American Income Life Sues Google Over Search Results

[Crabcake Johnny]

Really?

"An insurance company has sued Google for allegedly violating a state law regarding deceptive trade practices by returning search results that include links to unflattering posts.

In court papers filed in Alabama, the company American Income Life Insurance, an Indiana-based subsidiary of Torchmark Corporation, alleges that Google returns links to negative posts from scam.com and pissedconsumer.com in the search results.

The results pages allegedly include snippets like “American Income Life is a Scam.” American Income life contends that Google's display of these results violates an Alabama business law regarding “unconscionable, false, misleading or deceptive acts or practices.”

“American Income Life Insurance Company is not a scam, and is, in fact, a reputable and upstanding business corporation,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in September and transferred to federal court in Alabama last week."

MediaPost Publications Insurance Company Sues Google Over Organic Results 12/13/2011

 

[VolAgent]

I thought you were in favor allowing companies to banish bad info about them on the web?

Why play games trying to bury it using SEO when you can just sue Google.

That said, I can't see how they will win. Google uses the same algorithm for everyone. Its AIL's own fault many consumers have a poor opinion of them.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Actually it's changed. Google used to "partner" (per se) with some of these sites - especially ROR, which HEAVILY used Google adwords. Google would immediately index ROR's on the first page and they were stuck there like glue.

After a flurry of lawsuits, that practice has been ditched. A few years back, 100 positive articles/comments on your business and 1 negative comment got that negative comment 1st page, first result. Google backed off from those indexing methods and now if you have 100 positive things and one negative, that one negative can be pages back.

And that's the way it should be - it should be "to scale." If a restaurant, in business for 50 years, has 5,600 positive reviews, the 5 negative ones should not be the first five results on page 1.

 

[STIBROKER]

Google returns links to negative posts from scam.com and pissedconsumer.com in the search results.

you would think that these are the sites to go after instead of google.....

 

[VolAgent]

you would think that these are the sites to go after instead of google.....

Why, another one will pop up. They are like mushrooms. There is also ripoffreports.com. Glassdoor probably has plenty of "nice" things to say about AIL as well.

Much easier to hope you get lucky and stop it at the search engine.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Read some articles about Trip Advisor. People have already admitted to being hired by companies to post a flurry of negative reviews about their competitors while giving their company 5 star ratings.

 

[JGold814]

isn't google's return results based on a complex alogrithm? i doubt google is intentionally going out of their way to make them look bad. It'll be interesting to see what the end result is from this.