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."
Who ever is doing this, I'll bet there's some stupid law they can leverage that says that Top Level Domains (TLDs) should only be used for what they stand for. Afterall, the
When I search for Dean Hunt, the blog beats any references to that lawyer's firm by a long shot but the links referring to the lawyer follow the blog immediately after it's #1 slot.
Anyone else find it hilarious that all these news articles are going to Google bomb the blog into a no-way-beatable #1 position for at least a few months? And what's this guy supposed to do? Check Google daily to ensure that he hasn't offended this ranking implication that the online store claims should be in place superseding Google's pagerank?
My work here is dung.
An undisclosed somebody is threatening to sue a poor little blogger over something. Come on. This is not news. Where are the facts?
The lawsuit isn't needed anymore. By posting the story to /. as an anonymous coward, the store owner just blasted the bloggers website off the net. Now google'ers will bypass the downed blog website, and go on to the store.
Brilliant!
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.
A quite I heard:
Fighting on the internet is like the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.
While not necessarily the most tactful of quotes, it does ring true.
I am totally serious. My blog was SUED BY MICRO$OFT because I made some software that was so much more awesome then theirs. I even have the letters they sent me to prove it!!11!!! Now, if the Slashdot editors will kindly accept my claim without any sort of validation and post me on a Slashdot front page...
Seriously. Show an ounce of journalistic integrity and don't give a podium to utterly baseless claims. He doesn't even say what company is suing him so we can't even bother to ask that company if this is real. Any idiot could have made this up for the singular purpose of driving up hits. I am not saying that the guy is liar (he very well could be telling the truth), just he shouldn't get a free stage to advertise until there is at least the semblance of a claim that can be fact checked.
Dear [edited]
Since your business [edited].com is doing rather well and top ranking is important to your business. Please transfer $[edited] in U.S. dollars to this [edited] account. When that happens I will gladly remove any and all references to [edited].com.
Thanks and bite me
I saw a link to this on his website: http://www.deanhunt.com/services/index.html
It raises some suspicion as this guy's business seems to be googlebombing. Perhaps he fabricated this story in order to get his website up in PageRank by people linking to him.
Yes great. He posts a truly funny e-mail exchange on his site. And now he even gets slashdot exposure.
He even wrote: I will make a viral campaign!
http://deanhunt.com/category/seo/
This is it and you have fallen for it. Stupidos.
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.
See Misconfigured Webserver, Threats to Call FBI.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
There is NO evidence this guy is telling the truth, but there is ALOT of evidence this guy is lying his ass off. Don't believe this Slashdot readers!
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.........
And I'll share it for free:
A rich internal link structure.
Blog software creates this by default, but you can do it manually. A recent website I was hired to optimize will illustrate this. The site is customSiliconeBracelets.com. When I was hired they were on the 30th page for their two desired phrases: Silicone Bracelets & Custom Silicone Bracelets. Now, they're number 1 in both of those.
To accomplish this, I did two main things:
1. Add a bunch of text. It's mostly nonsensical. It's not meant for human consumption. It's there for keyword density.
2. Add a shitload of intra-site links. Every keyword in that nonsensical text is linked to other pages in the site. If you tried to navigate the site by following such links (instead of using the sites navigation) you'd go in circles for hours. Which, when you look at the logs, is essentially what Googlebot does.
Of course, there was all the "standard" stuff like page titles, H tags, links with titles, alt text on images, etc. But those only get you so far. The real beef is in the link structures, friends.
This seems *very* suspicious. Parent quotes from this post.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Is this not in fact the Viral Campaign he talks about starting on his blog? Seems to be working, since he's on Slashdot already, plus all the links go to his site and none to the other (ostensibly undisclosed) address.
This man owns a search optimization business
Nice catch, Sir Homer.
Here's where he tells us he's going to mount a viral campaign.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Just to reiterate what someone else tracked down in hopes of getting this (wholly ambiguous and suspect to begin with) story checked out:
http://deanhunt.com/category/seo/
Basically this guy has a side job of helping companies up their pageranks, and made all this up as an "experiment in viral marketing". Nothing to see here...and sure explains why he's keeping the company name and search terms secret.
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.
I would imagine that the business owners are attempting to "fool" google's ranking system. They just assume that Dean Hunt is trying and beating them and they're crying foul.
Perhaps they paid someone like a search engine placement company and feel a little angry at being cheated?
1) Anybody who runs a website with a reasonable number of users gets shit-loads of this sortof email every day. You ignore it and just accept that the world is full of nuts and we've allowed them to send emails
2) This guy is quite clearly interested in fiddling with Google rankings - indulging him by linking and quoting his blog is really really not very helpful.
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.
An entry for wicktionary:
deanhunt
It looks like this is turning into a cautionary tale for would-be advertising gurus: just becoming widely known is not enough; you need to very much avoid becoming widely known as a laughingstock.
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.
How about these?
asshole
shithead