Google sued over lowering company’s ranking.
Kinderstart.com, a parental advice site, has filed a lawsuit against Google for unfairly lowering it’s ranking without a reason or warning. They claim that in March of 2005 their site fell in the ranking and as a result had lost 70% of it’s traffic and about 80% decline in revenue. As a result they seek financial damages as well as details about Google’s ranking algorithm.
According to reuters:
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.
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.
Now, Kinderstart, on their side, is not that honest with their visitors (’search engines’) either. Some of their “Last Few Sites Added” have been there since July 2004, and in many occasions they repeated the same site with different anchor text. Is it for the good of their surfers? Or is it an attempt to help manipulate search results? Obviously at this point it is neither.
Looking at their alexa stats, I’m highly skeptical that they were pulling in 10 million page views per month at their height…unless their height is this week after the lawsuit was filed. Regardless, the lawsuit had its intended effect and traffic is up, at least for now.
Google is a company and has the right to decide what search results they want to display.
And changing search results isn’t violating anyones free speech.
This is just another way someone is trying to get somthing for nothing.
Alexa ranking tells the truth.
What a bunch of losers!!
You guys are correct. Alexa shows that their traffic was never anything significant until now. My take on it is that they did that to get their name out there. A marketing scam.
I must say though…It is scary that the SE don’t give warning. If it were true I could fully understand. If it were brick and mortar…It would be like someone crashing through your established business with a bulldozer…Leveling your entire building.
Google should give reason and warning.
A few of those business owners do make the honest mistakes of trusting webmasters. Not as if they have a choice right? They have to trust someone. It could happen to anyone.