Google is being threatened by Leo Stoller, an Illinois resident, who has been demanding settlement payments from the search giant in a trademark dispute for using the word "Google." Mr. Stoller recently sent a letter with letterhead reading, "Google Brand Products and Services ... Since 1981." The letter allegedly warned that beginning a legal proceeding on the issue would cost Google at least $150,000 and that Stoller would drop the claim if paid at least $100,000.

It is very unlikely Google will pay up, and even less likely that Stoller will be able to make a legal claim. It appears that Stoller has sent over 1,800 different companies similar demand letters over the past two years. Google has responded with a suit charging fraud, false advertising, unfair competition and racketeering, citing the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The Wall Street Journal Reported last week that News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox has subpoenaed Google Inc.'s YouTube video-sharing site to unveil the identity of a user who uploaded pirated copies of recent episodes of "24" and "The Simpsons."

The subpoena filed Jan. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California requests that YouTube disclose information sufficient to identify the subscriber so that Fox can stop the infringing immediately.

Could this really happen again to one of the world’s largest portals? In 2004, someone hijacked the domain name eBay.com for a short period. How could something like this have ever been allowed to happen? Perhaps the bigger question, how could this actually happen again to another company of similar presence?

Even with the precedence of the eBay high jacking, Google was unable to prevent its own name from falling into the hands of a cyber squatter, at least for a day. Visitors to the German Web site of Google.de, did not see the Google logo when they logged onto the site last Tuesday morning. Instead, they saw the name of a local Internet service provider with the message that no content was available for the domain. How did this happen? The domain name was transferred to a new ISP somehow. All that Google could say is, “This will never happen again, rest assured; there will be changes”.

This just goes to show you how vulnerable we all are to cyber squatting. If this could happen to eBay and Google, with all of their protections in place, how are we to protect our small business names? In my opinion, we need to pass stronger legislation which gives us as business owner’s sharper teeth when things like this happen, and only then will there be a significant deterrent.

In the new world of Social Search there are so many web portals one can choose to use. If you want to find a great shared book marking site, there is del.icio.us, Furl, Myweb, and so many more, if you are looking for a blog or RSS aggregator, you may want to use Technorati or Feedster. However, when it comes to photo sharing there is clearly only one solution that will serve all of your needs, where other sites just can’t cut the mustard. That site should be no secret to anyone, Flickr. Below are just some of the reasons, that I find Flickr the ultimate in social search:

• Pages have title tags
• Pages support HTML mark-up
• Pages allow for familiar tagging
• Pages can have optimized URLs
• Photos have text captions
• Photos can be grouped
• Photos can be saved to favorites
• Users can comment on the photos
• Flickr will host your photos for you.

Over the past two years, the importance of reciprocal links has declined considerably, where at one point, Matt Cutts, from Google stated at a Search Engine Strategies Convention, Google was going to just about ignore reciprocal links, unless there are some striking similarities between the sites and there is no question that the sites are extremely relevant.

As a search engine optimization firm, we have been asked the question by countless potential and actual clients why they can not go out and get those links. We always preach the link farm issue, which puts them in a “bad neighborhood” and the requirement for relevant links which can be found by humans. However, some people still just don’t get it. Reciprocal links are dead!

This morning, I read an article, distributed by Site Pro News that was directly on point with this SEO issue. The article was titled, “What’s Wrong with Reciprocal Linking, by Donald Nelson.

Mr. Nelson has some very poignant thoughts on the matter. Perhaps the most significant point he makes is that most of the request are automated today. Very rarely does an actual human being send a request. Now there is nothing wrong per se with an automated request. However, Mr. Nelson points out, “it leads to all kinds of abuses, and it prevents you from picking out the good links from the bad.” He also points out that most link requests are of extremely low quality. For example, take a look at the inbound links to the link request site, you will likely not find many. He further points out that the goal of many of those link requests are to generate

“money from Adsense and other advertising programs. In addition, driven by the need to acquire PageRank many webmasters went into a link gathering frenzy and sent requests to any and all sites whether they were related to their site or not. If a link is to be a resource to visitors of both sites, then the two sites should somehow be related and the sites should be of comparable quality. Most reciprocal link requests fail this test. “

His next point is very important if you desire more than just an inbound link for SEO purposes, but rather expect direct traffic from those links. Mr. Nelson correctly states, “Links are buried on pages where human eyes will never see them.” The problem is that in the past users would have a small site with one links page that might contain 30 or so links. Well, now in the world of dynamic web sites powered by databases and content management systems, web masters are setting up private directories.

That has all changed. People now build huge directories of hundreds of categories, stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory. These “huge directories of hundreds of categories are stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory.”

For more information on a better way to set up a linking strategy that will work for you, contact, Rock Coast Media today. In addition, if you would like to read the full article, check out Site Pro News.

It seems that recently, Google has been held to a much higher standard than Yahoo, MSN and Ask. To me, this seems a bit unfair, as they are all competing for the very same market share, and ad revenue. As proof of this statement, Google has been blasted on many techi blogs regarding their practice of marketing Google services, in the search results pages, as “tips”. This practice on its face may seem unethical, but the other big 3 search engines and AOL for that matter all do the same thing. However, Google is the only company being called out for the practice. As an other example, when the click fraud law suits were settled, Google settled its suit in a much greater position for the claimants than Yahoo did. However, Google was the one who was blasted for taking advantage of its name brand and competitors, while Yahoo was just conducting business as usual. Again, this seems unfair to me.

The rub in all of this is that Google itself seems to have come to expect this sort of treatment and even has sent out its messenger to the world, Matt Cutts to comment on this from his blog postings. Matt Cutts wrote recently,

“Whether it's fair or not, it's a fact that people expect more from
Google than other companies. People compare other search engines to
Google, but people compare Google to perfection. We have such
Passionate users that they'll complain loudly if they think Google
is ever straying from the right path. If you're a Googler, it
may feel frustrating. Instead, I'd choose to be grateful, because
that passionate feedback keeps our heads on straight.

When our users yell at Google, they care and want us to do the
right thing (for their idea of what the right thing is). What other
company gets that kind of feedback? Besides, if Yahoo or Microsoft
jumped off a building, would you jump off too? :) So yes, if the
decision were up to me, I'd remove these tips or scale them way
back by making sure that they are very relevant and targeted.”

In my opinion, Google is getting a raw deal, and should be held the same standard of care that their direct competitors are held to.