the Internet King. I wonder if he can provide faster nudity.
[Scene changes to Homer's office]
Homer: Welcome to the internet my friend, how can I help you?
Comic Book Guy: I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a 1.5 megabit fiber-optic T-1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring Ethernet LAN configuration?
Homer: [long pause] Can I have some money now?
So you see, Homer ran a very typical Internet company. The only thing notable about it was the very untypical way it ended (for a dot-com, that is), with Bill Gates showing up in person to trash Homer's office. But you have to give the Simpson's writers credit. This was written in 1998 and back then nobody knew that an Internet company needs to turn a profit to survive.
People are morons. sigh.
On Searchking.com, PHP.net is now ranked #1 on a search for 'php'. And #2. Yes, it's in there twice. Their results are either too fluid to be useful, or they've been changed due to criticism. Also, it doesn't link to the page directly, but opens a framed page, with a banner at the bottom.
My advice to anyone of any technical skills working there: Quit, and find a better employer.
(You can use Google to find good job agencies)
Search for SearchKing on SearchKing, SearchKing.com not found in the top 10 results...
Can you sue yourself for devaluating your own company's ranking on your own ranking site?
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
if(q[i]="Searchking") { ...1 warning(s).....Possible unwanted assignment.
Man, I hate C conventions and their leaky assignments and semicolon shit. Can't we get rid of such suckage already? C syntax conventions really really suck. Jeez!
I have had the misfortune of first hand experience with Mr. Massa's joke of an idea of entrepreneurship. Ha! I can say, especially now more than ever, that Mr. Search King was, and forever will be, the butt of every bad business model joke that I can think of.
Oh, it couldn't be that his business model is like selling Kia's to the Amish. Oh no! It's everybody else's fault. Riiiight. It couldn't be the desire to run the business by cymbol-clapping, wind-up monkeys? Oh no! It's Google's fault for bad link placement. If I hadn't laughed for a solid 15 minutes at the absurdity of this ass clown, I would have puked in my little plastic trash can.
I bet that these suing shenanigans will only boost his standing with his customers, now. Pshaw! Hell, I'd rahter be slathered in road kill, cattle prodded into a vulture cage, all the while, forced to watch Kelly Osborne's bowel movements Clockwork Orange-style then even fathom putting my business anywhere near Mr. Massa's. But that's just me. I could be wrong.
Who uses a search engine to find other search engines?
In "The Anatomy of a Large Scale Hyptertextual Web Search Engine", the creators of google explain in detail how the pageRank system works. This is not a secret at all, just search for this paper on Google.
Until Lotus won't run.
Oh, but this is google so it's OK.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
SearchKing, Oklahoma's premiere parasitic link-farm, is suing Slashdot for slashdoting its servers to decrease SearchKing's speed, crash their servers and inflate their hosting bills. For future reference, the press release itself took 2 minutes to download. And yes, lower numbers are better. Slashdot representative cmdrtaco commented the suit was "-1, flamebait".
We don't live in Libertarianville, we live in the U.S. Here in the U.S. we don't allow companies to engage in unfair business practices, regardless of whether or not they're a monopoly. Now move back to Libertarianville. Oh, that's right, there is none, cause no one agrees with your stupid points of view.
To the matress king perhaps? Hmmmm...
Under Motions, section 2.
"...Once Google became aware of the fact that Search King was profiting from Google's page ranking system, it purposefully devalued Search King..."
IANAL, but wouldn't Massa have to pay Google royalties for profitting off an invention of Google's?? By admitting this in his motion for an injunction, he's basically tied the noose around his neck. All Google has to do is slap the horse's ass!
Don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow. You'll most likely find a better way to do it!
Anyone remember the "Internet King?" of HyperGlobalMegaNet? That small startup that Bill Gates "bought out?" "Hmmm. The Search King. Perhaps he can provide me with the faster lawsuits I require."
-Miles
Fuzzy
Bob King isn't exactly a person with a clean past. Matter of fact, he was once an old fashioned spammer in the cleanest sense of the word. Matter of fact, he even admitted to spamming once.r rights. htm :-)
http://www.larrysworld.com/articles/spamme
So why did he quit.. conscience?? Nope. Turns out that too many angry scr1pt k1dd13z were breaking into his websites and someone even sent him a spider which was quite different from the ones he was normally used to.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all web pages are created free and equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent inalienable rights; among which are equal indexing, liberty, and the pursuit of profit."
More seriously, I can't see how they have any case against google. No page has the "right" to show up on google search AT ALL. And Google has every right to set that ranking to whatever they feel best reflect the actual relevance of that site, even if that means doing some manual moderation because a company is abusing the automatic system.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Google will not inflate a PageRank score for money. All Google's ads are separate from the main results, and clearly marked.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
." Does anyone besides me find this hilarious? My favorite part is that the name of the site is "Search King".
Does anyone else here besides me not find it surprising that SearchKing can't return a *single* relevant search result on *anything* I tried to look up?
All it spits out is MMF sites and the remainder of the dregs of the Web.
With a search engine like that, I can see why they want to sue Google -- to stay afloat.
Funny to note the "evolution" of SearchKing, as done on web.archive.org -
/ http://w ww.searchking.com/
t tp://s earchking.com/
5 /www.sear chking.com/promise.htm
t tp://w ww.searchking.com/
t tp://w ww.searchking.com/
November 11, 1998 (first entry)
http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183024
Next to some listings you may notice this icon: . This is to show our searchers that the site has been reviewed by our staff and has been awarded the King of the Web award. This signifies that Searchking feels that the webmaster cared enough about their site to try to provide a quality site. It is in no way an endorsement of any individual, product or service.
The SearchKing supports freedom on the Internet by offering a search engine that relies on its users to determine the relevancy and quality of the sites listed in our index. You provide and receive the benefits of this system each time you perform a search!
==========
April 23, 1999
http://web.archive.org/web/19990423183633/h
Welcome to the "next generation search engine". Searchking supports freedom on the Internet by offering a search engine that relies on its users to determine the relevancy and quality of the sites listed in our index. You provide and receive the benefits of this system each time you perform a search or use the power of your vote!
Searchking believes in honesty and fairness and we believe that by giving people the opportunity to act honestly and fairly, it only helps to improve the overall quality of the internet for us all. We welcome the support of other like-minded netizens who believe as we do. Our goal is nothing short of making our little corner of the internet world a better place, but we can not do it alone. We need you! If you have questions, comments or suggestions on Searchking, other search engines, internet marketing or just computing in general, please feel free to join us in our forums and chat rooms. You will find a lot of good people there willing to help and some that need your help. You are important to us as we hope to be to you. "SUPPORT FREEDOM ON THE NET"
==========
===March 2, 2000===
http://web.archive.org/web/2000030415194
"We promise to do our very best to provide you with only the most relevant keyword searches possible. We promise to rely solely on the input of you, the searching internet community to determine what is relevant and what is not. We promise to never compromise the results of a search by using any means other than the "votes" we get from you, the searcher. We promise to do our very best to make Searchking the most powerful internet search tool available and to always put you, the voters, first! We promise your vote does count with Searchking.
Our promise to webmasters and website promoters
We promise to do more to keep you informed of the inner workings of Searchking than any other search engine in the history of the internet. We promise to always try our best to work with you instead of against you in keeping our promise to our searchers to always provide the most relevant keyword search results. We promise never to forget that we depend on you for the bulk of quality content. We promise to always try our best to meet your needs and answer your questions in a timely fashion. We promise to always offer our members an open forum to inform and educate on how to best take advantage of Searchking's unique features. We promise to always provide instant indexing with submission results and instant editing to help in your online marketing efforts. We promise to always focus on providing you with the most open, honest and informative data possible. We promise to always strive to provide alternative advertising solutions to fit any size budget. We also promise that if you care about your site, we will be there to support you any way we possibly can."
==========
January 18, 2001
http://web.archive.org/web/20010118225700/h
The Portal Directory is a collection of independently owned and operated topic specific portals provided by SearchKing's Portal Program..
==========
Jan 24, 2002
http://web.archive.org/web/20020124050024/h
SearchKing offers Instant Indexing into our search engine database for immediate availability to the searcher.
If you have or know of a website, information, articles, today's breaking news, etc.,
when submitted, they will be indexed immediately at SearchKing!
Pay Per Day Advertising -unlimited clicks - for as little as $3.00 per month!
SearchKing's gateway to the Internet Web Directory. Including a host of services from free e-mail to free classifieds, and more! We are the Internet's largest Portal host.
Dynamic response content delivery system targeted directly to your visitor's interest.
Try it free!
Generate income every month with SearchKing's 3-tiered affiliate program! We offer a wide variety of services.
==========
CONCLUSION:
Seems to me that SearchKing may have been around since before Google, but that they morphed from "providing quality searches based on relevance" (in direct compeition with Google) to "pay us money to up your ranking on other engines."
What a bunch of hooey. So much for the so-called integrity of Searchking.
--AnonCow
...that's the name, that name again is Search King!
"leave the jacket ON!"
Registrant:
SearchKing, Inc.
13601 Quiet Cove
McLoud, OK 74851
US
405-386-4805
Fax:405-386-4806
Domain Name: SEARCHKING.COM
Administrative Contact:
Massa, Bob bobking@searchking.com
13601 Quiet Cove
McLoud, OK 74851
US
405-386-4805
Fax:405-386-4806
Technical Contact:
Massa, Bob kathi@craftmax.com
13601 Quiet Cove
McLoud, OK 74851
US
405-386-4805
Record last updated 08-08-2002 03:17:42 PM
Record expires on 03-04-2003
Record created on 03-05-1998
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.SEARCHKING.COM 209.217.135.144
NS2.SEARCHKINGPORTAL.COM 209.217.133.208
There is nothing more annoying than a site that just spits your search back at you on a page with ads. Google does not have ads, thusly making it more respectable then for example search king... which does. Frankly as the customer, I appreciate google augmenting my personal algorythm for ignoring hits such as the ones produced by search king. Yes, I avoid looking at usless crap...
This I did not know.
0 &h l=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn
...
http://news.google.com/news?q=searchking&num=10
Google Sued over Page Ranking
Slashdot-4 hours ago
OrangeHairMan writes Google.com is being sued by SearchKing.com because Google purposefully
devalued his companies' and his customers' web sites, causing his
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
A better one would be you suing slashdot because you were stopped by the lameness filter.
monopoly
1. Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service: "Monopoly frequently... arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals" (Milton Friedman)
Google is most definitely NOT a monopoly. The reason they control the market is, quite simply, they have the best product. If a new search engine with better matches than google's came along, there's no reason why it wouldn't overtake google. And nothing stops any search engine from updating its algorithms to do so.
Quite simply:
Barriers to entry (before google) == Barriers to entry (after google)
If Google were to start manipulating their rankings in such a way as to not give customers the best results, then people would stop using it.
This isn't about the "PageRank algorithm". It's about Google manually assigning a page rank of zero ("the dreaded PR zero" as SK calls it) to punish SK for attempting to abuse the system. SK also claims that Google enforces an idea of "bad neighborhoods" by assigning PR 0 to anyone who links to a PR 0 page.
In other words, Google appears to be using similar tactics to the spam blacklist SPEWS. Both entities:
I use both SPEWS and Google. I like the results. But I realize that concentrated power tends to be abused. And inability to see both sides of the story makes abuse easier.
How lame is your buisness if you depend on google for hits. Google can choose the way they want to rank pages, hell they could just delete searchking.com all together. Does anyone else think this is completely stupid. He's suing Google (a search engine) because his searchking.com (also a search engine) isn't ranked higher. Beside I though Google's ranking system was based on how many sites link to you and what those sites rank is(which is dependant on how many people link to them etc, don't you just love recursion). Its obvious that not alot of people link to him (well not people with a high rank anyway).
i think someone made a cruel joke and tried to manage to have his poor site run over by some traffic... slashdotted. i also had searchking.DE as first result from the google string. I thought the pagerank is done by users preferences so there is no point in sueing google for that..
just my 0.5
for his movie reviews.
"The recent thumbs down from Mr. Ebert for 'Death to Smoochy' has caused irrepairable harm. We will be pursuing damages in court."
If I am have legal right to use an IP number for my own legal purposes, does a third party have a right to track that IP number and use the information gathered without my permission?
Yet the registration page for their forums, explicitly state that they track the IP of those who register.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
. . . how many of y'all have already mailed this bob dude to request that he link to your low PR site on his high PR site?
Just me?
xScruffx and whatnot
On SearchKings forums (sadly I can't provide a direct link otherwise you'll get a 403 error)In the Bobking Speaks forum under the Frivolous it ain't ! Topic Bobking offers following drivil questioning the legality of search engines such as Google:
On the Does an unspoken contract exist between search services and webmasters that allow a search engine to legally build it's business using the content of webmasters without express permission? If yes, then what are the terms and if the answer is yes, has not the search services been acting illegally all along?
Now I can't speak for anyone else, but I want people to find my site....
For some reason, the name "SearchKing" sounds like that "PlowKing" or whatever business that Homer started in The Simpsons. I have no idea how this has to do with the rest of the discussion, but I figured I'd share it anyways. Eat it!
The pets guy, SearchKing and Scientology join up to destroy the evil Google.
The boyscouts are eeeeeeeevil by definition and, therefore, are a bad analogy.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
This is the guy who is sueing google. Need you ask any more questions?
When I search for "PhD Engineer needs job", my resume does not come up first. I am entitled to ten million dollars to make up for lost wages, pain and suffering, medical bills, etc.
Antitrust law is there to deal with industries with barriers to entry that prevent people from entering into competition with a monopoly. In such cases, there's a gouge point Y which is the highest amount you can gouge people before they simply decide it's easier to live without the product altogether, and without competition there will be no reason to ever lower that price.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
I'm sure that if any other company tries to manipulate the results returned by the google algorithm such that it no longer returns what would otherwise have been expected by a normal user (i.e. a on-topic result instead of an unrelated advert), then good will mod that companies fake results down too.
Having 79% of the market may legally make Google a monopoly (IANAL, so I dunno if it does), but it doesn't make them an ILLEGAL monopoly.
A comparison of any sort between the business practices of Google and those of, say Microsoft would be tenuous at best.
I would have said that Google should be very careful about searches involving other "search" sites. Excluding all other search engines would clearly be abuse of monopoly power. Even without a contract.
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
...would it be illegal? I'm not aware of any laws that say "If you write a search engine your algorithm design must be done in such a way that you rank your competitors equally highly."
Google's always pimped the integrity of their searches pretty highly. I don't buy into these guys.
May we never see th
.....that name again is Mr. Plow.
Now wash your hands.
The dictionary.com page you've linked to actually gives four different meanings of "arbitrary," of which you've cited only the first. The second - "based on or subject to individual judgment or preference" - is presumably the sense originally intended.
[5F11] Das Bus
CBG sits at his computer
CBG: Oh, Captain Janeway. Lace: The Final Brassiere.
Oh hurry up, I'm a busy man. Ugh, this high-speed
modem is intolerably slow. (The download is interrupted
by a banner advertisement) Hey, what the? Huh, the
Internet King. I wonder if he can provide faster nudity.
(scene changes to Homer's office)
Homer: Welcome to the internet my friend, how can I help you?
CBG: I'm interested in upgrading my twenty eight point eight
kilobaud internet connection to a one point five megabit
fibre-optic T-1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP
router that's compatable with my token ring ethernet LAN
configuration?
Homer: (after long pause) Can I have some money now?
Hmm, calclicks is one of Mike Rotter's sites (a SearchKing employee) and magic-city is Bob Massa's site. Looks suspiciously like they are manipulating their results! :-p
As a Java programmer, I wanted to see where Search King ranked the ultimatate java site - java.sun.com; I mean any site for java must have this near or at the top. Entered "java" , and gave up looking trhough the listings at #60 or so. Google ranks, and correctly IHO, java.sun.com as #1 for the search "java".
Rats, I've been caught:-) True, but unless a real dictator is in charge, it's hard for a large corporation to act based on an "individual['s] judgement or preference."
If there is any malicious code at all:
$8.95/mo web hosting
for some reason when I type "go to hell" in google it doesn't bring up microsoft right away like it used to.
The interviewer (Jono Craig) asks Robert Massa, "Don't you view the monetarization of PageRank or your service as a threat to Google's successful business model?"
Massa's reply is, "Absolutely not. Of course that's what you'd expect me to say. The thing is, Google has invested a lot of time, money and technology into developing PageRank as a way to determine the quality of a Web page. They have a very sophisticated system of filters designed to do nothing more than find the good and catch the bad. Whether a link is free or paid for does not alter the content of the page the link goes to."
Later, Massa talks more about Google's possible response. " What I do know is if Google would strike a small Internet businessman like myself down for capitalizing on the credit given to me by Google themselves, then we all have much more to fear than some guy in Oklahoma selling a few ads. That would be an indication that Google fully intends to overthrow Bill Gates and rule the world."
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
Since google uses python, maybe it's:
if q[i].upper() == "Searchking".upper():
q[i].rank = q.bottom - 1
Won't Search King now be getting a beautifully high PageRank with lots of the major Internet-related news sites providing a nice little link to them? After this all washes over, won't this leave them in a much better position whether or not they win a lawsuit if it's even heard? Just a thought...
I will be there if you would like to speak on this issue. Check this out, it is the discussion from the local 2600 group. http://www.okc2600.org/article.php?sid=52&mode=&or der=0&thold=0