Volume IV

Issue : 3: February 9, 2006

• B.C. Supreme Court Awards Nearly $700000 in Damages for Online Defamation
• US Appeals Court Rules Airport ID Checks are Lawful
• In Separate Decisions, U.K. and Irish High Courts Order ISPs to Disclose Subscriber Information
• Maryland Appeals Court Makes Important Spam Decision
• Makers of Grand Theft Auto Video Game Sued For Hidden Porn
• Google Blacklists BMWs and Ricohs German Websites
• RIM Achieves Patent Victories in Europe
• Does Ontario Law Recognize the Tort of Invasion of Privacy

Home > Volume IV > Issue 3: February 9, 2006 > Google Blacklists BMWs and Ricohs German Websites

Google Blacklists BMWs and Ricohs German Websites

According to published reports, Google blocked the German websites for BMW and Ricoh for allegedly attempting to artificially increase the likelihood that the websites would be found as part of a user’s Google search. The method purportedly used was the creation of “doorway pages” containing blocks of text with common search keywords that automatically redirected users to other pages when accessed. The other pages contained less text and more images, making them more pleasing to users, but ranking lower in the Google PageRank page ranking system.

Reportedly, both “bmw.de” and “ricoh.de” were blacklisted for the violations. At the time of the blacklisting, attempts to search the URLs www.bmw.de and www.ricoh.de produced a result of “Sorry, no information is available for the URL”. Other searches (i.e. “BMW Germany”) produced results for the international and European top-level websites only. However, as of Wednesday morning, both websites were appearing in response to these and other search queries.

For additional information, visit:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/060206/152/g33dn.html