Google sued over PageRank

• Jan. 10, 2003

There is a very interesting legal battle about to unfold in Oklahoma. Internet giant Google is being sued by a company called SearchKing who openly advertised that it would sell PageRank™.

For those who don't know, PageRank™ is Google's way of "recommending" a site to users. In general, the higher the PageRank™ the more likely a site is going to have what you're looking for. There are many factors which affect page rank, but Google has attempted to qualify what it feels are relevant data into a user friendly tool. There are also many ways to build page rank, which we've outlined in various articles on this site (including a link building strategy).

Last summer internet marketing firm SearchKing started openly advertising that it would sell PageRank™ to clients willing to pay for it. In essence, they were leading web users into believing a site was relevant to a search term when it may not have been, by artificially inflating that site's PageRank™.Google soon caught on and either changed the ranking algorithm, or purposely targeted SearchKing somehow so that the companies' website (and by extension, their clients websites) virtually disappeared from the Google index. SearchKing then sued Google for damages, and asked to be reinstated to previous rankings. Google did later restore SearchKing, but not to the level it was previously at.

Google recently responded with its own legal filing. There was much speculation in the industry just how Google would respond.

In essence, Google claimed it was their first amendment right to free speech which allowed them to rank sites. They went on to say that they are only giving their opinion on a site, and it's ultimately up to the user to decide if the site is indeed worthy to them. By devising the PageRank™ system, they were making it easier to qualify sites. They went on further to say that they didn't purposely remove SearchKing, but that the recent algorithm change must have excluded them.

This is entirely possible, because Google has had link farms removed in the past (a link farm is a site that has many unrelated sites linking from it), and what SearchKing was doing could have been construed as a link farm. In fact, Google even discourages this practice in their FAQ (see here). More than likely, it was due to the fact that around that time Google tweaked their ranking algorithm so that related sites links are now worth more than just a link from any site.

Google's response raises an interesting question. Fundamentally, they are correct in saying that they are merely offering an opinion on the site, based on the PageRank™ they give it. That being said, we all know that through its partners, Google powers about 85% of the web. Therefore, if Google deems your site to be not relevant, there's a good chance that you won't be found in 85% of the searches performed, even if it is your product or service being searched for.

So, does that give Google the right to seemingly arbitrarily rank a site? And to further devalue sites it deems to be inappropriate? In other words, what gives Google the right to act as God in the web world?

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I do believe that Google's ranking algorithm is probably the best out there. After all, they consider hundreds of different factors in determining PageRank™ including the wording on your site, and the number of relevant links pointing to and from your site. So Google's algorithm does appear to give web searchers the most value for their search. This can also be proven when you consider their partners, Yahoo! and AOL to name just two, have signed on for multi-year deals to provide Google as the primary search results.

I believe it will be a difficult legal battle. The implications from the outcome will be huge. If SearchKing wins the battle, then that leaves Google's PageRank™ open to a certain amount of commercialization by any third party with a decent page rank. It would also mean that Google is indeed a monopoly (in terms of search) and could become the victim of the same type of scrutiny that Microsoft is going through right now. That would also mean that bureaucrats could have the ability to recommend, even implement, changes to Google ranking algorithm, thereby rendering it useless.

If Google wins, then there's a good chance that the next time someone else goes up against them for dropping their site, they will have a difficult time proving their case, even if their argument is valid. It will also reaffirm that even though Google is THE majority supplier for internet search services and, in effect does have a monopoly that is ok in the eyes of the courts, but could leave them open for some sort of governmental regulation and control.

All in all, it will be an interesting few months in Oklahoma.

Rob Sullivan