Can Google be held legally responsible for showing links to information that might be viewed as defamatory? Well two real estate agents from Victoria Australia think Google should remove such links to articles saying they bullied an intellectually disabled man into selling his home in order to claim a commission of at least $200,000. The two agents have filed a defamation lawsuit against Google, which will go to court March 7.
I think we all know that the SERPS aren’t 100% accurate, like Wikipedia is (kidding!). But I have to wonder if the agents think it’s worth further damaging their results for searches on their names. I haven’t been monitoring their results prior to the mass coverage of their news, but I can see that the first page is dominated by neutral or negative coverage of their lawsuit. The coverage just further strengthens the rankings of the articles – just think of all the inbound links the articles must have gained in the past few weeks. And funny enough, I don’t see any coverage of them defending themselves. …Doesn’t seem worth it to me.