A Dutch website has lost a lawsuit over the words appearing in the snippet of text appearing in Googles search results, despite the fact that Google generated the snippet.
Apparently the snippet gave the incorrect impression that a local car dealer (Zwartepoorte) had gone backrupt despite the fact that the snippet only appeared when you searched for “zwartepoorte failliet” (failliet means bankrupt in Dutch). The offending page has now been taken down.
If you search for two quite rare words on Google then the results returned don’t always have those words next to each other – sometimes the best match Google can find is a page with both words somewhere in separate sections.
This is the snippet that Google generated (screenshot above), notice the dots to indicate the words were not together on the page:
Volledige naam: Zwartepoorte Specialiteit: BMW … Dit bedrijf is failliet verklaard, het is overgenomen door het motorhuis Ik heb bij Boot Rialto gewerkt …
Translated into English:
Complete name: Zwartepoorte Specialiteit: BMW…This company has been declared bankrupt, it has been acquired by the motordealer I have worked for Boat Rialto…
The reasons behind the findings were as follows:
According to the Court, the duty of care to remove or restructure the content that caused a combination of snippets to appear in a Google search result existed because:
1. plaintiff had suffered damages because of the wrong suggestion;
2. defendant used the services of Google, had optimized the ranking of its website in Google, and profited from this (through advertisements);
3. Plaintiff had requested to do something about it a number of time, with reference to the damage it was suffering;
4. It was easy for defendant to make a simple change to the website that would have caused the snippet to change;
According to the court, it would be rather easy for Miljoenhuizen.nl to edit its site so that something else turned up in the snippet. This may be because Miljoenhuizen.nl said as much during the court case – before retracting its words in statements to the press.
Why this is all wrong
There are a number of issues with this ruling, the main one being that an individual website doesn’t have full control over what appears in a snippet. Yes you can influence it but you can never fully control what appears because snippets are query dependent and not website dependent.
Every time a user types something into Google all the snippets are generated in real time based on what Google things you are looking for. Each snippet might only be seen by one person so how is a site owner supposed to police snippets for search results that nobody has even thought of yet.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, that’s a brilliant piece of bad luck for everybody involved although I can’t see how a website can be held liable for something on another website. Of course, local laws are local laws right? Thanks!
Brilliant ad Ask.com arbitrage specialists show there :\
It was a nice try going up against the giant but you better have some smart lawyers and deep pockets.
The plaintiff had requested that the site be changed multiple times, but the defendant refused. So I think the ruling is right. The refusal to make the “simple” change shows a willful desire to harm the other business, which is a far cry from having a suit come out of the blue for something they knew nothing about beforehand.
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How & why should they change it when the snippet is auto generated by Google?
More comments from Patrick AltoftI believe that had the defendant been able to demonstrate that they had made efforts to change the snippet that would appear for this particular query – even if those efforts had been unsuccessful – they would not have lost the case.
The crucial point here seems to be that they ignored (reasonable) requests from the plaintiff, who was suffering damages as a result.
In addition to what Marilynn already wrote: the defendant agreed that a “simple” change would do the trick. He only refused because complying with the request would in his opinion violate his freedom of speech. The judge did not hold him liable for what Google displayed, but for refusing to make the simple change.
Of course there is no general obligation to give a helping hand whenever you can, but in this case the defendant was in a more or less unique position to do something (together with Google itself, I guess), and helping would not have imposed any real burden on the defendant.
It is important not to interpret the verdict as implying that (Dutch) websites are liable for whatever Google does with their webpages. The judge took care to add a paragraph stressing this, but unsurprisingly most (Dutch) media reports chose to ignore that paragraph.
its just the Google algorithm to pick them up ,google generates it automatically as this been ,like how can one website can cause other website problems any how rule is rule ,but even the laws can be amended accordingly so that it does not effect in the near future .
This is an interesting post. I agree with Patrick when he says:
“How & why should they change it when the snippet is auto generated by Google?”
and James in regards to
“had the defendant been able to demonstrate that they had made efforts to change the snippet that would appear for this particular query – even if those efforts had been unsuccessful – they would not have lost the case.”
Thanks for sharing
Karl
Is there any tool to see the website is liable or not.
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