Late Friday news came down that Google has been sued by KinderStart.com, a parental advice site, for being demoted in the search rankings. KinderStart is trying to create a class action lawsuit for all Web site owners who have been blacklisted by Google since January 2001. "The complaint accuses Google, as the dominant provider of Web searches, of violating KinderStart's constitutional right to free speech by blocking search engine results showing Web site content and other communications." In addition, the lawsuit wants Google to turn over its secret search ranking algorithms. Plus, the complaint says that KinderStart has served its "its probation inside the "Sandbox" before release by the Defendant Google." For full news write ups, read Silicon Valley or Reuters or News.com. Also, if you like, you can read the whole filing at here, I wanted to capture a screen shot of the second paragraph of the introduction for you here, it is worth a quick scan.
Some information that may be important for this case.
- Google has posted its Webmaster guidelines for over three years now, clearly on its Web site.
- Google has recently been sending out warning emails to Webmasters who have been crossing over that line.
- Google has once officially confirmed a penalty in the past.
- KinderStart.com clearly has Google AdSense ads on their site.
- KinderStart has not been all that careful with managing its comments.
- KinderStart seems to have ~29,800 pages in the Google index. Although there seems to be huge supplemental issues.
Now for the forum roundup;
