Online Store to Sue Blogger Over Google Ranking

By Loren Baker, Editor | December 11, 2006

An online shoe store owner is threatening to sue a blogger Dean Hunt (DeanHunt.com) unless the blogger ‘lowers his Google ranking” for a keyword phrase that the store owner feels he deserves.

Hello Dean,

My name is [edited] and I run [edited].com

I have been running the site for over two years and we have been ranked very highly for the search term [edited].

On Thursday morning I checked our google positions and your site is now above us for this term. I haev checked your blog and it has nothing to do with [edited], so I think it would be best all round if you remove your blog from google for this search term.

Please understand that we make our living from this, and you are just writing a blog that has nothing to do with [edited].

If you do not remove yourself from google for this search, then I will call them myself and have you removed.

I expect a reply soon.

Thankyou.

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable adds:

In short, the store owner feels he should rank better than the blog, because he is selling the item on his site and the blog is only informational and not transactional. If this person knew anything about Google, he would know things tend to work the other way around.

After the initial mailing, Dean received a follow-up threatening email:

You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog.

Don’t forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches.

I have also contacted my lawyer about this issue, so you should expect a letter in the post very soon.

I expect a reply soon.

“An online business should be higher in Google than a blog.”

Doesn’t that guy know what the word blog actually stands for?