The SearchKing Google controversy revisited

(November 18 2002) As reported in October Google recently reduced the PageRank (a measure of Web page popularity) of the SearchKing home page. The SearchKing owned PR Ad Network had started selling text ads on the Searchking network of sites based on Google PageRank.

Google has not commented on this, but Pandia as well as other search engine observers have believed that the main reason for this drop in "PR" is Google's wish to protect their search results algorithm from outside manipulation. The home page of the PR Ad Network dropped to zero after the move.

Google has now restored SearchKing's ranking in search engine results (it is again No. 1 if you do a search for "searchking"). However, the PageRank remain the same: 4 out of 10.

SearchKing is not amused, and will not withdraw its lawsuit against Google. "This suit has never been about the priority we were given in a search or even our PageRank," says Bob Massa, president of SearchKing., Inc. and PR Ad Network.

"The case is about Googleís attempt to squelch competition by targeting businesses and arbitrarily reducing their PageRank or search status. So theyíve restored it ñ for now. Next month, whatís to stop them from reducing my ranking again?"

We have said so before, and will say it again. We can empathize with SearchKing's frustration, but if Google is not allowed to reduce the PageRank of a site because it hurts the siteowner's business, the PageRank system will surely die.

Search engines must be able to keep their ranking algorithms secret in order to prevent spammers from manipulating results. Moreover, they should be allowed to tweak these algorithms if they find that spammers have found a way to fill search results with irrelevant pages.

However, there is probably more to this story that meets the eye. One of our sources says that the reason SearchKing was penalized was that Google had discovered extensive use of doorway pages and linkfarms under the searchking.com domain.

We have not been able to confirm this. All such pages will have been removed from the Google index by now. Moreover, if there ever were such pages, SearchKing would certainly have tried to delete them.

To Pandia Massa replies rhethorically with a question:

"Is their algorithm really so poor as to not catch 3300 sites before this happened or does it seem just a little coincidental?"

He continues: "We are a network of over 3000 independent portal sites. I have no control over what any of those portal partners do other than what is stated in our TOS [terms of service]."

"As far as doorway pages, is Pandia spam? I see a lot of interior pages that are addressing a specific topic. Is that doorway pages? Who decides? My point is that I have encouraged people from the beginning to build interior pages that stay focused on a single topic under the umbrella of their main topic."

This is a difficult issue not only for Google, but for all major search engines, out of which none officially tolerates doorway pages anymore.

"Doorway page" was originally a term for a Web page with no real content of value, just text filled with the words of a popular search query.

Alternatively webmasters produced a lot of similar pages, where the search term itself was the only part that differed from page to page. Searchers were then encouraged to move from these pages to the real site by a link or an automatic forwarding mechanism.

Nowadays, search engine optimizers try to produce a large number of regular content rich pages, but where each page is optimized for a particular search term. Hence it has become very hard to diffentiate between doorway pages and regular pages. Whether Massa himself or some of the other SearchKing sites have used old-fashion spam pages or followed Massa's own advice is unclear.

Google's official argument for zeroing the pradnetwork.com site was apparently not that the ad system would undermine the PageRank algorithm, but that the network was using the word PageRank in its marketing. Google considers PageRank their trademark.

If we were Google we would probably have taken legal action instead of using the PR meter as a punishing device. Nevertheless, Google has a point. The PageRank trade mark may be considered the property of Google or its founders.

By naming the PR Ad Network after Google's PageRank (PR), and trying to price adds on the basis of the PR of the pages involved, Massa & Co have probably gone to far.

When asked by Pandia Massa noted that "Our contention is that we do not use the words Page Rank in our marketing. We have taken great pains to use those two words very carefully. There is not a single reference to those two words on the front page of the Pr Ad Network site."

As a matter of fact, there were such references, as Massa pointed out himself a bit later on. The word PageRank was present in the title tag. It has since been removed.

See also the Pandia interview with Massa.

For more information also read Danny Sullivan's excellent article "Google Sued Over PageRank Decrease" .

For a critical view of Google's policies, see SearchEthos' article on "The Power of Google".

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