Suing Google Over Pagerank 427
Yardboy wrote in to tell us about a story from Reuters describing a lawsuit by parental advice company Kinderstart.com against Google for 'charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning.' Kinderssart claims Google is responsible for 'a "cataclysmic" 70 percent fall in its audience -- and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.' I guess the courts will now decide: Can google taketh what they giveth?
Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:5, Informative)
If I wanted to find some information on what they do it would be tough navigating through that. Good website design skills: provide information as quickly as possible, seem to have been misplaced.
But they don't really do anything, other than linking other sites. They're a link site, plain and simple. Probably harvesting click through revenue and add little value to the internet. And on a wild guess here, since a year ago, using the same search parameters, I have had many less 'link sites' coming up in Google searches which I see as only a good thing. Ironically they may well find the sites they link to through Google.
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone else find it funny they're running Google Ads? THAT's why they're pissed off ... 80% decline in ad revenue from google.
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like one of those sites you get when you mispell the name of a website and you end up with some random search. If I hadn't gone there from slashdot, I would have quickly hit the back button for fear of spyware.
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot as a garantor of website safety? Wow, this is a new one!
So when Slashdot links to you-know-where, you won't quickly hit the back button for fear of irreparable eye damage, because, well, it was linked from Slashdot?
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:2)
I haven't read their homepage, though...
Re:Well, they are spammed with traffic now... (Score:5, Funny)
... and Kinderstart sues slashdot a week later ...
In retaliation, slashdot "mis-links" a "story" mis-titled "SCO Files for Bankruptcy" to Kinderstart and Kinderstarts' resultant server bandwidth overcharges put them out of business.
sorry (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, but that's just wrong. I know you're trying to sound cute and all, but even Shakespeare would say "Can google take what they give?"
it's... (Score:2, Funny)
So which is it... (Score:5, Insightful)
"aggressively defends the secrecy of its patented search ranking system"
Is it patented or secret? I mean it can't be both.
Re:So which is it... (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Re:So which is it... (Score:2)
A little of both (Score:5, Informative)
But Google's results are much more than page rank. It also involves other algorithms relating to the search keys for a particular search. And there are tuning factors to the particular PageRank implementation. Google's proprietary tweaks keep ahead of the people who try to artificially inflate their page rank (like, apparently, these guys). Those are secret, and search engine optimizers would dearly love to know them so that they could fake out Google.
PageRank (Score:3, Informative)
They are just a search engine? (Score:5, Informative)
They advertise themselves as a search engine.
Google still indexes over 25000 pages by them, and from my initial examination, theres no content.
They appear to be just a linkfarm
Google aren't wrong, this kind of thing is what we have been asking them to do for ages (clear out the crap)
They seem to have articles too (Score:5, Informative)
The funny thing is, it looks like they are using slash!
Re:They seem to have articles too (Score:2)
Look out for the slashcode trolls (hope they're running the latest and greatest).
-nB
Re:They seem to have articles too (Score:3, Informative)
No, they aren't running Slash, they are running Squishdot [squishdot.org], which is a Slash clone built on top of Zope [zope.org].
Even worse (Score:2)
Uh... Google can do whatever it wants... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh... Google can do whatever it wants... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. If the courts say there must be a "fair" system to decide pagerank, then who decides? Do we want Google and Yahoo to
Human index isn't the solution (Score:4, Insightful)
That's definitely the solution. I can always find exactly what I'm looking for with Open Directory, but not with Google.
Give me a break. Maybe you just need to learn how to search? Or maybe you should click the little link at the bottom of your bad search results that says "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." You won't find that at Yahoo.
Re:Uh... Google can do whatever it wants... (Score:2)
It's not a private company. It's a publicly traded company that now has to answer to its shareholders. Never underestimate shareholders' ability to steer a company completely down the wrong path for a quick buck.
Google can't do whatever it wants (Score:2, Insightful)
Google is, as has already been mentioned, a public company. It does have certain fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders, so the management can't for example, decide to shut down operations, abscond with the profits, and move to the Bahamas.
Beyond that, though, any company still has to operate within the law. Just ask Microsoft, which is grappling with EU law and has fought the US Justice Department and various US states over the years. Virtually any large company you can think of has been sued for
Re:mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft = MONOPOLY
Google = _not_ a monopoly
These are two completely different situations. Microsoft has legal restrictions put upon it becuase of it's position in the market (a Monopoly). They are _forced_ by law to play nice with others, because they have so much power.
Google isn't in this position (yet!). There are still several _large_ competitors (Yahoo and MSN) and Google is no where near a monopoly. Because of this they don't have any legal restric
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, pagerank is explained here [iprcom.com] and here [google.com]. Finally, if 70% of their audience and 80% of their revenue SOLELY relies on Google, then they need to change the way they advertise their site and profit from it. Looking at their site, they look just like a plain directory of links; they probably make money from advertising.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Sounds like pre-dotcom-bubble-bursting business model is showing its age. And they want to hit the biggest pocket first.
Frankly the site isn't all that - I don't think I agree with their rankings or content. If pagerank decided that they're not worthy of the rating, so be it...
I hate to mention it - but there is >some truth to search engine optimization methods, however from the details of the story - it sounds like Kinderstart's executives
My take on this (Score:2, Insightful)
And their argument is pretty damn lame, saying Google is "depriving their customers". Well, their customers already know about their company, and thus should easily be able to find them again. It would be potential customers that might los
You reap what you sow (Score:5, Informative)
So don't whine if you get back slapped
Merely a First Measure (Score:5, Funny)
Whats next? (Score:2)
Re:Whats next? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, you see, all dot coms are not dot bombs!
Well, I think their time has come.
Tick, Tock. Tick, Tock.
Incidentally, even archive.org has stopped wasting space on them (last index march 2005)
traffic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:traffic (Score:2, Insightful)
Advertising-101 will tell you that heavy promotion merely compresses the timeframe for adoption and repeat business.
If the product stinks, it will flame out in under a year rather than die a slow product cycle death. They lost core visitors here.
whinny babies (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think they have a leg to stand on (Score:4, Informative)
If my opinion is that your site sucks, you can't sue me for that.
Isnt it their page? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are they going after google? This seems more like the web designers fault, and not google's problem.
Being as vague as possible, I once did some work for a company who loved the results I was getting them in their page ranking. Then, one of the 'managers' came up and said that one person was complaining about the design of the site. I tried for a week to explain that any changes would result in a drastic drop in our page rank. I've actually studied the google patent filing, and was able to learn some important details that were used in the site constructively to help the ranking.
Since it wasnt my company, all I could do was explain what I thought the results of this decision would be. I ended up 'changing' the page layout to satisfy the clueless management, onlt to see a 15% drop in traffic and a fall from 6/10 to 4/10 in page ranking on google. Did I try to say it was google's fault? Hell no! I knew exactly where the blame was to be placed, and I vocally explained what was going on, why it was going on, and whos decision it was to make this change.
Suprisingly, they no longer question my ability to do my job. And that was shortly followed by a raise after I pointed out that I was very disapointed that I had to associate my name with such crappy performance, that was a result of poor decisions I warned against. And yes, it is VERY difficult to regain page ranking. But not impossible, unless of course your page uses every nasty trick in the book for optimization.
But the part about this company filing a lawsuit against google based on free speech? Is that a joke? It sounds like the lawyers this company hired are about as incompetent as their web designers.
Free services becoming core infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Private company freely provides service
2) It is found useful by individuals and companies for finding one another
3) Its use becomes wide-spread and significant in the success of companies (maybe)
4) One particular company sues provider of this free service for not catering to them
Not that this is the first one to bite the hand that feeds.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Google should help them out... (Score:3, Funny)
Shoot Your Lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shoot Your Lawyer (Score:2, Insightful)
Excellent! (Score:2)
I guess the next natural step is to throw a crappy website together and then sue kinderstart.com for failing to link to it. In the unlikely event that they DO link to it, I'll just sue them for my 'losses' due to them losing 70% of their traffic (and so reducing the visibility of their link to my crappy content free site).
Or we could all just grow up and realize that nobody, including a search engine, is legally obligated to 'recommend' (however mildly) any other site unless a private contract is in place
This site deserves it (Score:3, Interesting)
The site looks like the last time it was updated was 2000, the year on their site copyright. Most of the links don't even work.
I've built sites for these types of companies (back when I was starting out). Its probably just one or two people working out of their garage, fully expecting that the 10,000 domain names they purchased entitle them to millions of dollars. Quite sad, really.
Google has no obligation to pay their rent, and the Internet has no use for this trash. Get a real fucking job.
Re:This site deserves it (Score:3, Informative)
Funnily enough http://www.kinderstart.co.uk/ [kinderstart.co.uk]seems to be a valid site promoting a chain of nursery schools in the UK. It comes at the very top of google.co.uk's list when you search for "kinderstart". Google just seem to have downranked the US site because it's a junk link, providing no-one with any useful information, which is exactly what they should have done! Hope the suit gets thrown out and the judge orders them to pay Google's costs.
And in further news... (Score:5, Funny)
Pluto is suing the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City for depriving it of attention by school children by downgrading its status from "planet" to "biggest object in the Kuiper belt," without reason or warning...
and Texas is suing Alaska for unfairly depriving it of bragging rights by downgrading its rank among states listed by area, without reason or warning.
Will *their* customers sue *them*? (Score:2)
In Other News... (Score:4, Funny)
All the eggs in one basket? (Score:2, Troll)
Mod Me Up! (Score:4, Funny)
Publicity stunt (Score:3, Interesting)
First Amendment? (Score:3, Insightful)
They have the right to free speech. But here's the thing: Google is not a public forum. Google, as a seperate company, has every right to decide what they do and do not display on their webpage. Kinderstart has every right to go elsewhere and advertise their site. But last time I checked, regulating what privately-owned web pages display don't fall under the first amendment. Otherwise, you'd see a lawsuit every time a post gets deleted on (insert random popular web forum here) for breaking whatever that site's ToS is.
But, of course, it makes for better FUD when you slap a "You broke the first amendment!" sticker on companies.
On the plus side, at least Google's lawyers are getting a workout. Between the whole DoJ thing [slashdot.org], the FTC's demand for emails [slashdot.org], and that stupid Usenet lawsuit [slashdot.org], they're definately earning their pay.
Boo Hoo! (Score:3, Interesting)
Do they have any actual evidence Google maliciously lowered the site's listing in search results?
Google is not necessarily directly responsible for every downgrade of a Pagerank. The system is supposed to work based on how many people choose to link to a site. Therefore, falling Pagerank is simply a symptom of falling site popularity, although this would be a circular effect (the lower you are in the results display the fewer people will click you anyway). But that's not Google's fault. It's simply that most consumers are too lazy to read all results throughly before clicking one.
Given that it's just an advertising trap, the problem could be that (gasp!) consumers have figured out this site simply has no real information, and it's falling in popularity becuase there aren't as many suckers to reel in at this point. In other words, the whole site's business model has gone through it's half-life, they're on the downward slope of their cash-cow.
"Google does not generally inform Web sites that they have been penalized nor does it explain in detail why the Web site was penalized," the lawsuit said.
So?
Who said they have to?
Google's not a public utility or branch of the government last time I checked. If you don't like where you fall in search results, market yourself, improve your site, or go home crying to mommy.
The suit was filed the same day a federal judge denied a U.S. government request that Google be ordered to hand over a sample of keywords customers use to search the Internet while requiring the company to produce some Web addresses indexed in its system.
I don't see any relation between these two events. But if the editor wanted a couple more inches of article...
Interesting side note: When I worked in dial-up tech support I got a call from a customer who had a page up in their personal webspace. The page was about childhood abuse (or maybe eduaction, I can't remember) anyway. This person was an author of a couple books and her site was in the top ten results for this topic on Google for awhile. It had recently fallen to the second page I believe. They were calling us because they somehow thought we were responsible and wanted us to put the customers page back up to the third result when searching Google for the topic of the customer's expertise. Also, the site was not coming up when clicking the page link in Google.
The reason the site didn't come up anymore was the customer had their page up on a personal webspace (so the URL was htt p://home.isp.com/~username) but the customer had set up the page before her ISP had been bought out by us. So the google search result had the old ISP's domain (and we'd stopped forwarding from that domain to ours after a few years). I had to talk with them for a very long time about how the order of results are decided on Google (even showing them the "miserable failure" googlebomb to illustrate how results can be tampered with). My recommndations in the end were to get a proper domain name for their site and try to contact google to get the exiting result's URL corrected.
If Google made it a little more clear about how Pagerank works (without disclosing all their proprietary info, just a survey of information) to the public lawsuits like this wouldn't be possible, and they would get less hatemail from political parties/celebrities taking things personally.
They're using SlashCode! (Score:3, Informative)
I'm submitting this story:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-1011740.html [com.com]
Thanks AKAImBatman!
Page rank is opinion. Freedom of speech (Score:3, Informative)
It is their opinion, expressed in code.
If I do not like the food at a restaurant, can they sue me?
If I do not like Nike trainers (sneakers) can they sue me?
If I am allergic to nuts, can some nut sue me?
Failing that, google can google the judge and jury, find all their dirt, and black-mail them
mauhahahahahahahahahah on an evil scale that rates less than loosing the case, so it is ok.
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want to be shown they should pay for advertising. My lastname.com is on page 3 if I search for mylastname. So should I sue google? Maybe I should "advertise" since that is how they exist.
I hate bullshit like this, if you base your business model on a high google ranking you should do what others are to maintain it. Salma Hayek pics are hard to find since those site purveyors have the first 1000 links or so going to some scam *nude stars* sites. lol... maybe that is what i wanted after all
Re:fp (Score:2, Troll)
Apparently something. You see, apparently someone turned everything up-side-down while you and I were not looking. It now appears that if you go to a resturant and get bad food and bad service and write that in a review of that resturant then the resturant can sue you for giving them a bad "rank" - just like you now apparently can sue Google for ranking a garbage website low.
Re:fp (Score:3, Funny)
That has always been true. You can sue anyone for anything.
Now, if they win, on the other hand...
--
Krazy Kat [ignatzmouse.net]
Try the 'in-your-shoes' test (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine Microsoft says it has the definitive authoritative search engine, and then blocks Oracle from the results. Now when you search for anything related to databases you don't get Oracle, even searches directly related to do with Oracle databases.
Are you OK with that now?
Google owes Kinderstart *nothing*, other than a good authoritative search result, because thats what they've promised to deliver. So anytime they end up in court it will come down to this 'can it be argued
Re:Try the 'in-your-shoes' test (Score:5, Informative)
I think Google should sue them though. If I type "google" into their search engine all I get is:
Home : Search Results
_________________________________________________
Results for 'google' (0 matches found).
Page 1 of 1
Re:fp (Score:3, Insightful)
What does a private company owe someone who simply wants to be ranked high?
Um, Google is a public company.
However, public or private, Google isn't required to reveal their methods as those methods could qualify as a trade secret. If you try to haul Coke into court and demand they hand over their formulae, what do you think would happen? (besides the judge giggling, snickering, and laughing as though they are wearing feathered underwear under their black robe.
If they don't like the way they're ranke
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Lawsuit is Well-Grounded (Score:3, Insightful)
Utilities are natural monopolies. Telecoms are natural monopolies. Windows represents a natural monopoly.
Google is not a natural monopoly. First, it is not a monopoly at all. Yahoo! and MSN will be pretty miffed at the notion that Google controls the market--sure they are the top dog, but they don't control it. Second, unlike the cases mentioned above, there is relatively free entry in the search engine market. Just ask Google. They entered search very late
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bullshit suit. I'm sorry you don't have a constitutional right to have your message/voice broadcast/printed/served/displayed by others.
Re:fp (Score:2, Informative)
Congress shall make no law
The Bill of Rights only restricts the government. It has no influence on any other entity.
Re:fp (Score:2)
Re:fp (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:fp (Score:5, Informative)
Here it was I thought they were producing something, or selling something (hence the terms 'customers' and 'revenue').
Nope. Just a big-ass referral site, sucking down affiliate fees for driving real customers to real sites that sell real stuff.
Now I understand why Google k-lined them.
Re:fp (Score:2)
I would consider Google one of many food critics in a town of restaurants... you can't sue because you got a poor rating - suck it up, improve your site, and try again.
I fear they're trying to drum up traffic anyway they can because their site sucks. If google doesn't return the sites people want - they will and do use other search engines
Re:fp (Score:3, Funny)
Re:fp (Score:5, Informative)
This is known as a "clicktrap" and (imho) is the most annoying thing in the world to happen upon.
People use Google because your chances of finding what you want, quickly are good. I.e. being taken directly to the "end of the line" , either right to a store itself, or to an article, or something else related to your search. Not to one of the stupid internet polluting man in the middle wastes of disk space.
You can go to a site like shitlance [scriptlance.com] and pay someone from India a few hundred bucks to arrange hundreds of lasting (and good) backlinks. Search that site for "SEO" and you'll see what I mean.
Off my soapbox
Re:Worst thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's bad for your blood pressure.
>> Does the war in Iraq not annoy you?
Referring to war as 'annoying' is glib and tasteless.
>> Does "third-world" poverty not annoy you?
I live in the third world (I'm an American living in the Philippines). Yes, actually it does. However the topic was not about third world poverty.
>> Is this really the most annoying thing in the world?
No, its not. You have a point and I'll happily rephrase my post.
"Click traps are one of th
Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Google is a private company. It has no obligation to endorse Kinderstart's company than any others.
Like I have said before, the constituion gives you a right to freedom of speech, it does not guarentee you an audience. Saying Google should be forced to index Kinderstart *at all*, let alone that it should enfoce some ranking formula, would be akin to saying that a library should be forced to hold a certain book, or that a televsion station be forced to air a certain show.
Don't like the shows on a network? Change the channel. Don't like the results Google provides? Use another engine. It's not like they have a monopoly on web searching.
Re:Give me a break (Score:2)
The same logic could be used to say that a loan officer could refuse loans to people based on skin color.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just taking it to it's logical conclusion.
Re:Give me a break (Score:2)
Re:Give me a break (Score:2, Interesting)
However, I find it ironic that when Google is involved, Slashdotters seem to subscribe to the "private companies should be allowed to do as they please" ideology, but when say Microsoft is involved, Slashdotters everywhere scream "MONOPOLY! DOWN WITH CORPORATE AMERICA!" and the like. Microsoft
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
In principle, of course, you're absolutely right -- but the difference is that Microsoft broke the law (and mostly got away with it, grumblings on
Whether Google actually constitutes a search engine monopoly is an interesting question; given Yahoo's position as a pretty strong number two, I'm inclined to say not, but it might be worthy of a court test one of these days. I really doubt Kinderstart are going to be the ones to make this happen, though.
Even traded companies are still private (Score:5, Informative)
No, Google is a public company. You see there's this obscure institution called the "stock market"...
No, Google offered some shares to be exchanged on a particular market, making them a publically traded company, but they are in fact, a private entity all the same. In this short review of high school level Social Studies, the public sector is the Government, and the private sector is everything else. The unrelated term "publically traded" simply means that there are no buyer restrictions on who may own or trade their stocks. There is such a thing as stocks that are not publically traded as well.
Regardless of the trading of their stock certificates in the marketplace, Google does not gain some new requirement to rank companies/sites according to anyone elses wishes on how they should be ranked.
~Rebecca
Re:fp (Score:5, Interesting)
If Google opened its pagerank, then the order of search results would be the cleverness of the webmasters to craft their webpage to exploit Google's methods, instead of actual relevence to the search involved. You'd prefer that situation? Google would effectively denigrate into a giant billboard, and you'd then have to search through dozens of useless 'advertising' false links to get to the information you really want.
Re:fp (Score:3, Interesting)
"Google does not generally inform Web sites that they have been penalized nor does it explain in detail why the Web site was penalized,"
Sometimes they do [slashdot.org] and sometimes then dont [slashdot.org]
Re:fp (Score:2)
Re:fp (Score:2)
Re:fp (Score:2)
Completely transparent to the end user, except for the 8080.
Re:fp (Score:2)
The fact that you actually see that just means that they haven't figured out how to use mod_proxy.
Re:fp (Score:2)
Not really - its one of the 2 alternate http ports (the other being 8000) when you want to get around your ISP's port blocking. The regular ports are 80 (http) and 443 (https).
The rest of the site is static content; kin
Re:fp (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:fp (Score:2)
Google admits how to exploit them on their own site!!!
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html [google.com]
"Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attenti
Re:fp (Score:3, Insightful)
You are effectively saying that Google is better because it uses security by obscurity. I know lots of Slashdotters, especially supporters of FOSS, believe that relying on security by obscurity is silly and pointless. I'd just like to hear what those people think of how
Re:fp (Score:3, Insightful)
If I say "I recommend these sites: " and then I remove one from my list, am I obliged to *explain* myself?
I am not, no more than anyone is obliged to listen to me.
In general, I think corporations *should* be answerable for the broader consequences of their business motivated decisions (even though, as a matter of law, they generally are not). However, in this case, that is absolute hogwash.
They should be free to make whatever recommendations they wan
Re:fp (Score:2)
Re:fp (Score:2)
Didn't other search engines do that before google existed?
Re:fp (Score:5, Informative)
SearchKing sued Google over the same thing a couple of years ago [slashdot.org], and lost the suit. [slashdot.org] The judge's comment was:
KinderStart will lose. Case closed.
Re:fp (Score:5, Interesting)
Google chooses not to reveal its pagerank algorithms precisely to prevent the kind of link-bombing in which Kinderstart was almost certainly engaged. And why should they? This is one of the few cases where "security through obscurity" kinda works -- unlike with, say, encryption algorithms, which depend for security on a secret number, and which generally get stronger when they're open for public scrutiny, the security of Google's page rankings depends on the secrecy of the algorithm itself. They have no obligation to reveal their algorithm to Kinderstart or anyone else.
Now, as a generally pro-F/OSS guy, I personally think it would be great if Google came up with "public key pagerank" -- i.e., a pagerank algorithm that could be released as open source without compromising its effectiveness for a specific application -- but apparently that hasn't happened yet.
If anyone has a case here, it's Google; they could sue Kinderstart and everyone else who tries to manipulate the rankings, and probably under the DMCA they could press criminal charges as well. They don't, for two reasons: it would interfere with the warm'n'fuzzy "don't be evil" vibe they're still trying to project, and it would be a waste of time and money, in that they'd probably spend a lot more trying to track down the thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions?) of sites that try to do this crap than they would collect in damages. But personally I hope they turn around and grind Kinderstart.com into the dust.
BTW, the first search result that comes up on Google when you search for "Kinderstart" now is this [kinderstart.co.uk], which seems like a legitimate business rather than a badly designed wannabe portal. How is this a bad thing?
Re:fp (Score:2)
This is completely false. What SEO guys have managed to do is come up with advices and rough, very rought knowledge of what goes behind the scenes.
Deriving exactly what happens behind the scene would mean managing to reconstruct the Pagerank algorithm -- which hasn't happened yet -- and be able to reliably generate PR10 pages -- which hasn't happened either.
Re:fp (Score:2)
No, the truth is that these people have some idea of what's going on, and as such can neither guarantee results nor non-detection. If the actual algorithm were known, as you claim, then it would be much more trivial to design a page to be undetectably ranked highly.
There is no merit in their case. (Score:2)
Re:Constitutional issue? (Score:2)
Besides, Google is not a public service. If they decide they don't want people promoting purple-and-green teddy bear love in their lobby, they can kick them out of the place. A website or a search engine is not a 'place of public accomodation' or a public location. No company would want that
Re:Woah...Wait (Score:2)
New mod needed (Score:2)