The Google vs Kinderstart Lawsuit was dismissed though judge Fogel suggested that if Kinderstart can show a case of “manual intervention” by Google the outcome might be different and it’s now clear they’ll refile in September, probably as a class action. If the judge means they only need to show that Google’s done manual intervention *in any case* then this is going to get interesting, because everybody in SEO knows that Matt’s spam team routinely zaps sites that violate guidelines from the index. I doubt this was Kinderstart’s problem though – rather a severe algorithmic downranking that many sites have suffered over the past few years. However the Google lawyers may have failed to understand the nuances of the algorithm vs violations and how humans interface with this at Google (I think no single person knows everything over there). Thus if the judge felt Google claimed “no manual intervention whatsoever” then I think he might get pissed to know how often violating sites get killed off.
If this is any indication of the thinking that could guide the decisions I have no idea what’s going to happen here.
Joe Duck 