Lawsuit Seeks Google Pagerank Secrets
Published March 19, 2006
Kinderstart.com has sued Google, trying to break through the walls of the castle high on the mountain over the Internet. The suit seeks damages for the loss in visitors, but pushes for even more — disclosure of Google's methods of ranking websites.
In the hunt for website traffic, page ranking is everything. The steady group of regular visitors is rarely sufficient to generate the numbers that generate revenue. Sites depend on visitors who find them on Yahoo, MSNsearch, Ask, and the 800-pound gorilla, Google.
An entirely new industry has developed — search engine optimization — aimed at not just getting your site into the search engines, but to improve your "page ranking". The holy grail is to have your site turn up on the first page of results on a Google search. You can check the ranking of a site at sites like Googlerankings.com.
How Google ranks pages is a closely guarded secret. Google calls it an algorithm, but one blogger calls it a "smoky back room". Requests to Google for information on why a site has dropped in its rankings will get responses worthy of Kafka. If you get more than a form letter, it will sound as if the Wizard of Oz himself is running the show. There are references to the nameless faceless algorithm that sees all, does all. Google's official description of its pagerank system says only that "Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult."
Kinderstart got caught in the algorithmic storm. With its traffic buzzing along at a rate of 10 million a month, something caused its ranking to drop. Traffic dropped 70 percent and revenue dropped 80 percent.
After unsuccessfully facing the Google monolithic bureaucracy, it turned to another monolithic bureaucracy — the California court system. The suit seeks damages, information, and asks to be certified a class action. A class action would entitle every site that claims to have been dropped by Google to seek damages. It would also entitle Kinderstart's lawyer to large fees, which may be deserved if he could actually get Google to disclose their algorithm.
Unfortunately for Kinderstart, it is not the first lawsuit trying to penetrate the barrier. A similar suit, filed in 2003 in federal District Court, was dismissed.
Internet users have to ask themselves whether they really want Google to be transparent. Spammers game the system with comment spam and purchased subdomains, often causing searches on other sites to produce nothing more than useless pages of keywords.
Rather than release its methods, Google needs to have human beings responding to the complaints of legitimate websites like Kinderstart who get caught in the penalty system.
- Lawsuit Seeks Google Pagerank Secrets
- Published: March 19, 2006
- Type: News
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Culture: Business and Economics, Culture: Society, Sci/Tech: Internet
- Writer: Justene Adamec
- Justene Adamec's BC Writer page
- Justene Adamec's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
This is specious, would a lawsuit for Coke's formula get anywhere? Why should a company reveal it's trade secrets?
I haven't found a copy of the lawsuit yet. From a single sentence I read in all the coverage, I *think* the argument is trying to rest on the premise that Google is a monopoly and is hiding behind a trade secret to violate antitrust laws.
This is ridiculous. If google wants to completely stop displaying someone's website in THEIR search engine then they can. It's their site. If Kinderstart wins this case [doubtful] then I should be able to sue Kinderstart for not linking back to MY site. [same thing]
They're just crying because they're not making their ad revenue. Google is a free service, you can't sue for something you dont pay for. They should be grateful for all of the ad revenue they've made thus far BECAUSE of the search engine, without it they'd still be living in their mobile homes.
In my professional opinion, Google ought to write Kinderstart with a note that simply says "TOUGH TITTIES."
Anyone who thinks Google is a monopoly needs to only visit yahoo.com, msn.com or a9.com
I do not think the suit wins.
I do wonder if there is enough to show that Google is a monopoly. After all, Microsoft got into antitrust trouble despite Mac and Linux. It's been at least a decade since I've looked at how much market share you need before there's an issue.
They did say they were ranked highly in another search engine and the drop by google dropped traffic 70% and ad revenue 80%, suggesting that google drives most of the net traffic.
Again, I doubt that it wins but if it gets past the pleading stage, it may reveal some interesting things.
Aaman, I went to my Extreme Tracking counter to see the breakdown of visits per search engines:
Google: 49%
MSN: 45%
Yahoo: 4%
Dogpile: 1%
Conclusion: Not a monopoly. Circle gets the square.
Blogcritics extreme tracker:
Google 81%
Yahoo 14%
MSN 3%
lol that seems like bullshit, its a free search engine and shit, and they probably arent paying google, so they are jus greedy faggots.
Google is still just a website. I do not know how a person expects to be able to sue something which is located in the ether of the internet. I guess everyone has to complain about something. I like the fact that the site tries to blame an unaffiliated company for their problems.
Google should strike back by removing Kinderstart entirely from their search engine.
Kinderstart will NEVER pry open the secret of the algorithm. If people know it, Google will be a terrible search engine.
Let Kinderstart waste more of thier money by suing Google who has tons of $ to waste on legal fees! :D
That IS BS Google is a free service how can they be sued for not putting someones site high WOW
well, the point seems to be that google may be giving preferential treatment to some websites, without disclosing to the public that the websites ranked on the first page may not actually be the most relevant search results. sort of like back when radio stations used to charge record labels money to play their song, so that more people would buy the album. radio was free, but it was in the public interest to force them to disclose how they selected what songs got top billing..
anyway, in the california court system, google may very well lose this one.
Google is public, it no longer is a private company. Unfortunately, the Goo-Gurls still embellish their high-school mentality, frame of mind. Fortunately, Google Inc. has a more mature CEO. Unfortunately, Kinderstart may be approaching the(ir) issue in the wrong (legal) manner. Time will tell.
Regardless whether Google can be considered a monopoly, regardless whether Kinderstart 'paid' for services, the moment Google accesses (crawls) Kinderstart, regardless if Kinderstart used any of the available technologies to prohibit Google's crawl, Google partners with Kinderstart. If Kinderstart did NOT request services (by submission of their URL to Google) Kinderstart has a better claim, IF they approach the issue smartly. At the same time, it is wise business NOT to lay their egg in one basket, that of the Goo-Gurls, which is now evident to Kinderstart.
The STATS on Kinderstart give us some insight:
Kinderstart's website DOES NOT VALIDATE
5 errors, 276 warnings ... BAD BOYS!
However, this is true of over 99% of the over 10 billion web pages on the W.W.W. All crap!
Google SERPS do not VALIDATE.
Bill Gate's MSN SERPS DO VALIDATE, surprisingly!
Their top (meta) keywords are "kids" and "children". The number of competing web pages are 1,440,000,000 and 1,840,000,000 respectively on Goo. Whoa!
G-allinurl: 16,400
G-pagerank: 0 (heh, heh - no 'uman intervention?)
Alexa: 247,703
Gsite: = 30,200
Ysite: = 118,000<-Kinderstart should lookie-here
MSNsite: = 972
Glinks: = 222
Ylinks: = 101,000 <- Lookie-here!
MNSlinks: = 16,000+
It is a political (legal) battle that many will be watching, for sure.
For those of us who read lawsuits in our spare time, here is the actual complaint.
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Google has been crooked for a long time. Its about time something gets done about them.