Google affecting local political campaigns

Not the sandbox this time

[Powdork]

One of our local politicians has aligned himself with an unscrupulous webmaster and they are dominating the top keywords for the campaign. Here is the scenario.
Webmaster creates site for candidate. In this case with lots of hidden text, including his competitor's name multiple times.
Webmaster replaces his webmastery site with identical copy of candidate's site (complete with hidden text), but uses competitors name in the title. Since this site has been around much longer, it outranks the candidate's and the competitor's site for many phrases including the competitors name.

The important thing is that Google will show the candidate's site when you search for his name, but will show the webmaster's site when other campaign related terms are searched for. You would hope G's algo would catch this, but you would hope at the least they would take some action when it is reported to them.
These were the violations reported.
1. Hidden text on the candidate's site, the webmaster's site, and an additional dozen clients for whom the webmaster provided the hidden text at no extra charge.
2. Duplicate sites (webmaster and candidate).
3. More duplicate sites. Some of the clients have duplicate sites on different URLs targeting different keywords.

I would have thought the sword would have been a bit swifter with this one.

[Powdork]

So "What's the latest with this unbelievable tale?" I hear you all ask. It turns out a letter to the editor received some attention and others have filed reports to Google, although I don't know what avenue they took.

The bad guys haven't been sitting still either. They purchased goodcandidatesname.com and have been putting libelous material there. They claimed she had been found by a grand jury to have taken bread money from seniors and linked to a pdf describing the grand jury's finding. Naturally, the pdf was another tidbit on one of the unsavory webmaster's domains that had nothing to do with the good candidate.

What are the legal options when someone buys your yourname.com to post defamatory material about yourname?

So far, Google has done nothing (besides sit there and look bad). If you do a search for both of the candidates names at one time you will get

1. badcandidate.com
-2. badcandidate.com (indented)

3. badwebmaster.com copy of badcandidate.com
-4. badwebmaster.com (indented) copy of badcandidate.com

5. unrelated

6. badwebmaster2.com copy of badcandidate.com
-7. badwebmaster2.com (indented) copy of badcandidate.com

8. My local forum posting

9. Local newspaper
-10. Local newspaper

[graeme_p]

The obvious one is to sue for libel - it looks like an easy win from what you say.

You may be able to get goodcandidatesname.com through the .com/WIPO arbitration process - clause. c. (ii) of the ICANN UDRP would seem to give "Good Candidate" rights over the domain, and the bad faith element is obvious.

[Powdork]

Thanks graeme_p,
I already advised them to look into a libel lawsuit.

You may be able to get goodcandidatesname.com through the .com/WIPO arbitration process - clause. c. (ii) of the ICANN UDRP would seem to give "Good Candidate" rights over the domain, and the bad faith element is obvious.

That's the kind of stuff I am looking for. I am also guessing the registrar (GoDaddy) and the host (pair) might have something that forbids this in their TOS.

[Powdork]

At this point, goodcandidatesname.com appears to have been removed from the google index. On some dc's it returns no results. On others, it returns results with site: type searches, but not with general queries. Of course, it was bought strictly to influence the election, so it is very new and could be the drop into the sandbox that follows the new page bump.

goodcandidate.com has also removed any references to organized crime that could have been considered libelous as well as ridiculous. Their infractions were reported to their host and registrar. Although that couldn't have been the cause for the demise due to the timeline. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

[Marcia]

>>On others, it returns results with site: type searches,

I hope you've grabbed copies of all the pages still found that are cached. Did you get screenshots of everything possible, by any chance?

I'm wondering if there could be any kind of ruling with domain squatting.

[Powdork]

No marcia, I've spent the last 30 minutes looking around various se's for a cache that showed these references. I can't find any. There are some on page things (image names and such) that still reference the slanderous material, and I think enough people saw it, including local press, that it's existence couldn't be questioned.

[Phil_Payne]

I am not a lawyer - although I was heavily involved in the Godfrey vs Demon Internet case - and US law is probably different from UK law.

But in the UK anyone keeping a copy of a libel in a place where it can be accessed is considered a "publisher" of that libel. My understanding is that Google's cache will do just fine. In UK law, Google would _HAVE_ to implement a "notice and take down" notification.

Action for libel is expensive. In the UK, you can reckon on the equivalent of at least $250,000 to get into court.

[Powdork]

Update
Both Pair and GoDaddy responded (correctly) with the we are not allowed to get involved with domain disputes..yada yada
However, goodcandidatesname.com is now parked at GoDaddy. Probably a result of legal threats from the good candidates side to the bad candidate (not toward the host or regsitrar), although I can't be sure yet.
When searching for related queries both badcandidate.com and badwebmaster.com still show up in the results. However, a search for badcandidate.com or badwebmaster.com or cache:badcandidate.com or cache:badwebmaster.com brings up the "Sorry, no information is available for the URL...." page. I'm guessing the hammer is about to fall.

[trinorthlighting]

Sounds like politicians to me, lie, cheat, steal and spend our tax money with no accountability...

[Powdork]

The whole thing has taken a turn into the local papers, which are online. Since it's news I would post the link, but it leads to lots of urls so just send me a sticky if you are interested.