Suing Google Over Pagerank

Yardboy wrote in to tell us about a story from Reuters describing a lawsuit by parental advice company Kinderstart.com against Google for 'charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning.' Kinderssart claims Google is responsible for 'a "cataclysmic" 70 percent fall in its audience -- and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.' I guess the courts will now decide: Can google taketh what they giveth?

Comments

All the eggs in one basket?

[xiando]

If you rely only on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) focused mainly on one search engine then you are putting all your eggs in one basket. If you contact webmasters with similar sites and exchange hard links then both of you will get regular steady traffic to the benefit of both. Hard links between similar friendly sites has been the way to do it for ages and still will be in the future. You see, search engine traffic is there one day and gone tomorrow. Then you get nothing for a month and suddenly your server looks like it's about to die because you're among the first five entries for some interesting keyword. Search Engine Traffic comes and goes. Any not-totally-n00b webmaster knows this. And whining about it won't help you.

The whole issue is just stupid. If I link to some site from my website and then remove the link because I for any reason no longer like that site, and they sue.. I'd laught. This lawsuit is just a redicilous pr-stunt.

Re:fp

[xiando]

What does a private company owe someone who simply wants to be ranked high?

Apparently something. You see, apparently someone turned everything up-side-down while you and I were not looking. It now appears that if you go to a resturant and get bad food and bad service and write that in a review of that resturant then the resturant can sue you for giving them a bad "rank" - just like you now apparently can sue Google for ranking a garbage website low.

Worst thing?

[sparkz]

This is known as a "clicktrap" and (imho) is the most annoying thing in the world to happen upon.

I envy your simple life. If the worst thing in your life is a bad link on a website, you either have a perfect life, or no life. Does the war in Iraq not annoy you? Does "third-world" poverty not annoy you? Is this really the most annoying thing in the world?

What a simple life. I envy your clarity of thought.