SEO Professionals Support Google In Antitrust Court Case

Posted Friday 5th March 2010 by Kerry in Company News, SEO.

It is part of the human condition to feel hard done by when others do well, and no matter how big a company gets, the feeling remains. The European antitrust court case against Google is surely one such example. Of course the public in general and big businesses don’t like it when one company appears to dominating the market. With Google however, it seems to be that they are doing their job well and doing their job right, legitimately finding themselves the most popular search engine.

The complaint is that three companies, Foundem, ejustice.fr and Ciao! from Bing, believe that Google has conspired against them and made their sites hard to find in listings through penalising their sites; and the fact that two of those companies are tied in with Microsoft makes the ordeal even more suspicious to sceptics. Google however say that the reason these sites are not listing well in SERPs is because they are not compliant with Google’s algorithm, which is designed to give internet users the most relevant and useful results.

Microsoft, who have themselves been tied up in antitrust case in Europe for a decade, have accused Google of penalising their associated sites because they are a vertical search engine. Apparently, Google has skewed results to put competitors further down in the listings so they are hard to find, or penalised them to the extent that they do not appear in listings at all. It is fair to say that Google would not have become what they are today by engaging in such obvious bad practice. To omit results from competitors will ultimately hurt Google, as their entire policy is to deliver what internet users want, which is relevant and useful search results, which do include their competition.

As an SEO company, and a successful one at that, we spend our time ensuring that our clients sites are complaint with what Google wants. It is a skill and it takes hard work and dedication to do it ethically for sustainable results. The fact that Google have a complicated code of practice that is ever evolving helps us help genuine clients and actually prevents bad practice within the industry from ‘blackhat tactics’ and the like, once again pleasing those who need pleasing most – the internet user.

Complying with the algorithm in fact ensures that the end user and companies are part of a fair and just online environment, it is irrelevant if these companies are associated with the so called opposition. The reason Google are still favoured by users is because it does deliver what they want, and if Google ever decided to fix listings, the trust would be lost and there demise would be imminent.

The bitter pill of truth that some less successful companies should swallow is that they haven’t managed to do what it takes to get to the top, and having a corporate tantrum over it will not improve the situation. It is a simple fact in life in general that if you don’t follow the rules, you won’t be allowed to play the game. Foundem, ejustice.fr, Ciao! from Bing, and the like should remember that the rest of the world is complying with the algorithm, and doing just fine for it.

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