TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Kinderstart Sues Google Regards Index Placement

Kinderstart Sues Google Regards Index Placement

Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org)
Sun, 19 Mar 2006 23:34:42 -0600

Kinderstart sues Google over lower page ranking

A parental advice Internet site has sued Google Inc., charging it
unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its
search-result ranking without reason or warning.

The civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose,
California, on Friday by KinderStart.com seeks financial damages along
with information on how Google ranks Internet sites when users conduct
a Web-based search.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment but the company
aggressively defends the secrecy of its patented search ranking system
and asserts its right to adapt it to give customers what it determines
to be the best results.

KinderStart charges that Google without warning in March 2005
penalized the site in its search rankings, sparking a "cataclysmic" 70
percent fall in its audience -- and a resulting 80 percent decline in
revenue.

At its height, KinderStart counted 10 million page views per month,
the lawsuit said. Web site page views are a basic way of measuring
audience and are used to set advertising rates.

"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.

While an entire sub-industry exists to help Web sites feature
prominently in Google results, the company is known to punish those
who try to trick the system into boosting their search rankings.

The lawsuit notes that rival search systems from Microsoft Corp.'s MSN
and Yahoo Inc. feature Kinderstart.com at the top of their rankings
when the name "Kinderstart" is typed in.

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.

KinderStart contends that once a company has been penalized, it is
difficult to contact Google to regain good standing and impossible to
get a report on whether or why the search leader took such action.

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.

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.

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