TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Companies Subvert Search Results to Squelch Criticism

Re: Companies Subvert Search Results to Squelch Criticism

Steve Sobol (sjsobol@JustThe.net)
Tue, 14 Jun 2005 20:21:18 -0700

Barry Margolin wrote:

>>> It's not illegal, but it's SEO gone bad. Companies such as Quixtar are
>>> using Google-bombing, link farms and Web spam pages to place positive
>>> sites in the top search results -- which pushes the negative ones
>>> down.

>> Yeah, and there may be no laws against it, but if it's done on a large
>> enough basis you can bet they'll get sued.

> On what grounds?

Google has money and I'm sure they have hired competent, resourceful
attorneys who could find something reasonable and make it
stick. Something fraud-related, possibly, or they might be able to
point to violations of their Terms of Service.

> against frivilous lawsuits, which is what such a lawsuit (as manipulating
> a search engine) would be. PAT]

Oh, really? Creating fraudulent search engine results is not a valid
reason for a lawsuit?

JustThe.net - Steve Sobol / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
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