Kinderstart's Lawsuit against Google gets dismissed
- By: Cristian Mezei [privmsg - website] On 13th Jul 2006 In
So we have been discussing this in Threadwatch story before, where the term "sandbox" was mentioned in a lawsuit against Google carried out by Kinderstart, a directory and search engine for information related to children.
Well, a California judge dismissed the lawsuit against Google (yesterday, 13.07.2006) over its fall in the Google search index, but left the door open for the lawsuit to be amended and refiled.
KinderStart attorney Gregory Yu also said he was encouraged by the judge's discussion pertaining to the defamation claim, and he urged other Web site publishers to contact him at Glawinfo.com to join the lawsuit, which seeks class action status.
"The decision suggests that, if properly alleged, Google may be defaming a whole class of Web sites sacked with a '0' PageRank," he wrote in a statement. "If plaintiffs show Google manually tampered with even a single Web site's PageRank, Google's entire claim of 'objectivity' of search results and rankings could collapse."
Ambulance Chaser
Since when is PR 0 defamation?
It's a score in an algorithm, it's not like Google is running around calling them scam artists, it's a popularity factor, and when I checked on the 27th they were a PR7, wish I had a screen shot of that.
Yeah man .. They had PR4
Yeah man .. They had PR4 until this lawsuit came up I think..
Imagine the linkbait they got and the press coverage.
Check it out.
Defamation
If they were being held as an example on Matt Cutt's website being tarred and feathered THAT's defamation possibly, as being an example of breaking the rules isn't always defamation either.
This restores a tiny bit of
This restores a tiny bit of faith in the US legal system after all.
Toolbar PR is not part of an algorithm
Toolbar PR is not "a score in an algorithm". It's a public statement about the approximate value of a Web page with respect to the overall community.
There may, in fact, be some merit to arguments that manually reducing PR to 0 constitutes defamation (which is not to say I think anyone could win a defamation suit on the basis of Toolbar PR).
It would require, I think, some extensive research. Bob Massa's situation comes to mind, for example. If Google's devaluation of SearchKing's PR actually cost him money, and if he didn't sue for defamation (I don't recall the specifics), he might have an opportunity here (unless a statute of limitatons has expired -- I think there is a 2-3 year limit on defamation).
Matt Cutts refers to Toolbar PR as "external PageRank". It might be best for SEOs to start thinking of Toolbar PR in that way, so as to avoid making gaffes like the above in the future.
Personally, I don't think Kinderstart will get far anyway, but I don't have to argue the case in court.
Toolbar PR is not "a score
Just for the record (so don't get pissed on me): Can you point me to the page that displays 100% of the current Google algorithm formulas and all the other relevant information ?
I would like to Ctrl+F "pagerank" in the pages where Google displays it's algorithm scores, variables and ranking parts.
well, there was
well, there was this
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/7258
Irrelevant Aaron :)
Irrelevant Aaron :)
Google on PageRank
Can you explain why such a request is relevant to the well documented fact that Toolbar PR is not used in the algorithms?
My contention has always
My contention has always been that page rank is a part of an algorithm that belongs to Google.
However,if and when that algorithm is manipulated with the intent of causing harm without due process that is illegal,(or at least it should be).