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French and British complain they are not #1 for their term in Google

February 24, 2010

World No.1 search engine Google said earlier that British price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr had alleged that its search algorithm demoted their sites in Web search results because they were rivals. Reuters is reporting and this contributed to the antitrust case being filed against Google in Europe.

So we went to http://www.foundem.co.uk/ to see the story. As many of you know, I have been doing search engine optimization since altavista was the largest search engine and Yahoo was a directory (funny how things circle around with Microsoft running Yahoo’s search).

So of course we wanted to see how well the site is SEO’ed. Below is a screenshot from a Google Text Cache. Clearly something is wrong with the way http://www.foundem.co.uk/ is doing their SEO. Perhaps they should start here on Google Guidelines before calling regulators.

Right off the bat they are violating the 100 links per page guideline. Since the early 2000′s this has been in their guidelines, but even last year Matt Cutts revisited the case and still suggested websites keep under 100 links.

Notice something else with their site, there is no unlinked text based content on their main page. You’re talking ZERO content to rank in the first place. I’m almost surprised they are ranking for their own name considering the number of guideline violations the site is running from all search engines.

Some things are complete common sense that they violated. So instead of building your website with SEO in mind you instead pick up the phone and complain to the government that a private entity isn’t suggesting your site as the authority.

Foundem is almost viewed as a link farm from an algorithm standpoint and a 4 year old can see that. It’s amazing it’s even in the index. Hire someone to SEO that thing, don’t go complaining to regulators for your own business failures.

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Authored by Roger Wehbe - President and CEO - Yooter InterActive - Twitter @thefounder

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Written by TheFounder · Filed Under Advertising Agency News 


Comments

  • http://searchengineland.com/companies-ask-courts-regulators-to-restrain-google-to-compensate-for-own-competitive-failures-36901 Companies Ask Courts, Regulators To Restrain Google To Compensate For Own Competitive Failures

    [...] be based on bad SEO practices rather than any manipulation of results by Google. See for example Tribble and EConsultancy for [...]

  • Guest

    violating the 100 links per page guideline - violating a guideline, yes yes a big big mistake!

  • nev

    Tthe title of this article, “French and British complain…” is a bit misleading. I'm British and I agree that the lack of decent SEO makes these sites' gripes ridiculous!

  • TheFounder

    Some of the best SEO's I know are British …

  • http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=6955 Pot Calls Kettle Black - Microsoft to Google : you’re a monopoly

    [...] fix the search engine… don’t complain to the police. Seriously Microsoft you guys sound like foundem The company that’s ranking are horrible and call the police / antitrust [...]

  • http://getmeseo.com/companies-ask-courts-regulators-to-restrain-google-to-compensate-for-own-competitive-failures/ Companies Ask Courts, Regulators To Restrain Google To Compensate For Own Competitive Failures | GetMeSEO.com

    [...] Engine Optimization practices rather than any manipulation of results by Google. See for example Tribble and EConsultancy for [...]