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October 23, 2002 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Internet search engine Google was sued this week by Oklahoma-based advertising Web site network Search King (SearchKing.com), which alleged that Google unfairly lowered Search King?s Web sites from top rankings in search results.
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The complaint claims that Google purposefully reduced the value of Search King, as well as the value of sites hosted by Search King. The company says it was legally profiting from the page rankings Google had assigned to certain of its Web sites, and Google lowered the rankings with the intent of causing Search King clients to cancel their contracts with the company.
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Google?s Web site says the search engine?s results are not selected by any individual, but are determined by a number of factors, including the PageRank algorithm, a well guarded secret.
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Page rank is the statistic that indicates a site?s popularity in the Web community, relying largely on a total of the number, and importance, of sites that link to a given site. The final result is represented as a number from 1 (the lowest) to 10 (the highest).
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Due to the enormous popularity of Google, a high page rank is a valuable commodity on the World Wide Web, with an army of Web developers and marketers continually working to achieve page rank, and obviously reacting negatively to any drop in their standing.
