Wednesday, September 24, 2008

FindLaw Busted For Deceiving Clients

There is a wide divide between companies that "do websites" for profit and webmasters that embrace the concept of marketing lawyers online to bring together two vital ends: people who need legal help and people who offer it. There is also a wide divide between those who do whatever it takes to win (including breaking the cardinal rules) and those who embrace the psychological interactions online, the purpose of information, the value of intellectual needs and exchanges, and the goal of helping people. The former examples are what FindLaw has done; the latter is why I am a much former representative of FindLaw. Moving the soap box over....

If you haven't heard, FindLaw got busted by Google for breaking the cardinal rule: selling links.

The reason that the term "got busted" has been used to describe FindLaw's action is because it has forever and a day been against Google guidelines and rules for any website owner (or the company in charge of managing it - in this case, FindLaw) to sell links to other website owners. The primary objective of such links is to "pass link juice" from one website to another. "Link juice" is simply explained as passing the authority that one website has earned/gained in Google's eyes onto another website - much like you would refer a client to another lawyer along with your glowing remarks. The more authority you have in the legal community, the greater the weight of your referral. The same applies online.

Many BLOG's have posted the FindLaw bust, and shamed FindLaw for having sold links. I concur, it was a shameful act because FindLaw holds itself out as being an authority in the legal marketing industry; therefore, they knew or should have know that it was wrong, but they chose to do it anyway. What they did is "against the rules" and perhaps better known as "greed." The person responsible for that choice is their search engine marketing manager, but that responsibility must be shared by all of his managers - somebody has to have the courage to say "it is wrong" and "the buck stops here" in corporate America. The SEM manager knew both that it was wrong and that he could gain leverage in the search engine results by releasing small inventories of "link juice" and selling them at high dollars. One report by a former FindLaw manager said they pulled in nearly 1 billion from selling links. As a FindLaw competitor, I'm not in favor of them making money through massive projects such as those, but my views go to the ethical side of their choice.

They broke Google's rules, that's a given, and it is up to Google to hold the line on their rule prohibiting the selling of links by properly punishing FindLaw and all websites that participated in the game, or forever appear the empty threat or institutional mongrel that they have forever denied. Of course, such punishment would have to be bestowed upon their many other URL's, such as the thomson.com marketing campaign they launched almost immediately upon "getting busted" for selling links for FindLaw.com.

But the most concerning wrong here is the deceit: FindLaw deceived the lawyers that entrusted FindLaw to market them online ethically. We are not talking about ethics in legal marketing here, folks, but rather webmaster ethics - the heart of any business intending to market online. FindLaw claims to be a webmaster to law firm sites; FindLaw is a member of the same organizations that I am a member - organizations that preach the good guidelines to follow; they knew that selling links was wrong, and yet they concealed the possible harm from their clients. Some FindLaw representatives have posted claims that they did not know. That would not surprise me - the representatives are not trained in search engine optimization; they are trained in selling; they aren't trained in search engine marketing; they are trained to regurgitate talking points to drive the sale to close. Now, there are many reps that truly care about their clients, but that care is constrained by the product offerings that FindLaw makes available to them. Even so, most reps likely don't understand the technical side of marketing online, so they likely are not to blame for having deceived the lawyers that took part in the selling links program. Conspiracy would likely be proven if the challenge were there, but in my humble opinion, that responsibility goes to the managers.

Other BLOG's have indicated that FindLaw didn't do anything wrong, stating that FindLaw charged for links on its high ranking pages much like any other directory. In part, FindLaw has always sought to leverage select clients with links; that was done long ago, and is apparent online. Google has already noted those links. The actual "sales of links" broke known Google rules because the links are wrong because of FindLaw's "other acts" and "object intent". Those other acts included positioning the high ranking web pages to leverage other websites and host links to those sites after the links were purchased. In other words, FindLaw did not link to authorities in the legal industry because of those attorneys' past trial record or years of experience, nor did they seek to help people find a key piece of information, but rather, they linked to those sites without the proper programming behind the link that would indicate to search engines that the link was not intended to pass link juice to that site. The object intent is evident - boost the page rank of the client site, albeit unethical ways. So, FindLaw's claim that they don't do whatever it takes to win is disproved; they do, even unethical acts proven when they "got busted".

And yet other BLOG's have depicted the outrage of webmasters in the legal community at Google for having done nothing to FindLaw, despite the long standing Google threat of doom to anyone who sells links to pass link juice. I believe that the webmasters of the world have covered this well, and I wholeheartedly agree that Google should hold FindLaw accountable for their intended objective. By doing so, Google would not penalize directories as a whole - directories are good, they help us find information - but rather penalize those whose object intent it is to do something that they know should not be done. If it were anyone else, perhaps even lawyers.com, the penalty would be 6 months in the brig (i.e. Google Sandbox). I can understand why webmasters are outraged.

Results (top rankings in Google) go to those who play by the rules and work for the placement - they get by giving valuable information to the users of the Internet.

Interestingly enough, another BLOG post I ran across indicated that FindLaw was switching websites periodically. It stated that FindLaw would post your website, and then swap it periodically with another nearly duplicate site. The purpose of the swapping was to trick search engines into believing that the site had new content. In other words, another means of deception.

I wouldn't recommend swapping up websites to try to trick Google into believing that you posted new content. I do recommend doing the work - i.e. write the content!

We always ask our clients to tell us if they are involved in any other online marketing for this very reason. We do not participate in nor want anything to do with paid linking programs. We also don't knowingly link with FindLaw websites because it has long been rumoured in the webmaster community that they practice less than ethical search engine marketing - I believe I first heard of FindLaw selling links some 12 months ago through a company in Florida that has since been sold.

So, what can you do as a law firm who has a contract with FindLaw? Ask for a report of all inbound links to your site, and then ask for a report on any of those links which would qualify as "paid links" or "unethical practices" under the "Google guidelines" - then ask to have those links removed. In any case, at least then you will have the foundation of material upon which you relied.

And how can you tell if your site is being swapped-up? Make changes to specific words, sentences or paragraphs, and then print it off. Follow up by checking those changes to see if they disappear. One attorney in Green Bay reported that he had made changes to his website, but then some months later, those changes were "un-made". That result may indicate that the site was swapped-up. You could also just ask FindLaw...

^.com^

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