Slashdot Mirror
Online Store to Sue Blogger Over Google Ranking?
An anonymous reader writes "An online business owner is threatening to sue blog owner Dean Hunt (DeanHunt.com) because he is upset that the blog owner is doing better than his business in the Google search rankings. After an initial threat, Dean received a follow-up threatening to take legal action against him. So far Dean has elected not to name and shame this business owner."
An undisclosed somebody is threatening to sue a poor little blogger over something. Come on. This is not news. Where are the facts?
Put a little link at the top of his site saying "If you're looking for Texas lawyer .... click here (link)".
What's next? Students sued because they're more popular than the unpopular students? "Sally only won home coming queen because she's a cheerleader and promiscuous! It's UNFAIR!"
TV ad - Was your child devastated when she wasn't voted home coming queen? The law offices of Dewey Cheatum can help. We also provide Google ranking services.
The part I find bizarre is this:
Exactly how does the online business owner figure that the blog owner, Dean Hunt, bears any responsibility for how Google ranks his blog with respect to the online store? Only Google is responsible for how it ranks pages. I suppose the business owner can sue Google, but somehow I doubt he'd get very far, considering that Google doesn't owe the shop owner anything in terms of pageranking unless he entered into some sort of contract with Google, but that's all between him and Google, right?
My blog
To send letters like that. I have a feeling Mr. Dean Hunt is fabricating this story, as his business is mainly google bombing and search engine optimization.
What I find even more amusing...that so many people thing the internet was constructed primarily for commerce...when in fact, that is only a fairly recent by-product.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This newly-created account is Dean Hunt!! Read his posts. They're subtle attempts to get people to link to the story, as well as convince them it's not a hoax. Another Slashdotter figured this out, and I completely agree.
You, sir, are a scum-bag loser.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
great.... "nonsensical" content - no wonder Google is becoming so polluted with crap. I do hope the search engines adapt to this crud.
Oh my, if you hover over the people's names who have submitted responses, seems like each person's web site that the name links to is a business. I tried to submit a response, but it was rejected! He's a sneaky devil. That is how those sites are getting higher rankings, his blog links to their sites through the fake comments.
mr pibb + red vines = crazy delicious
No it isn't. Robots.txt does not include "article.pl" which is the article front page that shows all the comments.
As long as your post is modded up and thus visible via article.pl, all your links get counted!
In particular, all +5 Comments' links are registered by google.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
I have often wished that stores would not get such a high google rank. Many a time I have used google to try and find information about a product only to find the first few pages of response to be filled with stores selling the product and (even worse) price comparison sites.