Google wins over SearchKing in PageRank case

(June 2 2003) Last year Searchking sued Google for reducing the PageRank of may of its member sites. Now the court has dismissed the case.

As reported by Pandia last fall Google reduced the PageRank 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. The home page of the PR Ad Network dropped to zero after the move.

Later Google restored SearchKing's ranking in search engine results. However, the PageRank remained low.

SearchKing was not amused, and refused to withdraw its lawsuit against Google. "This suit has never been about the priority we were given in a search or even our PageRank," said 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?"

PageRank is a measure of Web page popularity and will to a certain extent influence the rankings of a Web page in Google search results.

On Tuesday U.S. District Court Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange denied a motion for a preliminary injunction brought by SearchKing. According to CNET news the judge dismissed the case because Google's formula for calculating the popularity of a Web page constitutes opinions protected by the First Amendment:

"PageRanks are opinions -- opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query," the decision says.

"The court simply finds there is no conceivable way to prove that the relative significance assigned to a given Web site is false. Accordingly, the court concludes Google's PageRanks are entitled to full constitutional protection."

SearchKing chief executive Bob Massa is reviewing his legal options.

We find the reasons given by the judge a bit strange. However, like the judge, we believe Google must be allowed to keep its search engine algorithms secret, the main reason being so that they can prevent spammers from manipulating results.

Some search engine optimizers tend to forget this, but the search engine results are produced for the searchers, not for the webmasters trying to promote their sites. That being said, Massa's actions has not made him popular in the search engine marketing environment.

See also statement from Massa at SearchKing.

Relevant articles at Pandia:
PageRank For Sale
The SearchKing Google controversy revisited
PageRank For Sale -- Exclusive interview with SearchKing / PR Ad Network's Robert Massa.

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