02 June 2009 | Author: O. Gaywood Media Optimiser

Website sued over content of Google snippet

A Netherlands-based website has been sued for the text snippet displayed on Google's search results.

MiljoenHuizen.nl - 'a million houses' - is a directory for homes across Europe. It used to have a page that mentioned the words 'Zwartepoorte' (a car dealer) and 'failliet' ('bankrupt' in Dutch). The two words covered different subjects in different sections on the page with no implication that the second described the first.

However, Zwartepoorte noticed that a search for the company's name on Google, coupled with 'failliet', brought up a snippet from MiljoenHuizen that suggested it had hit financial troubles. As the car dealership had not been made bankrupt, it decided to complain in court.

The snippet that appeared on Google did not come directly from the MiljoenHuizen website but from two separate sentences from the same page. Google saw both the words on one page and brought up both sentences - separated by ellipses - to indicate to the searcher that the page may be of interest.

The judge, however, ruled in favour of Zwartepoorte because some Google users thought that it had gone bankrupt because of this snippet. The company had previously asked MiljoenHuizen to change the page - to no avail - and, because MiljoenHuizen had previously attempted to optimise its Google rankings, it was ordered to change its website so the snippet would no longer appear.

MiljoenHuizen responded by taking down the page altogether. A search for those terms still brings up MiljoenHuizen on the first page - albeit with no snippet at all - and searchers are directed instead to a blog post about the court case. In this post, MiljoenHuizen is being ultra careful with its words and has switched some letters for numbers to avoid Google detection: 'Zwartep00te' and 'fai11iet' - to keep from getting in more trouble.

Interestingly, now that the story is being covered so widely, the English translation of the Dutch snippet is coming up for numerous websites. Bearing in mind that the actual content on the MiljoenHuizen site was not at fault (it was merely the Google-connected snippet that Zwartepoorte and the court didn't like) does this mean all the news sites are, technically, as liable as MiljoenHuizen was?

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