The couple who took on Google and cost the tech giant £2bn

Lee

Lee

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Just been reading this... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr431lr72jo

It is about a couple who took action against Google for not showing their site in the SERP listings.

As someone who has been building websites for years, I've had battles and successes trying to get higher up the listings. We all have I'm sure - that is SEO!

Do you think they have a right to rank?
 
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Lee said:
Just been reading this... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr431lr72jo

It is about a couple who took action against Google for not showing their site in the SERP listings.

As someone who has been building websites for years, I've had battles and successes trying to get higher up the listings. We all have I'm sure - that is SEO!

Do you think they have a right to rank?
Click to expand...

Nobody has "a right to rank", but that's not what was established in this case.

Google was found guilty of abusing its market dominance by favouring its own shopping comparison service over those of its rivals.
 
diablo said:
Nobody has "a right to rank", but that's not what was established in this case.

Google was found guilty of abusing its market dominance by favouring its own shopping comparison service over those of its rivals.
Click to expand...
Yeah I get that 100% but reading the article it did come across that they seemed to think that they were entitled at the beginning to rank for terms like "price comparison" and "comparison shopping".

Most comparison sites just tend to use feeds with dupe content. Did they add any value by adding unique content, reviews etc?

Or did thy just upload 1000s of thin, low quality pages to the website.
 
The site is still available, and comparing it to web archived versions from 2008, it doesn't ever look to have offered much in the way of unique content, but that's not to say the experience wasn't unique and much improved over any other offering at the time.

Foundem - Search and Compare Prices for Electronics, Flights, Hotels, Property, Jobs, and more

Vertical search and price comparison from Foundem. Review and compare the latest products at the best prices, or search for flights, hotels, property, and jobs.
www.foundem.co.uk
 
Lee said:
Yeah I get that 100% but reading the article it did come across that they seemed to think that they were entitled at the beginning to rank for terms like "price comparison" and "comparison shopping".

Most comparison sites just tend to use feeds with dupe content. Did they add any value by adding unique content, reviews etc?

Or did thy just upload 1000s of thin, low quality pages to the website.
Click to expand...

They obviously feel they were excluded from the search results, along with other comparison sites, and that was found to be the case. And that wasn't on the grounds of how good or bad they were, but because Google sought an unfair advantage irrespectively.

I had never heard of the site until you posted the article so no idea how good or bad its offering was, but again it isn't material to the case.
 
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"right to rank" is a ridiculous statement - they are a private company, and they can run their business as they see fit - obviously competition law has some input, but generally you have no inherent rights from private companies.
 
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As someone who knows them well and also is aware of the legal case, this is so much more. This is about Google abusing their dominance by manipulating traffic to anything they deem as a competitor. Using a dominant position to hinder anyone and everyone who is deemed a threat. This is illegal under the law of almost every country in the world. In 2017 the EU found Google in breach of some of these laws and many other countries, inc the US have now woke up to investigate what Google has been doing.

Google actually has hand dropped many many sites, almost every shopping comparison site was hand dropped in the index for all search terms when Google launched Google shopping. Google have played many many such games over the years in seo and ppc. There have been many many hand penalties to stop sites growing.

Shivaun and Adam are 2 of the most moral and honest people I know, add to it they are also very smart and have done so much analysis it is insane. For 17 years they have been fighting Google and all of it for free, so give them some slack as you do benefit, even though you may not be aware how.
 
I see they just launched SearchGPT. I certainly think Google's days are numbered. In this video, Google is made to look like some old relic out of 2010.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1852061198566535594

I'm not sure people are ready to switch for product searches etc right not, but as for information searches such as "Give me an example of a business plan". I have not used Google for things like that for a good 6-12 months.
 
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