News Source: http://www.networkworld.com
Published: Nov 17, 2008 - 04:48 am
Story Found By: Feydakin 1184 Days ago
Category: SEO
And so it begins.. I suspect that we will start seeing more and more of these types of lawsuits filed.. Whether it’s an intentional scam, or a failure to prepare the clients expectations, this won’t be the last suit of this type..
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Good spot Fey... hopefully one more nail in the coffin of the con men in our industry
See also this sphinn: http://sphinn.com/story/85079 and the commentary by SEOmoz’s attorney, Sarah Bird.
I just posted this at the other thread:Honestly, I am not really digging this. Heres why: from my view point many of the claims that Washington state are making aren’t legally "actionable". When cases involving tech issues present them selves in state courts often times well intention prosecutors, jurors, and judges, make bad blanket decisions that are based on their ignorance to the issues at hand. For eample I am willing to bet that the judge that presides over this case has very little knowledge of SEO, if any at all. How can we expect for the system to help our industry with these issues if the system doesn’t fundementally understand our industry?
Very true, Joe. However, it appears there are some fundamental consumer rights issues that are at the heart of the case, i.e., companies not getting what they paid for, and/or not being able to cancel their service without continuing to get charged. Without knowing all the details, it sounds as if Washington is alleging that the company in question isn’t fullfilling their end of their contract. In which case, it wouldn’t really be a tech kind of case but a typical contract case, no?
Ditto to what Jill said. This is less about the specifics of SEO than it is about not living up to the outlandish claims the company has made and alleged questionable business practices.
@jillYou are exactly right, and therefore, I think the proper route would be for each individual customer to sue for personal damages on an individual basis. When a state prosecutor gets involved there is a lasting impact that all SEOs in washington state will have to abide by. Theres a reason why Sarah Bird at SEOmoz is following this case so closely.
Found this post interesting since it is in my backyard. I am no law expert here and consider myself to be more of a beginner seo, but I thought I would share my opinion on this one anyway. By looking at their site it would seem that they do appear to know, at least a little, about the biz. Like I said I’m no expert, and I sure didn’t take the time to conduct a thorough analysis, but I did look at many factors we all know.http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factorsTheir site validates for markup and CSS (didn’t check any feeds). The titles seem to be unique, descriptive, brief and accurately describe the pages. Same for descriptions on most pages. All the URLs seem to be session free and "linkable." URLs have descriptive names and follow a directory structure. They also seem to have taken URL canicolization issues into consideration (checked www. and dir backslash only). Navigation seems to be friendly, uses a hierarchy and is mostly text based. They use breadcrumbs, HTML sitemap page, XML sitemap file and 404 error pages. The content seems to be "readable" on-topic and organized on pages. The language, grammar and spelling seem to be OK (didn’t look at very many pages other than main sections). Content seems to update on their blog (not sure about other pages). Content seems to be user focused. Anchored link text seems to be accurate, descriptive, stand out from normal text and link pages internally. Pages feature headings that seem to be descriptive of the pages. Seem to follow an outline format and don’t appear to be overused on pages. Images make use of alt text, are descriptive and don’t appear to have excessive text. Image filesnames seem to be descriptive and organized. Last but not least, I check for robots.txt, which is present and appears to follow best practices. Even found nofollows in footer links to policy pages.Now of course this doesn’t mean they provide the same things for customers, but it does make one think. I’ll be interested to see the outcome.
From Visible.net’s blog:we offered to have a neutral industry expert selected by the Washington Attorney General make an independent determination of whether the allegations against Visible.net are correct after being given unfettered access to Visible.net’s business, records and software. We are disappointed that the Washington Attorney General has thus far ignored this offer and instead has filed an action based on speculation and innuendo, some of which has come from Visible.net’s competitors.Competitors? When I saw the report on SEOMOZ blog that Visible.net was being sued, I wondered why SEOMOZ would be so anxious to highlight that in public. Is SEOMOZ the Seattle "competitor" behind the complaints sent to the Washington Attorney General? Is this another "outing" by SEOMOZ?
I doubt one complaint from SEOmoz would cause the attorney general to up and take notice. Don’t think ole Rand has that kind of power (yet!).
The meat and potatoes of this will be in how much liability is in the contract.
the trouble is that "states" have form in this area after kentuckys land grab http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/14/kentucky_domain_name_grab_amicus/and with the AG post being an elected post I wonder if some one close to his camapiagn is one one of those that is complaining and of course no AG has ever run a case to help their relection campaign.
@ johnandrews - Just to clarify. We love SEOmoz, the people behind it and the awesome resources they provide. We regularly attend industry events including the two training seminars BY SEOmoz at UW. We have no hard feelings about the post on their blog and will continue to renew the pro member status’ for the numerous staff members here who have them. We do not consider SEOmoz to be a competitor of ours, as I doubt they do.
It is important to create an accurate and fair contract before undertaking the job.
My assumption when I saw this is that the Washington State Attorney General is just more savvy about looking into search marketing complaints after having gone against Internet Advancement years and years ago: http://www.atg.wa.gov/pressrelease.aspx?&id=18382I’d say any search marketing firm in that state had better carefully watch what they are offering or delivering. On the flipside, the fact that the attorney general had to go after Internet Advancement again after a settlment in 2004 suggest that consumers might not get as much protection out of the action as the attorney general’s office suggests.
I don’t think anyone really needs to worry - as long as they are on the up and up. The company mentioned there, although I have never even heard of them so I cant speak from experience, seems to be a little misleading from their website alone - (e.g their strategic partnerships). Its not far fetched to imagine that they might be in the habit of misleading people offline as well. Companies that are less than 100% honest and true to their services will always have to worry about charges and suits, like any company in any industry that misleads and does not deliver.If you are honest and fair you don’t have to worry - there is no SEO "witch hunt" even in washington.