Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:06:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100224/0138408282.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100224/0138408282.shtml sue Google over getting either dropped from Google's index, or simply ranked really low on certain searches. And, of course, for some there are always totally unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Google purposely "punishing" a company or individual it doesn't like. To date, however, there's been no evidence at all that Google acts in such a capricious manner when it comes to rankings. If the company did so, and it ever came out, the hit to Google's reputation would be something fierce. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that all of the accusations of such personal attacks seem to come from tiny companies -- hardly any kind of threat to Google, anyway.

That said, if you want even more evidence that Google's ranking decisions aren't personal, but actually are based on what its system feels will give the best possible results, witness the story of Google employee Jason Morrison, who recently discovered that his own personal site had be delisted from Google. It actually took him a few weeks to notice this, but once he did, and dug into the issue (using Google's public tool and his own site's admin tools) he quickly realized that he had made a mistake that caused Google's crawlers to believe that his site was no longer up.

Now, that certainly doesn't preclude the possibility that Google takes revenge on sites it doesn't like, but it's at least more evidence that the ranking system really is pretty algorithmically focused -- and even Google employees aren't immune to being delisted for screwing up. If your site gets delisted from Google, it's not personal.

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]]> it-ain't-personal http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100224/0138408282 Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:58:59 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090629/1243065407.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090629/1243065407.shtml being a scam) has sued Google for removing Ascentive from Google's search index. There's a separate complaint about trademarks and AdWords on competitive ads, but that's an issue that's been covered so often, we'll ignore it in this case. Instead, what's interesting is the claim that Google removing Ascentive from its index is somehow a violation of Ascentive's rights. Of course, previous cases have shown that you have no legal right to have Google rank you where you think it's appropriate -- and if Google decides to remove you entirely, that's its prerogative.

Goldman notes that Ascentive's claim is a bit different than such claims in the past (but no more likely to get anywhere), noting that the refusal to list Ascentive's site is a trademark violation, because "consumers expect to see the trademark owner in organic search results for the trademark and therefore consumers will be actionably confused if the trademark owner doesn't appear there." Talk about twisting the intention of trademark law! It seems unlikely that such a claim gets very far, but it will be fun to see how the court responds to it.

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