Legal Issues in Search Archives

The New York TImes reports Microsoft has filed suit against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia. The suit comes after a year of investigative work by Microsoft in tracking down reports of click fraud.

According to the NY Times, these defendants allegedly:

Microsoft said it found a pattern of click fraud on its search pages, where lists ranked by relevance and popularity appear alongside a handful of paid results. Advertisers bid on what they will pay to appear in the paid-search results for certain keywords. The more an advertiser pays, the higher they are in that list, and advertisers usually pay for each click on their ad.

Why is Microsoft doing this? Maybe to send a warning to those who are involved in click fraud to stop doing it or else. Or maybe Microsoft wants more buzz about their search ad network, adCenter?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, I wrote at Search Engine Land about a report from The Register about how a Dutch company was sued over the snippet Google choose for a certain web page of theirs. Let me quickly explain what happened.

A web page on Miljoenhuizen.nl showed up in Google for the search phrase [Zwartepoorte] and [bankrupt]. When you read the snippet under the Miljoenhuizen.nl listing in Google, it basically read that Zwartepoorte was bankrupt. The issue is, Zwartepoorte was not bankrupt. So Zwartepoorte sued Miljoenhuizen.nl to make Google remove the snippet. The thing is, Miljoenhuizen.nl did not say Zwartepoorte was bankrupt, Google took several words on a page and mixed them together to completely make that up.

A Dutch court ordered Miljoenhuizen.nl to change the page, so Google's snippet would change. Miljoenhuizen.nl removed the page and the issue is now resolved.

Personally, I think it is crazy for a court to make such a request. But what do I know? I really want to see how you guys feel about this.

Should webmasters be responsible for what Google shows in their snippets about our web pages? Take our anonymous poll:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

About a week ago, we asked our readers if they like or dislike the new AdWords trademark policy. The new policy gives some advertisers the ability to use trademarked terms in the ad copy.

We asked our readers if they like the new policy and the majority do like it.

Question:Do You Like Google's New AdWords Trademark Policy?

:: Yes, About Time said 38 respondents or 64
:: No, This Is Bad said 20 respondents or 34%
:: Other answer... said 1 respondents or 2%

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

While my wife was giving birth to our baby, Google sent me an email telling me they have made a serious change to their AdWords trademark policy. The AdWords blog explains that now, in the US, advertisers can use the trademark term(s) in the ad text, in certain conditions. Here is Google's language:

That is why, in an effort to improve ad quality and user experience, we are adjusting our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text. This change will bring Google's policy on trademark use in ad text more in line with the industry standard. Under certain criteria, you can use trademark terms in your ad text in the U.S. even if you don't own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it. This change will help you to create more narrowly targeted ad text that highlights your specific inventory.

For example, under our old policy, a site that sells several brands of athletic shoes may not have been able to highlight the actual brands that they sell in their ad text. However, under our new policy, that advertiser can create specific ads for each of the brands that they sell. We believe that this change will help both our users and advertisers by reducing the number of overly generic ads that appear across our networks in the U.S.

Advertisers can begin submitting new ads to Google AdWords with that meet these trademark criteria on 11am PDT on May 15th. And those ads that meet the criteria will not begin showing until June 15th.

Scanning the forum threads, specifically at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums, you see that people are either in love with this change or hate it. Trademark holders are mostly against it, while those that sell the trademarked items are very for the policy change. In addition, many people feel that Google is doing this to make an extra buck, while some aren't so sure - suggesting that Google may get hit with more lawsuits that might cost more money then allowing the ads in the first place.

What do you think? Take our poll:

Here are some good quotes from the forums:

somebody needs more cash :_)

It makes sense though. We've run into problems with it in the past. I should be able to promote products that I'm authorized to sell by the manufacturer in my ads. If I'm not allowed to sell them, I can't use the term. Seems pretty fair.

I think it's about time. Are the big brands pissed off at all the grocery circulars that use their trademark?

Don't mean to sound like an ass but honestly, why is PPC any different from print, yellow pages, etc.?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

ShoeMoney Sues Google Employee For AdWords Violations from TechCrunch shows how Jeremy Schoemaker (aka ShoeMoney) has filed suit against a Google AdWords employee for allegedly bidding on his trademark and possibly for stealing his keywords.

TechCrunch explains that Jeremy found signs that the person who was bidding on his trademark was very friendly with Google employees. In addition, he found that on his LinkedIn profile it said he worked at Google in the AdWords department. TechCrunch said:

At this point it’s still unclear if the violator used his position at Google to bypass its trademarked words filters or to access Schoemaker’s own list of keywords, but at the very least it’s hard to believe the Google employee was unaware that his actions were in violation of Google’s Terms of Service.

I believe this is the first time we are hearing about a case of an SEM (I know Jeremy, you don't like to be called that, but in this case, you are) suing a Google employee for these allegations. It should be interesting following this case.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There are two different threads at WebmasterWorld that show publishers, advertisers and affiliate's concern over a new proposed tax law in California.

The law, as understood in the thread, would potentially tax any seller who using AdWords to market their product or service. Moderator, incrediBILL, explained:

The conclusion I drew after reading the law is that since AdSense directly refers customers via links, as do the AdWords ads showing in the SERPs, it's therefore theoretically possible that anyone using Google as an advertising vehicle could be subject to CA tax.

If people advertising in Google are suddenly subject to collecting and paying CA tax then people will most likely stop advertising on Google.

You can see the details about this tax proposal named AB178 and the hearing won't be until April 13, 2009.

Some are very skeptical over the bill and they are not worried too much about how it might impact them.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: 5 Star Affiliate Blog has very good coverage of this concern. Well worth a read.

Last week at Search Engine Land, I covered an Eric Goldman story on Utah trying to pass a bill for the third time, on regulating search ads. In short, the bill finally passed in the Utah House (still needs to be approved by Senate) and it holds search advertisers liable for targeting trademarks as keywords. It does not hold the search companies, i.e. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft liable (that bill failed). To see the bill, click here.

Shorebreak at WebmasterWorld gives a good explanation of the bill:

This bill, sponsored by 1-800-Contacts, prevents search engines from being able to serve competitive ads if someone searches for a branded/trademarked keyword. So, for example, if someone Google's '1-800-Contacts', Google would not be able to serve LensCrafters' ad, even if Lenscrafter didn't include the brand term in their ad copy.

Now, most search companies do not allow the trademarked terms to appear in the ad copy, but do allow bidding on many trademarked terms, as long as they are not in the ad copy. There has been a ton of legal precedent in this area already, so that is why Eric Goldman is surprised it finally passed. He said it "barely made it through due to the fierce last-minute lobbying efforts of 1-800 Contacts."

That being said, some advertisers hate the law and some actually like it. Guess who likes it and who hates it? :)

Many don't believe this law will last, since e-commerce goes over state boundaries and because geo-targeting capabilities are often not 100%.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Eric Goldman updates us once again to let us know that the bill did not pass in the Utah Senate. He said the bill "died quietly last night when the Utah Senate failed to act on it before the Utah Legislature adjourned for the year."

NetworkWorld reports that the State of Washington has sued an SEO firm for a variety of infractions, including making claims that they can increase traffic to clients' websites, falsely claiming affiliations with other marketers, making claims that customer service representatives are available for any calls (though they never returned calls), failing to provide refunds, continuing to bill credit cards of customers who have canceled, and failing to register with the Department of Licensing as a commercial telephone solicitor.

In the past four years, 90 complaints have been lodged against the company, which uses the name Visible.net.

Is this lawsuit a good thing? A few people are a bit worried. How many SEOs promise a lot but deliver below expectations because competitors overdeliver and the algorithm changes [drastically], despite all that you've done? It can happen. While some say that this is a plea aimed at snake oil sellers, if a client is unhappy with legitimate SEO work, what's to say they won't consider you a snake oil salesman?

On another note, how come nobody has sued those companies that send you mailers claiming to be your domain registrar and wanting to renew your domain for a few years (at least to my knowledge)? Like these guys. Seriously -- I'm sure there are more than 90 complaints against those people.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Argentina Forcing Google & Yahoo To Censor Search Results from Search Engine Land covers this very well. In short, Argentina is forcing, by court order, Yahoo and Google to censor their search results. The results being censored are for select public officials, models, actors, and sports stars.

For example, a search on popular soccer player, Diego Maradona returns no results at all and a message that means:

On the occasion of a court order sought by private parties, we have been forced to temporarily remove some or all of the search results relating to it.

Here is a screen capture:

Why do results come up at Google? Well, Google is censoring the results, but not completely removing the results like Yahoo.

We have discussion on this topic at Sphinn where one member seems to really know a thing or two on the topic. He said:

This is an incredible story - congrats to OpenNet Initiative for reporting this (and SEL + Ramkarthik for spreading the word :)

My first thought was that the Argentinean government had these results removed - it´s no secret that the Los Kirchner censore with a ´soft hand´ (critical journalists are not invited to press conferences, economical figures are´adjusted´ etc.). I was quite surprised to read that it´s actually private parties who have their online presence removed. I´m no expert in law, but find it hard to understand how an Argentinean private party can oblige international SE´s to have their ´names´removed from the SERP´s (and as a result other people with the same name loose their online presence as well).

Under which law do these SE´s operate? Any ideas?

Under the laws of which they run in that specific country. That is how it works.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Google lost their Gmail dispute in Germany and they had to remove redtube.com (and the like) from Google.de, plus other cases I am missing right now. This week, Bloomberg reports that Google "lost two copyright lawsuits in Germany over displaying photos and artworks as thumbnails in a preview of search results."

In short, let me blockquote:

Google's preview of a picture by German photographer Michael Bernhard violates his copyrights, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled, his lawyer Matthies van Eendenburg said in an interview today. Thomas Horn, who holds the copyrights on some comics that were displayed in Google search results, won a second case, court spokeswoman Sabine Westphalen said in an e-mail.

I love the responses in the WebmasterWorld thread. Moderator, incrediBILL, said it well:

This is stupid because the solution is technological, not legal:
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

I cannot agree more. This is pretty immature. Why sue? Why not just use the simple tag? Am I missing something? Don't say, to make money or because people hate Google.

What is going to happen now? These sites will drop in traffic, they might regret suing and who knows. This is not the first time. Same thing happened in Belgium over news content.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

The New York Times has a story about an AdSense/AdWords arbitrageur, a webmaster who makes money off getting visitors to his site through AdWords to have them click on his AdSense ads. The story is named Stuck in Google's Doghouse, where Dan Savage who runs SourceTool.com has sent a nine-page, 4,000-word letter to the antitrust division of the Justice Department over Google's business practices.

We have discussed the topic of arbitrage in this sense, even before it was coined that in the SEM world. But in May 2007, when Google decided to shut down arbitrageurs from what some may call, sucking the life of of the search results, it had a major hit for many small website operators. Including Dan Savage who made his money on making a few pennies of profit on those clicks.

Every since Google introduced the landing page quality score components, advertisers have been complaining big time. I wrote a pretty good summary of the history behind these AdWords Slaps in July, so you can read up about it over there. In short, while advertisers may have been paying $0.10 per click to get traffic, they may now be paying $10.00 for the same click, due to "quality score" factors that rose their bids.

Dan Savage is calling this move as monopolistic, at least in his case.

Google, he believed, didn’t like his Web directory because it was a search engine itself — though much more narrowly focused than Google’s search engine — and Google found it a competitive threat.

What’s more, Sourcetool competed directly with business.com, which was one of Google’s “content network partners,” meaning it gets additional advertising revenue because Google directs AdWords ads to the site as well as AdSense ads.

My thoughts? I am torn. I honestly don't think Google is going after business they find to be competitive. Heck, we see Yahoo advertising on Google, Ask.com advertising on Google and visa versa. But I do believe Google went after "arbitrageurs" because they felt the quality of those ads and results lead to a poor search experience. That is my thoughts and I can be wrong.

The debate is pretty wild in some of the forum threads:

• Is Google A Monopoly And Doesn't Know It?, The NY Times explores, Cre8asite Forums
• Adword Arbitrageur fights back?, WebmasterWorld
• NYT: Stuck in Google’s Doghouse, DigitalPoint Forums
• NY Times Background Story on DOJ AntiTrust Investigation, WebmasterWorld

Bigreds, an internet retailer has decided to sue Yahoo for $1 million over click fraud starting back in 2002. Yahoo offered Bigreds $17,000 back, but Bigreds wants more and they are suing for over $1 million in damages and penalties.

I wanted to pull out some of the best comments on this lawsuit, which you can read more about at InformationWeek, from a WebmasterWorld thread:

Look if you are going to build your billion dollar business around PAYPERCLICK then you should probably have systems, people, backups for the most obvious exploit.

It's the modern day equivalent of a bank without a safe.

Um, i'm looking at this site, and I really don't see how any traffic would convert, regardless of whether it's fradulent or not. Sorry Red, but I'm thinking that maybe the lawyers are the only ones that are going to come out ahead here.

I don't really see the problem with advertisers bringing suits against garbitrage because the advertiser foots the bill for the middle man market they create.

Decide for yourself...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

In the Copyright & Trademarks: What SEMs Should Know session from SES San Jose last week, adCenter announced they have a new policy on how they will be handling trademark complaints.

Instead of them being the go between, between affiliates and advertisers, they are kind of going to take a step back and let the two duke it out.

Microsoft then announced the change on their blog.

Microsoft adCenter will no longer attempt to mediate affiliate compliance by creating lists of trademark-owner approved advertisers who can bid on trademarked keywords. Support teams will be contacting those trademark owners who have provided affiliate documentation previously to explain this policy update and answer questions.

If you have a trademark issue, you now need to use this form.

WebmasterWorld moderator, Receptional, said:

Not sure this will upset agencies looking after client trademarks too much. This seems to me like the onus is on the advertiser to stick to their trademark rights, but trademark owners will still be able to protect their marks as and when.

Skibum adds an important point:

Microsoft is Microsoft so they can do whatever they want but this sounds confusing and inconsistent.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Privacy International released a report this weekend rating Google at the bottom of bottom, in terms of their privacy practices. They even published an open letter to Google over their practices calling for "an apology" for calling this report "a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft."

As one might imagine, with Google's popularity, this news did not wait for the weekend to break before articles started coming out. Every headline I was tracking for Google was about this report. The coverage is overwhelming, but let's have Techmeme help sort it out. Danny Sullivan took a different approach, after carefully analyzing the report he wrote Google Bad On Privacy? Maybe It's Privacy International's Report That Sucks calling for:

Overall, looking at just the performance of the best companies PI found shows that Google measures up well -- and thus ranking it the worse simply doesn't seem fair. But the bigger issue is that the report itself doesn't appear to be as comprehensive or fully researched as it is billed.

Frankly, about the only thing saving Privacy International from many more companies or services being upset over this report is that they singled out Google as the worse. That's almost guaranteed to make players like Microsoft and Yahoo shut their mouths and point at this silently as vindication they aren't so bad.

On that, Matt Cutts of Google wrote his own piece named Why I disagree with Privacy International. He said, "I personally feel strongly about protecting our users’ privacy. So I’m frustrated by a recent study that Privacy International did, and I want to know if I’m off-base in my reaction." Adding;

I think Privacy International should feel remorse about walking right past several other companies to single out Google for their lowest rating. But I think that there’s a larger danger here too. I believe this report could corrode earnest efforts to improve privacy at companies around the internet. Why? Because the bottom-line takeaway message that I got from the report is that a company can work hard on privacy issues and still get dragged into the mud. Consider: in the last year or so, other companies gave users’ queries to the government, leaked millions of raw user queries, or even sold user queries and still came off better than Google did.

The Techmeme coverage on the opposition to the report can be found here.

Now, let's take it to the forums.

WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums have larger threads on the topic. Here are some select quotes from members of those respective forums.

I assume any information I give google will be used to find profit. One area that really irks me on is Adwords. I assume that by using their "free" Analytics and ROI calculator that know exactly what my price tolerance is and will start to increase my costs per click seperate from my competitor, with this in mind.

What Google does with the data is less important than what governments can force Google to do with the data. Google's good intentions don't matter. Their policies - which may permit the data to fall into truly evil hands - ARE what matters.

This report is just plain BS

It is sad really, because I really believed that Google was fundamentally different

For some reason, I don't think this is the last we hear about this. I suspect Google will come out hard against this report. I suspect the debate to linger on for a couple weeks and then die down and no one will remember it until a new report is released.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Cre8asite Forums.

A DigitalPoint Forums thread points to a Digital Chosun article that reports a Korean site is suing Google for banning them in AdSense, and not paying.

Google, the U.S. web search giant, faces a W30 million (US$1=W945) lawsuit in Korea. Humor University, a local humor website, announced on Sunday that it filed a suit against Google demanding W20 million in payments and W10 million in damages. Humor University said the American firm allegedly failed to pay for three months of online ads.

Google said they are not paying Humor University because the clicks were fraudulent and have banned the account. "Humor University said Google never provided evidence to back up those claims."

I doubt Google will lose this one, but this should be fun to chat about.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Big news last night, Google wrote they will be taking steps to further improve our privacy practices. What that means is that after 18 to 24 months, Google will begin to anonymize their sever logs to help protect it a lot better.

This has been a common concern over the past couple years. Danny pressed this issue with Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt in A Conversation With Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

Q: Danny brings the NY Times up about the woman who was found via token data from the AOL slip up. He said there are tons of privacy issues. What do you do to protect this? Government taking it, accidents, etc....
A: This is obviously a terrible thing. The data was not anonymized and it was a mistake. If Google were to make this mistake, it would be a terrible thing. They have lots and lots of systems to prevent this from happening at Google. They don't share everything in Google with everyone in Google. He describes a case where the government gave Google a subpoena that was over-broad, and they fought it in court. They take is so seriously that they fight it in court.

Q: Will Google destroy data they have?
A: Eric said they had this debate in Google. But they are take steps to prevent issues.

The AOL issue has undoubtedly pushed this concern to the front of the pack for Google. And I am happy that they have announced they will be doing this. Here is a PDF document of the log retention policy.

But this does not mean all your privacy will be anonymized. As Danny explains in detail you still need to be worried about several things including:

(1) Search History On Your Computer
(2) Search History & Your ISP
(3) Search History & Search Engine Server Logs
(4) Search History & Personalized Results Or Personal Search History Records

You can control number four, Google will allow you to do that. You can try to clean your computer for number one. Your ISP is your ISP and not sure what you can do about that. Same with number three.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

The big news over the weekend was that Microsoft to blast Google for its copyright policy via Reuters. Let me give you some quotes to some things up quickly.

In prepared remarks to be delivered to the Association of American Publishers, Microsoft Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin argues that Google's move into new media markets has come at the expense of publishers of books, videos and software.

"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs," says Rubin, who oversees copyright and trade secret law at Microsoft.

"We do this by complying with international copyright laws, and the result has been more exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers and producers of content."

Danny Sullivan, as always, has done an excellent job Dissecting Microsoft Slams At Google As Copyright Infringer, so read that as well.

But let's see what the search marketing industry things about this:

All those web pages that don't want to be indexed and want to stay invisible on the web can just do the robots text thingy. The rest of us will just pay no attention

I would like to see a government or "internet" service where original content owners can submit their property such as articles and images. This service would then provide the proof of original registration. Search engines would check there, either automatically or by request of the owner to be sure that they are not indexing duplicate copies of registered material.

We are living in the age of content theft. This theft is rampant, done in secret and almost unenforceable. I believe that this service could be supported by a small fee charged for each submission.

That is really weird that they would just stand up and say something like that. It almost seems personal. Google is making money because they are good at organizing data. Books should be set up like music. If you show books with advertising there should be a set fee that goes to the publisher/author like radio stations do.

The "your in unless you tell us otherwise" policy is pretty much the same as the phone book. Your home adress and phone numbers are published unless you "PAY" for an unlisted number! I can just see all the search engines jumping on that band wagon at some point in the future! Don't want us to cache your pages ... no problem! That will be $200.00 for the first year please and $100.00 for all subsequent years.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Google came out and finally gave us some numbers.

0.02 Percent of Clicks Pass Through Google's Fraud Detector:

Our Click Quality team investigates every inquiry we receive from advertisers who believe they may have been affected by undetected click fraud. Many of these cases are misunderstandings, but in most cases where malicious activity is found, the clicks have already been filtered out (and not charged for) by our real-time filters. Because of the broad operation of our proactive detection, the relatively rare cases we find of advertisers being affected by undetected click fraud constitute less than 0.02% of all clicks.

Invalid Clicks Account For Less Than 10% Of All Clicks:

Our invalid clicks rate – the activity rate – has remained in the range of less than 10% of all clicks every quarter since we launched AdWords in 2002. At Google’s current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million/year in potential revenue foregone.

So, in a sense, click fraud is costing the industry $1,000,000,000 ($1 billion) per year.

Danny has an excellent break down on all of this, so I won't get into why Google released it and how this all makes sense. It is worth a read, so check it out.

Currently we have threads at both WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums, with WebmasterWorld having discussion in it. Here are some quotes:

totally misleading. How many advertisers can analyze (or choose to) the data and take the issue up to google?

Those 10% invalid clicks are identified as such by Google and are not charged to advertisers. What they are saying is that maybe 0.02% of those clicks are invalid *and* charged to advertisers. That sounds like peanuts and as long as advertisers have a decent ROI, I don't see what's the big deal, as long as Google is diligent with banning fraudsters. No advertising medium is 100% efficient.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday at Search Engine Land I reported Search Engines Do Not Have To Display All Ads Says Court based on Eric Goldman's post named Search Engines Defeat "Must-Carry" Lawsuit--Langdon v. Google.

In short, a court ruled that Google and other search engines do not have to carry any ad submitted to them. Specifically, Christopher Langdon was upset with a company or two and wanted to buy ads to complain about them (i.e. a "griper") but Google denied him. They would not approve his ads. So he took Google to court, and the judge ruled in favor of Google saying, "some of his [Langdon] claims "specious" and "frivolous." Eric them noted three things we can pull from this case:

(1) The First Amendment gives search engines the right to reject any ad they want.
(2) "Search engine decisions to reject ads is protected by 47 USC 230(c)(2) as a legitimate decision to filter "otherwise objectionable" content."
(3) "Search engines aren't state actors and are not bound by the First Amendment, so they do not deprive advertisers (such as Langdon) of First Amendment rights by rejecting their advertising."

But these are ads, flip it around to the free/organic results and Google has often denied to remove such listings. Why? Because they want their algorithms to handle it. Heck, there is a profession to handle such organic results named reputation management.

A WebmasterWorld thread has a nice amount of discussion on the ruling, so here are a few quotes:

Seems logocal to me. Otherwise an accountancy search engine (or directory) could be sued for not listing a shoe shop. That would be absurd.

I'm not constitutional scholar, but doesn't the first amendment keep the Government from preventing free speach? I don't think it applies to individuals or business.

First amendment is clearly a restriction/limitation on government powers. Google, despite all their power, is not the government.

This case, OTOH, is quite different to the questions about whether the SE's should censor listings out of their organic SERP's. The bar for censorship should be (and is) much, much higher in that arena. Though personally, I don't think it's high enough, given the arbitrary nauture of some of the decisions from the major SE's WRT listings they are unwilling to display, relating to both content and region.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This is fairly entertaining... Via a WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums threads, a blog owner received an email from a online store owner, requesting he lower his ranking for a keyword phrase the blog is ranking well for. In short, the store owner feels he should rank better than the blog, because he is selling the item on his site and the blog is only informational and not transactional. If this person knew anything about Google, he would know things tend to work the other way around.

The emails, without specific identifiable information, can we read in part one and part two. Let me quote part two for you, since I find it the most entertaining...

You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog.

Don’t forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches.

I have also contacted my lawyer about this issue, so you should expect a letter in the post very soon.

I expect a reply soon.

I won't quote from the forums, but I think they tend to agree with me on this.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

Seems like everyone is taking a stab at Google and YouTube's recent fortune - but that would have been expected. Everyone is talking about it now, UTube.com is suing YouTube.com for "site confusion."

What is the issue, the Guardian explains;

Universal Tube says it has lost business because genuine customers have had trouble accessing its site, and has filed a lawsuit asking YouTube to change its web address or pay the cost of creating a new domain name.

Because YouTube traffic at UTube.com caused the server to come down...

Ouch.

Forum discussion is pretty wild at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

In late July Google's $90 Million Click Fraud Settlement was Approved and we now have reports via various forums that Google advertisers are now receiving the payouts.

WebmasterWorld has a two page thread with some comments;

Got my $6.45 wohhooo! headed to McDonalds for a Big Mac on google.

After spending $480,000 over 3 1/2 years I see a $280 credit in my account for Oct 20.

I've spent $188,000 this year alone, and my payout is only $30. This is a joke. I bet I've had more click fraud than that in on hour.

Similar comments at other forums as well.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums and Affiliate4U Forums.

Steven Bryant wrote that Google Sued for AdSense Fraud. In short, Theresa B. Bradley, owner of bravacorp.com has sued Google for being terminated from the program after allegedly spending a hundred hours placing the Google AdSense code on her site.

Hold on a sec....

(1) 100 Hours to place ads on a site? I can attest that it can take less than 3 minutes to place AdSense code on millions of pages of a dynamic site. But it looks like her 24 page (or so) site is pure HTML, so let's say it took 3 minutes per page, to add the code? 72 minutes of work? What about economies of scale? :)

(2) She admittedly clicked on her own ads and as Jen clearly points out, it is "against the AdSense terms & policies, which states "Please note that clicking on your own ads for any reason is prohibited, to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs." So she is in violation of the agreement she signed.

JenSense and eWeek have great coverage of this.

Both WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums have long threads on the topic, even though the news was broke late last night. It is honestly a shame that this woman sued Google. She is destroying her name, in my opinion. Just look at all of the comments in the forums. They read all of the tone as;

Funniest damn thing I've seen in awhile.

Perhaps it is time for Google to file a counter-suit seeking damages for:
a) Damaging the good name of Google by implicating them in a frivolous suit
b) Breach of contract (the TOS)
c) Fraud (clicking ads herself)

Wow... honestly what a stupid woman. I can't wait for Google to own her in court.

It appears the 100 hours includes the time taken to review the ads, so she's suing google for the time she spent clicking her own ads :)

Some comments are worse. Everyone has Google's back on this and that is rare. :)

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Earlier this month AOL Messes Up by Releasing Sensitive Search Data. Well, the other day they acted on that mistake by forcing the CTO to resign and firing the researcher who released the data, as well as his manager. AOL wasn't kidding when they said they will be "giving everything away for free."

Maureen Govern, who became technology chief last September, has left the company and her position has been temporarily taken by John McKinley, her predecessor. The researcher who released the data – that was aimed at academics researching search patterns but was widely copied across the web – and the researcher's supervisor have also been fired, according to people familiar with the matter.

Do you feel this move by AOL's top management to release a top manager and the two individuals closest to the slip up was good enough? Do you think those who decided to make AOL a free portal are more to blame?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Last night I posted at the SEW blog that Brazil To Close Google Brazil's Offices Over Orkut Issues? You see, Google and Brazil don't have such a great recent history. Orkut, Google's social networking platform, has received headlines that include;

- Aug. 16, 2006 :: Orkut Causing Trouble In Brazil Again
- Jul. 21, 2005 :: Drug Pushers Using Orkut Arrested In Brazil
- May. 25, 2006 :: Google Works With Brazil To Shut Down Orkut Communities
- May. 18, 2006 :: Google Faces Criminal Charges For Child Porn & Racial Material
- May. 3, 2006 :: Google & Brazil Fight Over Orkut User Data Rights
- Mar. 10, 2006 :: Brazil Asks Google To Help Orkut To Stop Organizing Organized Crime
- Mar. 9, 2006 :: Al-Qaeda Likes Orkut

Ouch! Well, I think Google has pushed Brazil far enough. The news is now everywhere; Reuters reports that Brazilian prosecutors seek lawsuit against Google.

Brazilian prosecutors asked a federal judge on Tuesday for permission to file a civil lawsuit against Google Inc., alleging it was withholding user information required for a separate criminal investigation.

The prosecutors want Google to pay a $61 million fine and asked that if it refuses to comply with its information request, its Brazilian unit be dissolved.

Should be interesting...

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread claims a Google AdWords representative sent him an email warning him not to use the add to Google Reader RSS button on his site. Why did Google tell this person to not have the button on his site? Well, because the Google Reader button has the Google logo within it, and you need Google's permission to use Google's trademarks prior to posting them.

Here are the exact words of the email, I believe;

It has come to our attention that your website is using Google's trademarks without our permission. We allow use of our logo only if we have granted express written permission to do so. Please remove the Google logo from your website until such time as you obtain permission and approval for its use.

Um, check out the Google Reader Blog, do you see the button they use on the right side?

What about Google's Help People Subscribe to Your Content page which has the button there for this specific use.

Obviously, this is a gross example of Google's representatives not being educated in Google's other properties.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Have you received an email notifying you of a settlement by Yahoo! with Checkmate? "A proposed Settlement has been reached in a class action proceeding alleging that Yahoo! breached its contracts with Class Persons and committed unfair business practices by improperly collecting revenue by charging and/or overcharging Class Persons for certain types of clicks." You have up until October 14, 2006 to say you want out of this class action lawsuit, and you have until November 20, 2006 to submit your claim.

More details and instruction at http://www.checkmatesettlement.com/.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & Search Engine Watch Forums & DigitalPoint Forums.

I wrote about it at the SEW Blog yesterday;

Techmeme is reporting a huge amount of concern over AOL releasing, then pulling, search logs done by 500,000 users over three months. The purpose of the release was to help search researchers better understand user behavior in conjunction with an industry event for search researchers happening in Seattle, SIGIR. The data was posted on the AOL research site, but has since been pulled.

Much more at SEW blog, Danny postscripted later on.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

A WebmasterWorld thread notes of a BusinessWeek report that Ask, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are coming together to form standards on what is an "invalid click."

The Internet's leading search engines are teaming up with an advertising trade group to find a better way to identify and measure "click fraud," a scam that has raised doubts about the Web's trustworthiness as a marketing vehicle.

The initiative, announced Wednesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, will draw upon the expertise of Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -- the owners of the top online search engines -- to attack a problem threatening to erode their profits. Combined, the three companies control 86 percent of the lucrative U.S. search engine market, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Danny at the SEW Blog also covered this with a quick recap of the News.com story.

Definitions are incredibly important and without it, you won't know exactly SEMs and PPC Engines are trying to prevent.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Danny reports that the $90 Million Click Fraud Settlement has been approved. $30 million goes to the lawyers, $60 million goes to AdWords customers, in terms of credits. Danny says that "apparently around 500 companies choosing to opt-out" of the settlement and will go after Google solo.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I reported Friday afternoon at the SEW Blog on an Independent Report: Google Click Fraud Detection Practices Are "Reasonable". Bottom-line, the report stats that "click fraud detection practices that shows Google makes reasonable efforts to detect click fraud." What is also interesting is that the folks in the forums don't seem to care, well, as of yet.

There are no forum threads outside of one that I found at DigitalPoint Forums and that one doesn't have much feedback from forum members.

This 47-page report by Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin, Professor of Information Systems at NYU, has tons of clues about AdWords, that can benefits SEMs. Anyway...

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

I reported at Search Engine Watch blog on Monday that the Kinderstart.com case, where the site owners are suing Google for penalizing the site, may go to court. The case is that Google is a competitor, and Google banned KinderStart.com, for Google's own benefit. :) Yea, yea, I know. The forums are chuckling about it as well.

It is important to note, that although the judge wants to hear more specifics, that the case has yet to fully proceed and that KinderStart.com has a long way to go to win such a case.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Chris Sherman has the huge write up on Yahoo's settlement of the click fraud case. He describes;

The terms of the settlement include a cash payment of $4.95 million to plaintiffs' counsel and a provision that will allow advertisers to file a claim for Yahoo to investigate potentially fraudulent clicks back through January 2004. Yahoo will pay refunds to advertisers who file claims if it discovers evidence of fraudulent clicks.

Chris explains that the amount does not come close to the $90M Google Settlement but Yahoo is "offering cash refunds, and there is no ceiling on the amount it will refund if it finds evidence of click fraud," where Google offers advertiser credits.

Forum discussion on this settlement at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

The most ridiculous case I have seen in that past week, was brought to my attention via a DigitalPoint Forum thread. They link to articles at JournalNow and at The Inquirer that is named, "Google "hacked our website"."

The schools claim that Google's search engine spider grabbed information they shouldn’t have and posted it on the Interweb.

The data included the names, Social Security numbers and test scores of 619 students which are still available online when the page was removed by the schools.

There is no way Google can type in a username or password into a form box. Someone at the school must of left something open, some how. Either a URL was posted that contained a direct link to the information, via some sort of password embedded in the URL to enable access.

I agree, the judge is right, Google should remove this data from the index ASAP. "The temporary injunction, granted by the Honorable Richard D. Boner, calls for Google to remove any information pertaining to Catawba County Schools Board of Education from its server and index..." But "and alleges conversion and trespass against the corporation," is out right crazy.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

A touch question at hand, does one join the class action settlement against Google on PPC fraud or not. Google is giving back $90M, $30M which will be going to the lawyers, the rest to the advertisers. How much will the average advertiser get back? That is the discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

The details for the settlement can be found at http://www.clicksettlement.com/.

Honestly, it is about you - do you want to just take it easy and join the settlement or do you want more from Google. Many want more and think the settlement is unfair.

Join the discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums & WebmasterWorld.

On Friday at SEW Blog I reported that Google was being sued by Nassau County Legislator, Jeffrey Toback for profiting on the sale of child pornography. We have some discussion on Google AdWords showing Child Prostitution Ads from the past. So is Google really profiting with a smile? I doubt not, and I doubt Jeffrey Toback believe so also. He clearly said that this suit is a "is a proactive step to keep children safe." It will basically make Google more proactive, instead of reactive with these sort of ads.

The folks at WebmasterWorld forums are exploring a few sites.

(1) Google technical glitches with the AdWords system to allow these sort of ads to be shown.
(2) A great political move by an electoral candidate (i.e. fight porn against Google).
(3) The whole suit is ridiculous and dumb.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld has a thread named Class Action Suit Filed Against YSM which discusses a Washington Post report that Yahoo is being sued for "syndication fraud." Syndication partners are those who place Yahoo! ads on their Web sites and products. Most of the law suit is based on Ben Edelman's uncovering of PPC Ads Found In Spyware With Auto Click Fraud.

A class-action lawsuit filed Monday against Yahoo! Inc. and group of unnamed third-parties accuses the company of engaging in "syndication fraud" against advertisers who pay Yahoo to display their ads on search results and on the Web pages of partner Web sites. The suit claims that Yahoo displayed these advertisers' online ads via spyware and adware products and on so-called "typosquatter" Web sites that capitalize on misspellings of popular trademarks or company names.

Potentially more explosive is the plaintiff's claim that Yahoo regularly uses its relationship with adware and typosquatting sites to gin up extra revenue around earnings time, alleging that the company is conspiring to boost revenue by partnering with some of the Internet's seamier characters. From the lawsuit:

The article also mentions typo-squatting issues where people go to a Web address, that is a typo of the Web address they really want to go to. They see ads on the site and click on them. This is a big business and has always rubbed people the wrong way. For some reason, Google's Domain Park, just now is getting a lot of attention. We wrote about it back in early January under the title DomainPark - AdSense for Domains Sparks Huge Forum Debate.

Bottom line with this law suit, probably like with Google, Yahoo! will settle out of court for a relatively small sum. Who will win here? The lawyers.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Danny Sullivan reported last week that the Traffic Power case against SEO Book filed last August has been dismissed. The appeal time for Traffic Power has passed, "the case was tossed out on February 13, so the 30 period for appeal has elapsed."

I suspect, Matt Cutts and Google's official confirmation of Traffic Power ban had something to do with it. But I do not have any confirmation from either side.

Forum discussion continued at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Search Engine Watch moderator Jeff Martin reports that Chinese Adwords Advertiser To Sue Google Over Click Fraud. The thread has a link to an article written in Chinese which was "loosely translated," into the following.

Mr. Huang, who has been using Adwords since 2004, normally pays 158 RMB per month. However, on 1/26/06, his Adwords charges suddenly run up to 8,000 RMB.

He sent an email to Google China and asked for investigation. Google replied that there was nothing wrong with the clicks and had no suspicion of click fraud. He then asked Google to provide supportive data and Google declined. He’s going to file a lawsuit, which will be the first lawsuit against Google in China.

With the recent refunds to US based advertisers for "invalid clicks" by both Yahoo and Google, it is no wonder non-US based advertisers want a piece of the pie.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Yesterday I reported over at the SEW blog about a Ben Edelman report. Ben Edelman uncovers how some spyware programs have Yahoo Search Marketing ads in them, and auto click on them, without the user's knowledge. You may want to check out his findings for yourself.

Ben is at WebmasterWorld forums, if you have any questions, he will reply to them there.

Other Forum Discussion at:

• Search Engine Watch Forums
  
• DigitalPoint Forums
  
• WebmasterWorld
  

There have been some major marketing initiatives recently using traditional offline advertising to drive traffic to a website, portal, or search engine. Ask.com has unveiled some new TV spots to get people to try their new technology. This past Sunday, as blogged by Rand and Barry, Yahoo and CBS News program 60 Minutes introduced a new partnership. What seemed to kick the year off, however, was Pontiac's clever use of the verb "google" to ask people to "google Pontiac" in its TV spots. In a search engine marketing stroke of brilliance (my opinion), Mazda purchased the keyword Pontiac, which led to a debate over the use of trademarked terms that has been covered here and elsewhere.

Bill Tancer from Hitwise pointed out at SES NYC 2006:

Did Mazda benefit from the Pontiac ad? Pontiac.com received 66.8% of the traffic from the term, and the second most visited site (3.4% of traffic) for the Pontiac search term was Mazda.

Search Engine Watch Forums Editor Elisabeth Osmeloski stared a good follow up thread to the Pontiac story the other day. She describes reading a recent article about the story in Adweek Magazine, and wonders if Pontiac paid Google to use their name as a verb (and the screenshot showing Pontiac typed into the Google search bar), and reminds us that Google was for a while very protective of its name, forbidding people to use it as a verb in the media. Danny Sullivan reports that Google swears they didn't get paid for the use, and quotes them as being eager to participate.

Not many more answers in this thread yet, but it should lead to an interesting discussion about Google's recent "kindler/gentler" attitude towards the use of its brand as a verb. Read at Search Engine Watch Forums.

In a class action law suit on click fraud against Google and other engines (Google's AdWords partners). Google and Lane's Gifts & Collectibles (the one who filed the claim) settled on $90 million settlement fund to be returned to US based AdWords customers with invalid clicks. The class action lawsuit does not seem to involve those outside of the US; Danny Sullivan said "To date, Google's had no lawsuits over click fraud filed outside the US." If you want the whole run down, I recommend reading Danny's SEW entry.

Let me pull out one comment that maybe Wall Street will understand, but probably wont.

The why answer seems a no brainer for me. A $90 million settlement, compared to Google's revenues, is cheap to get this particular issue resolved. It seems likely to buy an out from all potential cases going back for years. Compared to the estimated $260 to $290 million Google spent to resolve a patent lawsuit with Yahoo, this deal seems an especially cheap, smart one to take.

Forums are discussing this right now at:

• Search Engine Roundtable Forums
  
• Search Engine Watch Forums
  
• WebmasterWorld
  
• DigitalPoint Forums
  
• Cre8asite Forums

Over at the SEW Blog I wrote about a recent ruling where Perfect 10 Photo Site Wins Injunction Against Google Image Search. I wrote;

Perfect 10, an adult photo site, has proven to the court that Google's image search thumbnail copies are a violation of U.S. copyright law. This past Friday, U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz, ruled that Google has violated the law "by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs."

Google plans to appeal the case, but the main reason documented as to why Google lost the case is two fold. First, Google monetizes image search with AdSense of those sites that have pirated the images of Perfect 10. Second, Google has image mobile search, which enables users to save a downsized version of the image to the phone, that image is "similar to what Perfect 10 offers as a subscription service through U.K.-based Fonestarz" and could hurt Perfect 10's revenue and earnings.

This can be major for image search as we know it. The distinction was about saving and monetizing other people's images.

We have three forums already buzzing on the topic, they include;

• Search Engine Roundtable Forums
• Search Engine Watch Forums
• WebmasterWorld

Both SEW and WMW bring up the point about having Photo 10 use the robots.txt file to exclude Google from indexing the images. Why bother suing, if you can tell Google not to index them. But I am sure that was discussed, the question is why didn't the court summaries write about it. For that, someone needs to read through the 48 page PDF ruling file that Gary Price posted.

Ian, our resident legal search guy, at SEW Forums writes;

Here is the crux of the decision. There are two major ways to display someone else's content on your site: 1) copying it from their server and displaying it from your server, and 2) displaying it directly from their server using frames or some from of an include or scraper.

Google argues that the test should be server based. What server is the information coming from? In the case of framed content, the content is coming from the original server.

P10 argues that the test should be the incorporation test, whereby the test is "what website does this information appear to be from to the user?"

The court acknowledges that both tests can be abused, but prefers the server test, since it's easier for webmasters to understand and preserves the interconnectedness of the web.

Ian then explains; "Finally, the court basically held that Google was likely to lose due to the thumbnail issue, but would probably win it's argument that they were not responsible for *other* peoples copyright infringments that image search dug up."

Very interesting and controversial court injunction, and this can play a major role in the future of image search.

Matt Cutts write Confirming a penalty where he specifically is talking for Google in his post. He said in a bold statement;

I can confirm that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by Traffic Power from our index because of search engine optimization techniques that violated our webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/ webmasters/guidelines.html.

This is not only huge for Google, in that they have started calling out names of those they ban. It is also huge support for Aaron Wall's Defense Against Traffic Power.

As you can imagine, there are many forums talking about this including;

• Search Engine Roundtable Forums
• Search Engine Watch Forums
• WebmasterWorld

A CSMonitor article says that "US plans massive data sweep."

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

My first impression was, this was not being done now?

Found by way of Search Engine Watch Forums it looks like the folks in the forums are not too happy about this, as you can image.

That gives me goosebumps...and not in a good way

Danny Sullivan just posted an SEW blog entry named A Picture Says 1000 Words About Google's Censorship In China which is show true. He shows a screen capture, side by side (Google China versus Google US) of a search on "tiananmen" at Google Images China versus Google Images. Here it is.

SEW has a long thread on the topic since its inception named Google Agrees To Chinese Censorship and I started a forum thread just on this Google Images comparison, since I feel that alone is shocking enough.

Forum discussion at Google China: Story Told in Google Images.

Talk about a major news story that has caused the two major SEM forums to debate. We got two large threads, one at WebmasterWorld and the other at Search Engine Watch Forums. The WebmasterWorld thread started by the founder of WebmasterWorld, Brett Tabke and the Search Engine Watch thread started by the founder of Search Engine Watch, Danny Sullivan.

Danny does an excellent job explaining the two different sides of the story, in his thread. He explains that it makes sense that the court ruled in favor of Google to allow them to cache pages be default, since they do allow a opt out protocol (i.e. <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">). He explains, since spidering a site requires an opt out, not to be included in the index, the same should apply to the caching of those pages. Danny also give other logical and reasonable explanations as to why caching should be allowed by default.

Brett explains that "the court did not understand what real caching is and what Google calls caching." Explaining that what Google called caching "does not meet the crieteria for caching." He continues to warn that this will "effectively neuters all copyright laws on the internet today. It is the wild-wild west again. It legalizes content theft."

There are two sides to the story, the court ruled in favor of Google.

After Danny spoke with DaveN on his Search Cast morning show and read Brett's thread on the topic, he has changed his mind.

But not that we have a court that seems to not understand some real copyright issues, I'm flipflopped. I'm with Dave and Brett -- make it opt in. And we don't need a court decision for that to happen. The search engines themselves could do it. The problem is, with this ruling in their pocket, they have less reason to do so.

It makes you think if that was one of the reasons why the other day the Google Cache Currently Offline (if you do not know what the Google cache is, click on that story, it will show you). The Google cache is currently back online and running properly.

Join the debate, maybe the search engines will listen, forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Danny Sullivan sums it up nicely in his SEW blog entry named Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No, Others Comply where he says;

The Bush administration wanted one million random web addresses and records of all Google searches for a one week period. The government apparently wants to find out how much pornography shows up in online searches and how often people may seek it.

Here's a thought. If you want to measure how much porn is showing up in searches, try searching for it yourself rather than issuing privacy alarm sounding subpoenas. It would certainly be more accurate.

This sprung the need for Danny to start a thread at his forums named A Search Privacy Bill Of Rights. In that thread he asks members to answer a few questions, including; What do you think should be in such a bill? What protections do you want specifically spelled out?

Should make for a nice thread. Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

So you are having trouble getting paid by a client or two. They won't return your calls, they wont answer your emails, faxes or letters. What do you do? Well, of course you can send out a letter from your lawyer, but your a search guy - aren't you?

One search guy wants to pay for a PPC ad, when someone types in the defunct company's name into a search engine, up comes....

Company XYZ
Please pay outstanding invoice
#1234, which is 31 past due.
http://www.mysite.com/invoice1234.pdf

Cute idea, but will it be affective? Are there any legal repercussions? Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Google was sued last night over the library book scanning project by the Authors Guild. They basically want to stop Google Print from existing, whereas the Authors Guild wants to protect written documents as much as possible. What is shocking (a bit) is that Google actually wrote a blog entry on the topic last night, named Google Print and the Authors Guild, PR move?

For more detailed information, as always, I recommend checking out the Search Engine Watch Blog. Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums & WebmasterWorld.

Aaron Wall from SEO Book wrote last Friday, NOTICE! YOU HAVE BEEN SUED. He has been going back and forth with Traffic Power, an SEO company with many faces, about how he wrote about what Traffic Power has been doing with its SEO clients. Many in the industry are not happy with Traffic Power's tactics and many have voiced it. As many of you know, we try to stay away from political topics here, so I have not been discussing the topic here. And to be honest, if I did and TP threatened me with a law suit, I would pull it. For me, it is not worth the money, time and stress to get involved in a lawsuit based on principle.

I commend Aaron for keeping up the content, many, in Aaron's position, pulled the content. There are many showing Aaron support by participating in Search Engine Watch Forum Thread, Traffic Power Files Suit Against SEO Book.

The news hit that Google loses AdWords trade mark case in the US but it was not clear to me or WebmasterWorld and SEW Forum members as to what the exact ruling was. Basically, The Register summarizes that "The judge found that there was infringement where the terms were used in the text of sponsored ads." Also, "there had been a breach of the insurance firm�s trade mark rights �solely with regard to those sponsored links that use GEICO's trade marks in their headings or text.""

But based on my past research on legal issues in search, Google stopped allowing the use of trademarks within the headline or description. So I, as well as others, were scratching our heads about what is new with this ruling. Good thing Gary Price blogged about this case and linked to Judge Brinkema's opinion, which on page three says (my understanding) that its

(1) There is not sufficient evidence to prove "confusion" by someone bidding on a trademarked keyword alone.
(2) There is not sufficient evidence to prove "confusion" by someone placing a trademark in the ad copy (heading or description) alone.
(3) But if both are done, bidding on a trademark and placing the trademark in the ad copy, then there is sufficient evidence to prove that Google "violate the Lanham Act."

I hope I got that right. :)

I had the privilege of having a client come to me and ask me my thoughts on an ethical and business dilemma he is having in regards to his search marketing campaign. Let me start off by giving you a bit of vague background on the situation.

The company specializes in a very unique niche, manufacturing a product specifically for a need. What this means is that they will not sell a product off-the-shelf. They design solutions in the form of customized products based on a customer's problem. This type of detail requires that an engineer from the company speak with the prospect before a solution (i.e. product) can be designed. The company has engineers that speak the languages, English, German, and Hebrew.

The company is a big user of PPC engines; Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Second Tier PPC Engines. They want to target a wider market, because they know they can offer a solution to anyone in the world. The only issue is that they can not understand all the languages in the world, in order to be able to understand the problem, in order to formulate a solution (i.e. a product).

The idea of creating specialized landing pages in any other language outside of English, German or Hebrew sounded both good and bad. (Good) By creating these pages they can effectively provide an avenue for other markets to find them and the company's offerings. (Bad) Since they do not speak the language, (1) the prospect might feel deceived and (2) it will lead to unnecessary costs in translation and PPC spend.

So I decided to post a thread on this topic over at Search Engine Watch Forums. The responses were kind of contradictory to each other. Mikkel feels that you must be able to speak the native language to offer a product, such as this client is offering. Others believe that if the copy on the page explicitly notes that the company engineers do not speak that language and they must have an English, German or Hebrew speaking representative call the company - then it is perfectly ok.

Mikkel places a good logical statement down in the thread:

In my experience people search in the language they expect to be serviced in.

Now we are in business. This lawsuit came across the news feeds last night, the one I spotted was at Yahoo! News by Reuters and is named Google sued over 'click fraud' in Web ads.

A seller of online marketing tools said on Wednesday it sued Google Inc., charging that the Web search giant has failed to protect users of its advertising program from "click fraud," costing them at least $5 million.

Currently forum discussion is at Search Engine Watch Forums where the members feel that this is a good thing for the industry.

We talked about Google Print becoming Mainstream in the past, and as it becomes more mainstream and larger, publishers will have issues with it. Recently, the Google Library Project has undergone some widespread controversy amongst the publishing community. Gary Price, who is a library guy and also a publisher, blogged about this on Monday under the title Some Publishers Not Happy With Google's Library Digitization Program. Then Danny Sullivan, who has his origins as a writer and publisher, and the leading authority figure in the SEM world, followed up Gary's entry with his own named Forget Google Print Copyright Infringement; Search Engines Already Infringe. Both entry titles are incredibly descriptive of their respective thoughts on the topic. There is some concern as well, that this is leading towards Google Taking Over the World.

A forum thread at WebmasterWorld discusses an article published yesterday at the Washington Post named Publishers Protest Google Library Project. The SEM world is buzzing about it at WebmasterWorld.

There has been a Search Engine Watch thread I have been watching, actually since before it became a thread. The thread started off on the topic of a company's Web site being de-listed from Google. The thread is named Webposition.com de-indexed, but the news of Web Position Gold being de-listed is not new. It is fairly well known that Google dislikes Web Position Gold, and they have every right to like or dislike a company.

The thread had turned over to a more interesting tangent. What is a search engines legal or ethical obligations to include the most relevant Web pages of a search query, even though they might disagree or dislike a company? This question is an important one. For example, since Webposition.com does not rank in the Google results, simply because Google penalized them, when someone searches on "Web Position Gold", should the official Web site not come up?

I am not an opinionated person, so let me leave my own comments out. If you are looking for some strong opinions, I highly recommend clicking through to the thread. Here is just a short list of some of the well known names in our industry who have chimed in with their thoughts:

fantomaster - "It would require some hefty legislation to convert them into a public utility type outfit tying them up into such obligations.

Mikkel deMib Svendsen - Yes, I would surely like guaranteed inclusion by law - it absolutely would reduce the risk dramatically on certain kinds of questionable tactics.

dannysullivan - In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of examples where Google overtly will remove material from its index like this -- self-interest. For example, if they banned Yahoo from showing up, there'd be a huge outcry.

DaveN - The smart move would be for google to ban all sites that have used WPG imo. they broke the rules.

massa - Instead of quoting this one, you probably want to click through, since this guy is the man for this thread.

A few more from Danny Sullivan that I should include - This highlights the absurdity. Ban WebPosition, and you've done nothing but downgrade relevancy for your own searchers. They'll still find the product -- heck, even though your own partner Amazon, which has one of the top listings. What they won't find is the official company web site. That's your job as a search engine, to help peopel navigate correctly.

There is a nice new forum thread at WebmasterWorld named Google is refusing to act on DMCA notices, where a member initially reports that Google has declined his request to remove a page from its index based on the DMCA guidelines and laws. As you read down the thread, the thread creator writes:

The sites are all scraper sites of one kind or another. Most are pulling 2-4 sentences of content from my sites (about 40-50 words of content). This content is then listed alongside content scraped from 10-12 other sites and capped with a block of Adsense ads to monitize it.

It's probably not enough duplicate text to have any effect on my rankings, but it's pretty annoying to me that both spammers and Google are knowingly making money off my original content.

From this statement you can see that bits and pieces were "scraped" from his site and put together to make a highly targeted AdSense page. This is nothing new, it is done all the time and it works. It is extremely hard for Google to automatically detect this type of content, since it is far from mathematically "duplicate" and for Google to do anything manual, outside of embarrassing things, is not reasonable. I like how member walkman put it; "don't blame Google then. Copyright is not absolute. 50 words is nothing and easily falls within fair use."

Our very own Ben Pfeiffer (aka Phoenix) started an outstanding thread over at Search Engine Watch forums named Can an SEO/SEM Company Own Your Meta-tags?

The thread was inspired by a friend of Ben who felt he was scammed by an well known SEO company. Basically, the SEO company required that he continue to pay his monthly fee in order to continue to use the meta-tags. In fact, the contract he signed or wanted him to sign read:

The Meta tags provided by ABC Company are the property of ABC Company and protected by copyright law. As a client, you may continue to use the Meta-tags and work provided solely for the website after the terminations of this agreement as long as payments are made as agreed.

Ben goes on to talk about the ethics behind this. Will such a clause stand up in court. And if so, what happens if your sued over your meta-tags, is the SEO company libel?

Replies to Ben's post are of all flavors. Some look at the case from an objective point and say, yes, this should hold up in court. They base this off of documents at copyright.gov that reads;

(b) Works Made for Hire. � In the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author for purposes of this title, and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright.

Others say that its perfectly fine to have that in your contract. It is the same thing as writing an email at work; unless otherwise specified, the business owner has rights to read that email. Others say that it is simply unethical, legal or not.

Seems that some retailers have finally had enough to do about click fraud so much so that instead of complaining about it draining their budgets or reducing the effectiveness of online advertising they are doing something about it. The retailers instead of being proactive about managing their campaigns for click fraud, they are taking care of it the good ole American way by suing them. It appears a small retailer from Texarkana, Arkansas is asking a circuit court in Arkansas to certify the suit as a class action, which would allow many other companies to sue as well. Not only is the suit going after Google and Yahoo, but some others like Time Warner, Ask Jeeves, Walt Disney, Lycos, LookSmart and FindWhat.

As you know click fraud is a major issue these days undermining the search engines in many ways. Even many top SEM experts in the field without hesitation will tell you this and "spam" are two of the main battles search engines will fight in the next couple years. Even, Google's chief financial officer George Reyes told investors that click fraud is the biggest threat to the Internet economy currently. It will be interesting to see what happens with this lawsuit, whether it will be accepted or thrown out and how the search engines react. No word yet from Google or the above on the lawsuit.

There is some forum discussion on this at SEOchat. Related news articles here, here, and here.

It is nice to see that participation at the forums, on behalf of the search engines as well as the individuals that use the search engines make a difference. A thread at WebmasterWorld named Apple wants to take the MAC out of MAC Address... tells a story of a member who had his ads "pulled because they included the term Mac." This individual advertiser is in the business of "client authentication based on several things including the MAC Address of the machine." So the term "MAC Address" is pretty well used in that area, it stands for "Media Access Control address." It often confuses people, the term that is, when someone asks a newbie what their "MAC Address" is, they said, "I don't have a Mac."

A couple weeks later the issue was resolved with AdWords by allowing him to use the term "as long as we make sure to use "MAC Address" and not "MAC"."

It is very interesting to watch these specific cases, it is still early on on what is legal and not legal to bid on. In fact, we have a whole section on Legal Issues in Search most of it in terms of PPC engines. And we have covered 3+ sessions at SES on legal topics, including; Leggo My Trademark: A Search Engine Legal Update - SES NYC 04, Moot Court: Trademark Protection on Trial - SES San Jose 04 and Brand Summit: Life After Geico - Google - SES NYC 05.

This is just a mockery of the US legal work process, in my opinion. Little company buys a domain name "seattle-mortgage-loans.com", soon after a company named "Seattle Mortgage" sends a cease and desist letter. In fact, they don't want this small company to come up in the top results for the term seattle mortgage. This is just very sad. Thread over at Search Engine Watch Forums named Little Guy Sued Over Generic Name Use.

I admit, I no very little about contracts when it comes to SEO jobs. I do not sell "SEO Services", I do not offer "guaranteed positions" and I don't pitch that I will rank your pages in the top results. So when it comes to contracts for me, I do not have to worry about things outside of my control (i.e. Google's Updates, Sandbox and others). But that does not mean that I do not put everything I know into ensuring a Web site is properly coded for the engines and have an outstanding internal linking structure. But I sell Web applications and high end Web sites, not top rankings.

For those of you that sell SEO services and you are looking to protect yourself, from what you need protection, check out a thread at Search Engine Watch where moderator (and I believe former lawyer), mcanerin, posts a detailed sample SEO contract.

He warns:

Be warned that it was intended to be a very complete version - I have another, simplified version I use most of the time. This one is so complete it's been known to scare away small business people who are used to dealing on a "handshake" level.


On the other hand, if you are dealing with a large corporation or a client that is in a foreign territory, this can be very useful for spelling everything out.

Plus he is willing to explain the details of the contract if you have questions.

At this point, the contract is not downloading, seems to be down at the moment. I'll check back later.

Sexually explicit sites are sensitive topics. You have a site, it ranks well for specific keywords, but there are sexually explicit content and/or images on the pages. It is preferred to have an entry page for a first time session on the site. But that doesn't really sit well with search engines. One member at Cre8asite forums started a thread named SEO'ing past 'sexual content' disclaimer. In this thread he asks about putting a disclaimer on each page or redirecting all first time visitors to an entry page with the disclaimer.

Forum admin Grumpus recommends that he add an ICRA Label to his site. He warns that this label will most probably exclude the site from the default results, with safe searching on. Black_Knight says a disclaimer has no legal strength, but a "PICS label or ICRA label are the best legal defences right now." Ammon Johns PMed me with a response, "Those online disclaimers really aren't worth a thing when the whole focus of search engines is to deliver you direct to the content, not the disclaimer." Yup, yup.

One of the topics often discussed behind the scenes at forums, in the moderation rooms, are those of legal issues concerning pulling threads. Some forums have strict policy that anything that might resemble an legal issue, will be pulled. For example; the discussion of companies, specifically how bad company ABC is. Often a PM or email will be sent to the moderators or the administrators to have the thread pulled. It is then up to the administrators (forum owners) to decide on what to do. Some forums have a policy of free speech, and they will not pull anything from the forums except for outright spam.

There are also concerns with reprinting articles, documents and essays online. Over at WebmasterWorld, there is a thread named Liability Issues Return Concerning Online Posts, started by the owner of WebmasterWorld, who is all too familiar with these cases. The main problem is, Internet law is still very immature, let alone forum topics.

Brett quotes from Techdirt:

...a libel lawsuit against a business professor who posted a student's essay to the web to start a discussion. The problem was that the essay detailed the story from one of his students talking about how a company, Ben-Tech, had allegedly pushed him to take confidential materials from Siemens, where he was employed at the time. While posting the paper to the internet was mainly for class discussion only, Google found it, and that helped Ben-Tech find it, and decide that it was libelous.

And then posts his thoughts on the topic:

So we have three parties at risk here:
- the students for making strong statements that may or may not be slanderous or libelous.
- the professor for is potentially illegal actions.
- the search engine for publishing the paper without permission.

This is 2005. My bet, is the kid gets the shaft and the college absolves itslef of the incident.

If Ben-Tech were smart, they would drop:
a) the legal action.
b) make a large donation to the college.
c) ask for rebuttal time in front of the class by their attorney.
d) ask that the rebuttal be published on the web.
e) apologize to the college for dragging it into court.
f) walk away with a masterful gain in Public relations.

It seems as if Google AdWords is allowing (unknowingly) for companies such as eBay to purchase ads (unknowingly) for the "sale of women". Do a search in Google on Women for Sale and look towards the ads on the right. You should see the following ad:

A member at Search Engine Watch Forums is very disturbed by this. This member did a search on women and anger, I believe in the UK, and received an ad that read "Women For Sale Low Priced Women. Big Selection! (aff) - ebay.co.uk". The member asks several questions:

Continue reading "Google AdWords Allows the Sale of "Low Priced Women""

Several hours ago a federal judge ruled that the search engine's advertising policy does not violate federal trademark laws. Score one for the consumer. It appears that if you are interested you can successfully bid on the term "Geico" in Adwords and display ads for it, even though they may not like it.

Here is a brief summary of the news:

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected a claim by auto insurance giant Geico Corp., which argued that Google should not be allowed to sell ads to rival insurance companies that appear whenever Geico's name is typed into the Google search box.

Geico, claimed that Google's AdWords program, which displays the rival ads under a "Sponsored Links" heading next to a user's search results, confuses consumers and illegally exploits Geico's investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in its brand.

Apparently the court did not agree saying that "There is no evidence that that activity alone causes confusion". The ruling occured just three days after the trial had begun. Google is standing by the ruling saying that it "confirms that [their] policy complies with the law, particularly the use of trademarks as keywords." They are also claiming this as a victory for the consumer.

Read the full article here.

So if I bid on your name, will you bid on mine? What if I promote myself by biding on the name of a popular expert, is that ok? How about targeting Donald Trump to sell spray on hair? Cartoon characters to sell vitamins? ;-) Some of the questions addressed in this thread, relating to creative ways to spread your own name and befriend or (anger) an expert. Fun thread this early afternoon to read. I am glad someone brought up the subject up, becauses its relevant to the industry, and its a polarized issue for some people. Ultimately I am to the opinion that if someone is not spreading ill repute for my name - Ben Pfeiffer, then its not going to be an issue, I would applaud them for being smart. However, in a sign of respect I think it comes down its just best to ask them before you go bidding on their name.
Check our the ongoing discussion at SEW - Targeting Personal Names in Adwords

I was pretty sure I wrote about this in the past, but either my search function is not working properly or I am going senile. Anyway, what does one do when they find that someone ripped off their content and is now ranking in the search engines from your hard work?

It happens all the time for content writers. I personally have stopped looking to see if people were ripping my stuff off, it is just too time consuming. But if I stumble across one of these content thieves, I handle it in the following fashion.

(1) Take screen captures of the pages
(2) Download Google/Yahoo/SE cache as proof (if available)
(3) Document whois information and figure out who the ISP is
(4) Call or Email the number (if any) listed on the contact us page
(5) If no response in a few days, send an email to the ISP with the subject Digital Millennium Copyright Act Copyright Infringement with the proof listed above. I ask them to take down the pages that were stolen, providing the file names and paths.
(6) Send email/fax to the search engines
- Google's DMCA
- Yahoo's Copyright Infringement & Yahoo's Page Deletion Process
- Ask Jeeves TOS, scroll down and you will see "Copyrights and Copyright Agent" section with a form.

Actually, just found this excellent page on sending dmca notifications to search engines.

There is this new tool that actually is in beta right now. It's named Article Guard and its purpose is to seek out these content thieves. When the final product is live, I will make sure to post about it. Seems like a great tool.

Google's legal staff basically has a revolving door to and from the court room. Two more widely discussed legal events are unfolding for Google. The first is the case of Age Discrimination at Google and the second is Google's Challenge of 'Froogles' Rejected (which was kind of expected). Now for the forum coverage:

Age Discrimination:
- WebmasterWorld
- Search Engine Watch
- Cre8asite Forums

Froogle Versus Froogles:
- WebmasterWorld
- Search Engine Watch

Pay Per Clicks and trademark lawyers are spending a lot of time together these days. I have posted several times on the trademark topic and brought several cases in the past. The latest news is that Geico sues Google, Overture over trademarks.

The insurer charged the two companies with infringing on its trademarks when they sold them as keywords to Geico's rivals, so that the protected terms could appear in sponsored search results. According to the suit, that practice causes consumer confusion, in violation of the Lanham Act, the primary federal law covering trademark registration and protection.

But

Previously, Google had granted requests from advertisers, including 1-800 Contacts and eBay, to bar competitors from bidding on their trademarked names. Google will now only review trademark complaints that relate to text appearing in sponsored listings on its Web site and those of its partners.

According to Geico's complaint, the insurer considered Google's policy change before pursuing legal action: "Google's recent change in trademark policy constitutes a deliberate decision to use the registered trademarks of other companies, including Geico, for the financial benefit of Google and to the detriment of (others)."

Don't you just love this stuff. We need a legal ruling already. Trademarks need to be protected and I personally do not thing Google's current policy is going to cut it.

Forum coverage at:

• HighRankings Forum
  
• Cre8asite Forums
  

Thank you Doug from Aderit Internet Marketing Consulting for the tip.

A member over at IHelpYou Forums started a thread named fraudulent clicks today where he discusses how his clicks on his AdSense reports skyrocketed in a single day. Someone was fraudulently clicking on those banner ads and he decided to report it to Google.

Pay Per Click advertisers take click-fraud into account when factoring ROI (return on investment) of the overall campaign. Besides for the obvious cons involved with click fraud, the thread discusses some of the, not so obvious, pros.

"Fortunately on AdWords, it can actually increase your position if it happens on a small scale." Google AdWords looks at two factors when deciding how to position ads. (1) The bid placed by the advertiser and (2) the CTR (click through rate) of that particular ad. So if a bid is lower then an other ad but the CTR of that lower priced ad is much higher, the lower priced ad can come up before the higher priced ad with the lower CTR. So that benefits the advertiser who is paying less for the ad.

Could it have been that the advertiser was the 'fraudster'?

Do Google Search on rustybrick, my trademark. If it does not come up, refresh a few times and you will see the following ad by a competitor I never heard of. They call themselves "superior" to RustyBrick, I doubt that. But to stay on topic...

Is there a way to contact Google about this? Will it matter? Google now allows for competitors to bid on trademarked names, however they will not allow one to place the trademarked name in the ad copy. Fair? It is extremely hard for Google to police this, so they try to make their policies as easy going as possible unless otherwise forced to change them.

Three past posts on this subject can be found at:

• Pay Per Click's Trademark Policies
  
• Trademarked Names & Google AdWords Hits Home
  
• Trademarked Names No Longer Blocked by Google AdWords?
  

Posting this for my own notes but it can't hurt to share. Policies at major search engines on allowing bidding for trademarked keywords range widely, with at least one having no stated policy. Here's a rundown:

Google Inc.
Policy: Had limited the bidding on trademarked keywords upon request of trademark holder; within next several weeks, will no longer do so, but won't allow the use of trademarked terms within the ad itself. Also bans critical ads.
Comment: Says it is changing its policy to better serve users with relevant ads; observers say the move will generate more revenue for the search engine

Yahoo Inc.
Policy: Allows bidding, but screens for editorial relevance
Comment: Will investigate complaints from trademark holders, but allows bidding if ad makes clear what the company does

MSN
Policy: Sells retail brands (e.g. Sears) only to the retailer; sells manufacturer brands, like Sony, to the manufacturer or to retailers. Policy differs for brand names that are also generic terms; for instance, would sell "amazon" to Amazon.com but also to an online travel site selling trips to the Amazon region.
Comment: Yahoo supplies some of MSN's paid listings, but MSN also sells some listings directly.

FindWhat.com
Policy: Allows bidding, but screens for editorial relevance
Comment: "Pepsi is allowed to bid on Coke, just as Pepsi uses Coke's trademark in its TV commercials," says Phillip Thune, chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

Lycos Inc.
Policy: Reviews ads for relevance and generally doesn't allow bidding on a competitor's trademark
Comment: Competitors typically "don't have content relevant to that trademark," says Adam Soroca, who runs the ad-bidding system for searches on lycos.com, hotbot.com and other sites

Kanoodle Inc.
Policy: Doesn't allow advertisers to bid on trademarked terms they don't own
Comment: "An advertiser bidding on listings through Kanoodle must either sell, or provide substantive information on, products linked to that listing on their Web sites," says Lance Podell, president of Kanoodle.

My Source: WSJ.com, WSJ Source: the companies

A lot of forum talk has been encourages by the recent news about how Google allows trademarked names to be purchased. In one of the latest threads on this topic over at Cre8asite Forums, this trademark issue hits home.

The trademark at hand is "juno". Juno to most American's is a popular low cost Internet Service Provider. But in the UK, Juno is a popular records store. The trademark issue here is not really applicable because both are valid trademarks. So when you do a Google Juno Search, they Juno (The ISP) has a right to buy the AdWords.

The thread gets deep inside the still hazy area of online keyword purchasing and trademark infringement. Check out the thread named Adwords and Company Names.

Hello,

We're writing to inform you that we're changing our trademark
complaint procedure. This change may affect how we handle
the trademark complaint you currently have on file with us.

If you've requested in your complaint letter that we prevent
advertisers from using certain trademark terms anywhere in
their ad text, we will continue our efforts to support your request.

However, within the coming weeks, our trademark complaint
investigations will no longer result in Google monitoring or
restricting keywords for ads served to users in the US and
Canada. Complaints received after today will be processed
under our revised procedure.

You do not need to file your trademark complaint with us again
unless you would like to amend it based on the new guidelines.

For more detailed information regarding our trademark complaint
procedure, we invite you to review our revised complaint procedure,
posted online at: http://www.google.com/tm_complaint.html.

Sincerely,

The Google Trademark Policy Team

Found over at SEO Chat.

What this means is someone can purchase the keyword "RustyBrick" but can not use the keyword "RustyBrick" in the Ad text. RustyBrick is a trademark, we do Web development. So if RustyBrick was a household name for Web development, like Kleenex is for Tissues, and the advertiser used Web Development in the ad text, then there is no problem.

Curious if one can buy the keyword "Google". :)

A few days back, I covered the forum news on Google's Free Email Service. Now that its real, there is a lot of talk on the privacy issues involved with this free service. What do you feel of Google reading your email?

Forum coverage:
WebmasterWorld
SEO Chat
Cre8asite Forum
DigitalPoint Forums

One of the biggest gray areas for me and many people out there is how can or can't they use the Google API. Recently, Danny Sullivan wrote (password required), "Google's API service isn't aimed to help people build commercial services. But Google Alert sees a business in using the API for tracking Google results. This story suggests it may have cut a deal with Google to share revenues when paid-for services are offered. Google Alert's Gideon Greenspan tells me this: "Google has agreed and encouraged us to begin charging for a premium service using the high-volume API key that they have supplied, but we haven't signed anything yet. As the premium service grows, the key capacity will need to be increased, and we'll enter discussions about specific business terms."

I know that Google doesn't want anyone to sell the results from the Google API. Where it gets gray is when you don't sell the results, but you sell the services around the results but give the results away for free. See the difference. What are your thoughts?

There has always been news on companies/people suing others for documents and information they found on search engines. Today, I received a phone call from Symantec (I would link to their site but I am mad at them so, no PR for you). Before I go into the nature of the call, let me give you some historical background.

We purchased the Symantec VPN 200R device, I have been very happy with it. Problem was that the VPN was not supported by Symantec. So some of my guys at my company put their heads together and figured out a solution. We worked with Symantec a bit over the phone but then ultimately got the VaporSec software working with the Symantec VPN 200R device. So I published the method at the RustyBrick Technology Blog (which I admit needs to be updated more often) for all those to see. I then sent my findings to the technician who gave us a hand early on at Symantec. Who then wrote back to us with a more formal method of setting it up. What I posted at the blog is under the title of Setting up Symantec VPN 200R On Mac OS 10.3 with VaporSec. It was my original verbiage. I even had images with screen shots of how to set up the screens. He used my screen shots in his document and then added more content, above of what I had.

I get a phone call today from that technician saying that Symantec might sue me for copyright infringement. He said someone at Symantec 'Googled' and found this information. I told him - I wrote it and not you. I showed him the text and said this is my copy. I then said, I linked to your document. So I told him I would remove the link to his document. He didn't care either way, he just said he wanted to warn me that its a possibility.

This is the thanks I get from Symantec. Now they can support Apple platforms and they want to sue me. Google, you did it again! ;)

I would just like to clarify an article published at WebProNews that is named Jewish Groups Concerned Over Google Results. It falsely states that "the search engine has now plans to manually change the listing." I think "now" was a typo and should say "no".

The Jewish Journal, which WebProNews links to, states "that Google has no plans to manually alter the results of their ranking system to knock Jew Watch from its top spot." Google responded saying "No, we don�t do that. Google merely reflects what is on the Web and does its best to algorithmically rank pages. Unless [a Web page] violates a country or local law, we don�t make any tweaks."

I have started a thread at SEO Chat on this topic.

Not much else to say about this one, but it's pretty funny if you ask me...

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5176670.html

I even saw the guy posting in forums offering to sell the software...

Quote: Google even called me to thier office, I flew up, met with them, and lets just say, they are scared and don't want this software to get out, bottom line, I don't care anymore.

Hey dummy, too bad they called you there because they wanted to get the extortion attempt on tape. hehe

Of course, his website www.myhq.info is down now.

Situation is as follows; company A is involved in lawsuit. Lawsuit is publicized on law firms Web site. Few weeks later, when you do a search on Company A's name, law suit information comes up in rankings.

The topic was brought up at WebmasterWorld with the thread name Client wants record of old lawsuit moved down in rank.

I have had large clients that asked me to do the same because of Web sites by customers who are dissatisfied with their product/services.

This is an interesting thread. Two courses of action. First thing one can try is to call Google, but they will only take pages down that are illegal in some fashion. Second, rank multiple site's above the site you want to move down in the rankings. That is a big task and would take a lot of resources.