Brand Name "out of business" spammed into Search Suggestions

[Mike_Brent]

Hello,

Someone is spamming our brand name so when it is typed in the search bar it shows "BRAND NAME complain" "BRAND NAME out of business" etc. We know that someone sued (and won) Google for having his name show up with some bad words (Name is an idiot etc). We are going to SUE GOOGLE if we are not contacted about this issue so we can resolve it.

We cannot find anywhere how to contact them, every "contact us" link just brings you to some other form or some other FAQ.

Please can someone let us know who/how we should contact Google about this? Our legal team presses us to just sue, they think we can make a lot of money out of this... but we rather solve this with them.

Thanks.

[tedster]

Google's contact information is here: http://www.google.com/contact/ [google.com]

The only successful legal actions I know of about Search Suggestions happened in the EU, by the way.

I'm aware that a cottage industry has sprouted around spamming Search Suggestions - both positively and negatively. If I'm aware of it, then I'm pretty certain Google is also aware of it.

In fact, there are signs just today on some data centers that a substantial change is rolling out in the Suggestions. Here's hoping it fixes your problem. One of the more infamous spam jobs I know of has already vanished.

[Mike_Brent]

That URL brings you nowhere... just more forms and more FAQ but no real contact info, only an address. If we have to mail a letter it will be from our lawyers.

[tedster]

I also see a phone number and a fax number at the bottom.

[Mike_Brent]

The phone doesn't help its all menus.

Just so you people know how you can spam any company with this feature - if you have a high traffic website all you need to do is open a 1x1 iframe for every page view to a google search + the spamming words. Within a few days it will create this search as a suggested search.

If you want to make quick buck just do this with your name + some bad words and sue Google in the EU, you'll make a fortune. Someone already did this and won, so what are we all waiting for?

[rustybrick]

Try [google.com...] Googlers monitor it.

[MrFewkes]

Hey - if you do the iframe thing - but open up a 1x1 frame with a google search to a domain name - do you think google will now think your domain is mega popular because its being searched for.

Sounds like a nice trick to help a domain.

[Mike_Brent]

Here is an article about the guy who sued them:

[news.softpedia.com...]

We already contacted the same firm in France.... Hope we can make some good $ out of this, this is Christmas season and we "estimate" our loses to be about $500,000...

[Mike_Brent]

We have many websites with a lot of traffic, we can create for you a search "your brand complain" etc if you want so you can later sue Google, if interested let us know. Thanks. (free service)

[Bewenched]

What's really bugging me is the instant search results and you type and sometimes google doesnt return the search that I typed... I know it has their instant suggestions, but about 1 out of 5 times my search is what I want, but the results page is one of those darn suggestions. I know you can turn that off, however the average joe doesnt know that.


Yesterday... traffic good sales decent. Today our phones are dead. Think i'm going to go run some facebook ads....

[anallawalla]

Google doesn't make it easy for us to find specific people or departments, e.g. see this discussion - [google.com...] - I can see their position, since they might get thousands of complaints every day and perhaps hundreds of them would be threatening legal action. Hence you have to just file a suit and wait for Google to defend it.

There was a well-known case where someone sued them in Santa Clara County and Google lost because an inexperienced person was sent.