Court Rules Search Engines Not Responsible for Unflattering Results - The UpStream

Court Rules Search Engines Not Responsible for Unflattering Results

posted Saturday Mar 9, 2013 by Scott Ertz

Court Rules Search Engines Not Responsible for Unflattering Results

One of the fascinating things about people in the US is that, despite highly publicized precedent in court, people will still file the same suit and expect different results. I believe I heard that is the definition of insanity, but I'm no expert.

This week's example of insanity comes to us care of Wisconsin resident Beverly Stayart, CFO and Director of Business Development at Stayart Law Offices. You would think that someone working at a law office, especially one whose last name is in the office name, would be smarter than wasting resources, but here we go. Miss Stayart sued Google because of the search results that return when searching for her name, "Bev Stayart."

As it turns out, "Bev Stayart Levitra" is related to erectile dysfunction and, therefore, her name returns sex pills. She believes this sullies her "wholesome image," despite the fact that she is obviously not related to erectile dysfunction. The court ruled in Google's favor, just as they have in Yahoo's favor previously for the same case.

Previously, in an unrelated case, Google won a very similar battle with then Presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Santorum believed that the results for his last name returning a relatively unknown, yet legitimate British slang term with the same name, returned before his own results, were hurting his chances for the Republican nomination. The term had gained popularity in the US when openly gay sex advisor Dan Savage used SEO skills to promote the term when Santorum came out angrily against gay equality.

If a Presidential candidate was unable to win the case against Google, I'm not sure what an unknown lawyer in Wisconsin thought she brought to the table. For now, the Internet has won another battle against censorship, no matter how frivolous and insane it might be.

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