Google sued over rankings (penalty)

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16187&hed=Google+Sued+over+Ranking&sector=Industries&subsector=InternetAndServices
I was wondering if anyone tried to sue G for penatly/bans. Here is one story...
sorry not news, organic SEO posted this on March 19

yup saw that...

i'd be happy to c g sued over sandbox

Maybe I should sue my newspaper for not writing enough articles about my website.

If someone wants to sue me, please do, I always look for an excuse to wear a suit..

Although my "fondness" of google has dwindled in recent years, I still think this lawsuit is absurd. KinderStart.com is not a customer of google, and they have not bought or paid for a top listing. KinderStart.com is one of tens to hundred of millions of website businesses out there. Not all can be on the top listings - google just indexes and lists websites.

It is still up to the website owners to create business, whether it's through the 'net or otherwise. Too many website owners still have the mentality of "Build it, and they will come". Many also feel they are entitled to be on the top, or if they have been on the top before, they deserve to stay there (in KinderStart.com's case). I guess I can feel for them with the heavy loss of traffic, but google owes them nothing...

Just my .02

Google can rank websites any way they want... and Google can change the way that they rank websites any time they want.

If these guys can't handle that they should hire an SEO instead of an attorney.

Whether or not you like the sandbox, thinking that Google should be sued over it or any other criteria they choose to rank pages by is absurd. Just what we need, the government telling search engines how they can and can't determine what results to return - and morons masquerading as business men (or business women) who are constantly on the lookout for someone else to blame for their failures.

If a journalist starting writing articles about my company, which resulted in me getting a lot of business, should I have the right to turn around and sue them when they stop and my business decreases? If a past customer tells everyone he knows what a great job I do and sends me millions in business, should I be able to sue him when he stops and those leads stop flowing in? NO!

I have no RIGHT to the business generated by the situations described above, just as kinderstart (obviously run by executives with kinder-brains) has no RIGHT to free traffic from Google. Google gave them a free benefit from the traffic they got via their search rankings. There is no obligation tied to that benefit. It was not OWED to them. If their business model was built around a GUARANTEE of free traffic from Google, they should go back to B-school and study harder... Or better yet, use the same common sense your average business owner picks up their first year out of the gate - Don't count on business from sources over which you have no control.

I hope these clowns not only lose, but get stuck with Google's legal fees as well. Maybe if a few of these baseless suits actually cost the plaintiffs some cash, people would consider taking responsibility for their own screw ups before looking for who to sue.

I'm hoping they win - then we can all sue google for not making all of our sites rank #1

Seriously though - living in the UK I guess I've grown used to hearing about "absurd" lawsuits in the US (no offence intended), so I wasn't suprised when I read about this, just kind've sadly pondering how much money the attornies are gonna pocket out of all this - and how much of it they'll be donating to people who really need it for something useful... (like ummmm food)!

Like wise I heard that is fairly difficult to sue someone in the UK. Basically here in the US if you do anything other than exactly what you say, you may be sued.

I think the absurdity of the statement is supposed to be reflected in the smiley icon. I thought it was just a joke.

I do sympathise with companies that get diversly effected when Google changes the algo or the way they rank sites for the serps, but I dont think its cause for a court case.

Google provide the service because they choose to, they arent contractually bound to or necessarily obliged to provide this service.

In an extreme circumstance, for example; if Google decided tomorrow to cut off all search services they currently offer, what could we do about it? nothing.

This also proves as yet another reason to "not put your eggs in one basket" It is important to not rely on Google, or at least as a business have some kind of reliable backup plan if google decides to shut its doors tomorrow.

Thats easy to say and it can be difficult to cover revenue lost by losing %70 of your Google visits. But if you are going to rely on one (unreliable) medium to get your visitors that the gamble. Its not like the old days where market researchers would find niche advertising mediums and run weekly ads. Thats very reliable, just as adwords is reliable.
Say you open a shoe store downtown, are you going to rely on the newspaper to give you free ads? If a reporter writes an article about your new business downtown, are you going to then sue him when he doesn't write more? Are you going to only rely on word of mouth to run your business?

My only comment, which I believe has been brought up in the media is this:

In the 60's and 70's it became a required business practice to start being listed in the Yellow Pages (yes remember them). Some businesses could not gain customers without a listing.

So imagine that you were not able to get a listing, or you had a listing and it was removed and you were not told why.

When I first built out my site I submitted it to Google. I didn't see it indexed for a while so I submitted it again. I later found out that in most cases if you submit a site twice you get a penalty from Google, but they didn't tell you this on the submit page (maybe they do now).

I also find the lawsuit questionable but the fact is you cannot run an online business today without being listed in Google and Yahoo so some better transparency may be needed by both companies.

That's not true, multiple submissions don't have any effect at all.