Legal Issues in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
June 29th, 2009
By Roberto Garabell
Legal aspect of Search engine optimization is very important to explore in order to step into this industry or to take some of positive advantage from it. A number of legislative and regulatory bodies are already present in America to deal with these kinds of issues. In addition to this, in collaboration with the search engines and the optimization agencies governing bodies have also been setup. Most of the times the legality is involved in the monopoly control of the websites and the fake ranking of the entities on the search engines.
Monopoly control has been given much importance over the past few years in America as well as in Europe. With internet industry often being monopolized by one or two big players, it is very important to take control of these business scenarios. In order to implement this, regulatory bodies have set up limits on the ranking and the amount of money being paid to improve the linkage of a site to the search engine. Monitory penalties have also been setup and few cases have already emerged in this regard. Many of the world famous sites have been struck of the ranking lists only because of monopolized presence in the ranking list of the search engine. Moreover limits have also been placed on the amount of investment and content of advertisements for a particular website. This may be a contradiction to free markets and free trade deals but somewhere or the other a check has to be made.
Fake increase in the ranking and linkage of the site through stuffing with reference words and virtual linkages has been penalized in several courts in the US. Many of the worlds most famous sites have been dropped of one of the major search engines list due the fact that it used illegal ways of increasing its chances in the search engine results. Monitory punishments amounting up to million dollars have been imposed as well.
The legislation and the legal work are being constantly going on in order to keep the industry under check and have a competitive environment.
Thomas is an author and SEO expert. He teaches effective article marketing strategies with unique content articles. Take a look at his blog for new online SEO and web hosting related articles.
