Google and American Income Square Off
December 25, 2011
Casting blame. That’s what one company is doing, rather than look to its own behavior. Media Post News reports, “Insurance Company Sues Google Over Organic Results.”
It seems that American Income Life Insurance, based in Indiana, doesn’t like having critical posts from sites like scam.com appear in the results when one searches for its name. Of course they don’t like it! But that isn’t Google’s fault. Perhaps the insurance company should spend its efforts on improving relations with its employees, rather than suing the messenger. Just a thought.
American Income is taking its case to Alabama courts, though it did offer a way for Google to get out of its crosshairs: just move the offending links to the second page of results, and they’ll forget the whole thing. Google declined to play ball; it knows the suit won’t get anywhere. Writer Wendy Davis notes:
Law professor Eric Goldman, who broke news of the lawsuit on Twitter, predicts that Google will prevail — despite the insurance company’s characterization of the dispute as a trade practices issue and not a defamation case. Either way, he says, Google should be protected by the Communications Decency Act, which generally says that Web companies are immune for posting material created by third parties.
American Income Life Insurance would be better served by doing some work for itself on its Internet presence. Objectivity, precision, recall– each matters. The insurance company wants positive traffic, but has not figured out that Adwords work. Work with Google, not against it; the odds are much better that way.
Cynthia Murrell, December 25, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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