The reason being that Findlaw was publishing blogs authored by Findlaw employees that, in my opinion, were nothing more than a regurgitation of news content. The goal being to fill a blog post with keywords that could link to FindLaw websites or websites FindLaw sold to law firms. In other words, spam blogs to game Google's search engine rankings.

I mentioned that a 'Emily Grube,' a writing specialist, not a lawyer, was one of the folks writing the FindLaw blog posts.

Last week I received an anonymous comment from someone who says they used to work at FindLaw.

I used to work as a writer at FindLaw - not blogs, more just churning out the firmsite stuff. As such I just want to say, don't be too hard on Emily Grube.

FindLaw hires people who have only vague notions about the law, then tells them "write like this, it might make you feel like a shithead but trust us, it's okay."

Grube was just following orders. Don't blame her, don't shit on her life just because FindLaw put her in the position of offending the wrong people.

Nice.

FindLaw is continuing with spam law blogs. This time rather than with its own FindLaw blogs such as the New York Personal Injury Legal Blog, which gave rise to my earlier post, FindLaw is apparently selling ghostwritten blogs to lawyers.

Take a look at the 'Recently Added Blogs' on FindLaw's Legal Blog Network.

The blogs are not written by lawyers, they are written 'On Behalf of" a law firm. I guess that way it's not false or misleading advertising contra to bar rules for implying that a firm's lawyer authored the blog.

I thought I had seen some 'real posts' written on behalf of a law firm on some of the 'Recently Added Blogs,' but the following are the only blog posts I see today on these blogs.

• From the Boston MA Personal Injury Law Blog, published by Kenney & Conley, PC one blog post of January 4:

  We established this blog to share stories and information about topics relevant to our practice. Our intent is to highlight local stories, as well as national subject matter, that we think you will find interesting. We will regularly update this blog and encourage you to share your thoughts on these posts.

• From the Fredericksburg VA Family Law Blog, published by Jarrell, Hicks & Waldman, PC, one blog post of January 9:

  We established this blog to share stories and information about topics relevant to our practice. Our intent is to highlight local stories, as well as national subject matter, that we think you will find interesting. We will regularly update this blog and encourage you to share your thoughts on these posts.

• From the Pearl River NY Tax Law Blog, published by The Law Offices of Hugh Janow, LLC, one blog post of January 9:

  We established this blog to share stories and information about topics relevant to our practice. Our intent is to highlight local stories, as well as national subject matter, that we think you will find interesting. We will regularly update this blog and encourage you to share your thoughts on these posts.

See any similarity in those blog posts?

I know the blogs are going to go on to have additional blog posts. FindLaw has likely sold the law firms 'X' number of blog posts per week or month.

Rather than insight and commentary on the law from a practicing lawyer though, the posts will be a shallow regurgitation of news stories like this post titled entitled 'Georgia girl suffers lost arm from pit bull attack, testifies,' paraphrasing a Atlanta Journal-Constitution story.

Maybe by blogging about this I am being too hard on the law firms who are buying these blogs from FindLaw. They likely don't know anything about how to use the Internet for business development. They probably don't know how poorly what FindLaw is selling them reflects on their law firm and its attorneys.

But Findlaw ought to know better and ought to be playing straight up with members of the legal profession it serves.

Sell expensive stuff to unknowing lawyers who don't how the Internet works and who don't know their reputation is being tarnished by what you're selling them. What a business model.

West established itself as the nationwide de facto standard used by all federal courts and most state courts for the reporting of legal decisions. The company published countless legal treatises authored by the leading legal scholars of our time. Black's Law Dictionary published by West and the first law book I bought in law school, had a place in every courtroom and law office the entire time I practiced law.

But boy has West Publishing, now part of Thomson Reuters, fallen. West, under the FindLaw brand, is now publishing spam law blogs full of little more than mindless crap, all in the name of selling Internet marketing services to unknowing lawyers. Shameless.

West's slide has come with the roll up of West into what's now known as the global legal division of Toronto based Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters (then known as Thomson) purchased West in 1996 and consolidated West and a number of other law book companies into what became know as Thomson West. In 2001, Thomson West acquired FindLaw.com, a free legal information web portal, founded by Stacy Stern and Tim Stanley. Thomson Reuters - West - FindLaw, however they may be now branded, make up this global legal division of Thomson Reuters.

As way of background, spam blogs are blog sites with inauthentic text or or text merely stolen or paraphrased (blog scraping) from other websites. The purpose of such a blog is to get high google search results in order to sell ads on the spam blog or to link to other websites in an attempt to improve the search engine performance of the site being linked to so you may sell ads or services on this second site.

Spam blogs are the rage among two bit scheme artists out hustling a buck. Unfortunately West, under the FindLaw brand, has become one these two bit scheme artists.

Let's look at one of FindLaw's new law blogs, The New York Personal Injury Law Blog, and in particular a blog post about a fatal auto crash reported by WCBS News in New York. The blog post is authored by a Emily Grube, a writing specialist, not a lawyer. Grube also authors other spam blogs for FindLaw.

In this blog post FindLaw regurgitates the facts of a local accident, including listing the names of four people killed in the accident. The post goes on to strategically link keywords related to the law, injury, lawyer, and New York to web pages in the FindLaw Internet directory in which lawyers buy listings and ads.

Grube then has the gall to write if you've suffered a personal injury you can contact a New York personal injury lawyer, of course linking the text 'personal injury lawyer' to FindLaw's directory. The post does not allow for comments, nor is there any attempt at creativity or analysis.

Imagine scraping the names of four of someone's loved ones killed in an accident from a news website story for a blog post so you can use the term 'wrongful death.' Your goal being to link the term 'wrongful death' to a FindLaw website page where people may search for injury lawyers who pay to pay to be in the FindLaw directory. Ambulance chasing at its worst. But FindLaw did it.

Imagine scraping the names of four of someone's loved ones killed in an accident from a news website story for a blog post so you can say 'can still sue that man's estate.' Your goal being to link the phrase 'can still sue that man's estate' (also done in the subject post) to a FindLaw website page where people may search for probate lawyers who pay to be in the FindLaw directory. Disgusting. But FindLaw did it.

There's even more garbage in this FindLaw spam blog. Look in the about section in the right hand column where out of 97 words 37 words are keywords related to New York and injury law. It takes a real 'writing specialist' to write crap like this:

The New York Personal Injury Law Blog covers news and developments in the area of personal injury and tort law in New York state, and New York City specifically, and helps to connect people with New York injury lawyers. The New York Personal Injury Law Blog is intended to serve as a resource for people working through a personal injury issue in New York, or those who are interested in New York personal injury and tort law generally, including New York personal injury attorneys who wish to keep up with the latest news developments.

I'm not alone in my criticism of FindLaw. Leading New York Attorney Eric Turkewitz labels the blog publishers on spam blogs, and in this case FindLaw's blogs, as dreck-bloggers. (dreck defined as "excrement; dung")

[They] aren't interested in creating good content, they simply regurgitate local accident or arrest stories and place a call-to-action link at the bottom. Posts are filled with buzzwords to game Google that, if coupled with the call-to-action for a recent event, places them firmly in the camp of Solicitation 2.0, a subject I dealt with two years ago. Put bluntly, many of these dung-blogs are electronically soliciting clients. E-chasing, for lack of a better word.

Widely respected blogger and New York Attorney, Scott Greenfield, commenting on FindLaw's blogs:

These aren't blogs, of course, in the sense that we understand them. There are mere names designed to trade in on search engine keywords, and capitalize on FindLaw's SEO ability to get their scam blogs higher than yours on the search engine's first page.

San Diego Attorney Marc Randazza asked 'FindLaw, are you really that douchetastic?'

They hired a milquetoast writer to author a milquetoast blawg for the sole purpose of selling ad space to sh*tty lawyers who can't develop a reputation on their own.

FindLaw's conduct is beneath everything we have the right to expect from companies serving the legal profession. Rather than conduct itself in a way that improves the image of lawyers and upholds the dignity of our profession, FindLaw gets down in the gutter so it can sell marketing services to lawyers who have not a clue what FindLaw is doing to trash our profession. A profession in which West Publishing once played a proud role.

Boy has a first class legal publishing company once held in esteem by lawyers, judges, and law schools fallen. All in the name of greed.

Rather than acknowledge its errors, FindLaw responded that it did not sell links to law firm websites. FindLaw said the story of selling links arose out of FindLaw sales literature leaked to the public about a FindLaw product called SEM - Corporate. It was that product purportedly pitched by FindLaw to corporations such as Avvo and JD Supra which involved the sale of links.

Typical of FindLaw's response given to lawyers, its employees, and the media, including the Wall Street Journal, is this statement given by FindLaw spokesman John Shaughnessy to the National Law Journal's Pamela MacLean.

What FindLaw did not say is that FindLaw had been selling a similar product to law firms called SEM Advantage. Presumably standing for 'Search Engine Marketing.'

I've received a copy of promotional information on SEM Advantage, apparently distributed to FindLaw's salespeople in sales meetings this last Winter at Tucson's Star Pass Resort. The literature clearly identifies the product as SEM Advantage, making no mention of 'SEM-Corporate.'

The literature clearly defines the customer of the product as law firms.

What's included in this sale to law firms? Inbound links tops the list.

FindLaw websites top the list of websites on which FindLaw will place the links to law firms.

What do those links look like? In many cases, like the 100 links to law firm websites below the footer of this FindLaw Legal Connection web page. Links placed clearly not to provide greater visibility to law firms by the links being clicked on, but links sold by FindLaw to provide what's called 'Google Juice' to the law firm websites.

I suppose FindLaw could say the sale of links was only one of four things being sold to law firms as part of SEM Advantage. I don't know.

What do you think? Do you think FindLaw was being truthful in its denial of selling links to law firms?

Related Posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

The Legal Broadcast Network ( LB Network ) is not LexBlog, but a network founded by Jan Schlichtmann, the nationally renown attorney and advocate for public justice and environmental issues and Mark Wahlstrom, one of the nations leading settlement planning professionals and advocate for plaintiffs rights to representation.

Notwithstanding FindLaw's hope and belief, the FindLaw selling links debacle has a ways to play out, with the primary impact being lawyers and law firms distrust of FindLaw and their law firm marketing solutions.

This well done and researched video from a reputable source is an example of what you can expect to see as people look beyond what FindLaw is telling folks.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

FindLaw's been reportedly selling a service to lawyers whereby FindLaw gets high search engine results for the law firms. FindLaw calls this product SEM (Search Engine Marketing) Advantage.

The problem is that a key element to FindLaw's methods for getting high search engine results for the firms is the placing of links around FindLaw property websites, not links for users to click on, but links in tiny text below footers on webpages. They're called 'spam links' and in violation of Google's guidelines.

FindLaw got caught by Google a couple weeks ago for allegedly selling links. FindLaw started changing the 'spam links' so that the links no longer provided 'Google Juice' to the lawyers' websites. Doesn't appear FindLaw has told the lawyers who paid upwards of $2,500 per month for this SEM Advantage product that FindLaw got caught by Google nor that FindLaw took away a significant part of the lawyers' 'Google Juice.'

FindLaw will not respond to bloggers but did respond to the Wall Street Journal saying 'We don't not sell links to law firms.' I am also informed from a reliable source that talking points given to FindLaw employees in order to respond to blogged reports of FindLaw misconduct includes the same 'We don't not sell links to law firms.'

FindLaw did say they may have sold links to corporations, but never law firms. And that the sale of such links has stopped and the money has been refunded to those corporations.

Now we have an informed source known to be a former FindLaw Sales Representative blowing the whistle on FindLaw's misconduct. What started as simply misconduct is appearing to me to be every bit a coverup - Linkgate.

Here's a comment from the source on a leading SEO blog.

And another comment on the same blog from the same source.

And yet another comment from the same source.

Readers, please keep that information on Linkgate coming. If need be, set up an alias email address at GMail to send me information and documents. I'll do my best to share what I can.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them

Well the mud just got a little deeper for FindLaw today. Dow Jones' Nat Worden reported this afternoon that FindLaw has been slapped by Google for shady SEO tactics and that lawyers are now questioning the SEO marketing product FindLaw sold them.

Worden explained that FindLaw came up with a 'SEM Advantage' product which cost some lawyers $2,000 per month.

Billed as a "high-octane" way to double or even triple traffic on his site, Newell [FindLaw lawyer customer] and others like him understood FindLaw's SEM Advantage product to be a package of well-placed links designed to lift a Web site's standing in a Google search. But now they're wondering if they're still getting their money's worth.

Worden reports FindLaw may have pulled the wool out from under these lawyers.

Late last month, FindLaw quietly made changes to a link on one of its Web sites leading to Newell's site, which he had received as part of SEM Advantage. It also changed at least 99 other links to the Web sites of law-firm clients after it ran afoul of Google Inc. (GOOG) in the search giant's ongoing efforts to crack down on a practice known as selling "link juice," or Web links designed to boost a Web site's page rankings in a search engine. With the link juice trade springing up as a cottage industry across the entire spectrum of online marketing, Google views it as threatening the quality of its search engine, an asset that has made Google a dominant force in media.

Read on in Worden's article and you'll see that FindLaw made the changes adversely effecting lawyers like Newell because FindLaw had been caught by Google for selling links in violation of Google's guidelines. Something in my opinion, FindLaw knew or should have known it was going to get caught doing.

Worden concludes with what is most alarming, and perhaps why FindLaw is not owning up to its misconduct.

The controversy comes at a difficult time for FindLaw's parent company, Thomson-Reuters, which publishes a news service that competes directly with Dow Jones Newswires and is delivered on the same terminals. Its stock price is down about 20% over the last year amid concerns that the U.S. financial crisis will quash growth in its financial markets division. Investors are counting on its professional division to pick up the slack, and its legal services business, for which Findlaw is a small but important growth engine, made up 66% of that division's revenue in the first half.

Imagine if FindLaw confessed to duping lawyers for millions of dollars (not saying they did, just looks to me like they did). Imagine having to refund millions of dollars. Imagine having to refund these monies after paying millions of dollars in sales commissions on the sale of this 'high-octane SEM Advantage Product.' Imagine how investors would view Thomson Reuter's stock then.

Scary stuff for FindLaw and their parent Thomson Reuters. Scary stuff for lawyers relying on FindLaw going forward.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

In addition to blog posts and blog comments, including a reporter's comment asking for current and former FindLaw sale's reps to contact them, here's my Tweetdeck monitoring FindLaw discussion from just this afternoon.

Think FindLaw has a PR problem? And it looks like FindLaw handles PR the old fashioned way. 'Don't say anything and hopefully the bad news will go away.'

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

The email thanked Kevin for the time he took talking with them, and read in part, '...[Y]ou truly are an upstanding professional in a field where such traits are essential.' Full disclosure, the professional services firm decided to go in another direction than LexBlog in their communications strategy, but we made a friend and a business relationship, things that last a lifetime.

Yesterday Mark Meranda, President of Smart Marketing which provides marketing for law firms and financial professionals, explained his company's dilemna when finding itself in competitive selling situations with FindLaw, a company owned by the huge Thompson Reuters conglomerate (2007 revenues: 12.4 billion).

After hearing us tell [potential clients] how you build search engine ranking with a quality website and by adding significant content over time, potential clients will come back at us with: "FindLaw says they can get me to number one on Google in two weeks!"

Mark then goes to explain one of the reasons FindLaw was able to make such a claim, FindLaw was selling links from FindLaw's website to law firm websites.

Each link is a "vote" that your site is interesting and valuable. Buying or selling links, like buying or selling votes, is a big no-no. FindLaw is apparently offering to do exactly that, selling links to other law sites for $1,000 a month.

Mark wouldn't get involved in such a scheme of buying links or advise his clients to do so. It's wrong, gets you penalized by Google, and is considered unethical in the SEO industry. The reputation of Mark and his company, is their life blood. How could Mark expect someone in the legal profession to trust him if Mark was doing something that was wrong?

I can remember starting LexBlog out of my garage (literally) 5 years ago. I had faith law blogs would work for lawyers looking to enhance that reputation. But when you're getting one lead every 2 weeks and doing 7 blogs in the first year, you can feel like the farmer with a horse and plow doing one furrow at a time. Your faith in yourself and your service gets shaken every now and again.

Tim Stanley, the co-founder of FindLaw and who sold FindLaw to Thomson 7 years ago and who's now the CEO of Justia, told me to hang in there. Tim said we're different than the big boys like Thomson FindLaw and LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. 'We care,' Tim said, 'That makes a big difference in the long run. Lawyers want to work with people who really care about the service being provided to them, and the lawyers themselves.'

Tim's the same as Mark. Same as a lot of companies whose leaders I have come to know. They do the best they can in helping lawyers and law firms, but are not going to step across the line and do something that's questionable.

In deciding what's stepping over the line, my guess is employees at good companies are guided by these types of questions:

• Have I considered and identified other options or alternatives?
• Is the action ethical?
• How will my decision affect others, including our customers, shareholders, employees and the community?
• How will my decision look to others?
• How would I feel if my decision were made public?
• Could the decision be honestly explained and defended?
• Would I be happy if my conduct were described on the front page of my hometown newspaper or online news source?

Want to know the irony here? Those questions were pulled from 'Thomson Reuter's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.' (pdf) Yes, Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Findlaw, who pulled a rock by gaming Google and failing to disclose same to their lawyer customers.

'When you're faced with a decision or situation and you're not clear as to what action you should take, ask yourself the following questions,' the Thomson Reuters code says.

You can almost hear CEO of Thomson Reuters, Tom Glocer, saying that after reading his intro to the Code in which he says, 'As our reputation is critical to our success, Thomson Reuters will maintain the highest ethical standards in our relationships with customers, suppliers, each other and the communities in which we do business.'

I speak at a lot of conferences and am invited to do a lot of presentations on Internet legal marketing. As much as I have been impressed with Tom Glocer through his blog and his ideas on new media, it will be a long time before I could pull myself to use reputable business practices and Findlaw in the same sentence.

That's especially true with FindLaw ducking their selling links fiacso for over a week in the face of growing criticism from bloggers and lawyers across the net. Maybe that's because Findlaw knows their conduct cannot be 'honestly explained and defended.'

That's a shame when lawyers and law firms selecting a legal marketing strategic partner are looking for people who care and whom will act with integrity at moments of choice.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

Not only may FindLaw be liable to law firms for the millions of dollars paid by law firms to FindLaw for these spam links, but FindLaw and its parent company, Thomson Reuters, has damaged its reputation and brand in the eyes of lawyers and the search community, including Google, for years to come.

Dad always said there's a right way and a wrong way to handle everything. FindLaw needs to do the right thing and to do it now.

Here's the right thing to do:

1. Acknowledge immediately to your lawyer customers who bought the spam links and the legal community as a whole that 'FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business,' acted wrongly and in violation of Google's webmaster rules.
2. Apologize immediately to the law firms and the legal community for FindLaw's course of conduct.
3. Announce immediately that FindLaw will refund within 30 days all the money paid by the law firms for these links.
4. Perform an immediate accounting of all monies paid for the links by the respective law firms. (Appears to be in the hundreds, possibly thousands of law firms and for all I know could be $3 to $5 million).
5. Report the results of the accounting publicly.
6. Hold the FindLaw people who authorized the sale of links, who had to know it was improper, personally responsible. That includes senior management who very likely knew.
7. Establish an in-house ethics review committee and ethical standards protocol to prevent future improper conduct.

Tuesday will be the 7th day since the news of FindLaw's selling links was reported on the net as well as 7 days from when Google's Matt Cutts became aware of the violation. And at least the 4th day since FindLaw was penalized by having its website PageRank dropped from a 7 to a 5.

FindLaw has chosen not to respond - to the public, to its customers, or to bloggers. This is rather surprising in these days of corporate damage control and where word spreads like wildfire on the net.

I worked as a VP of Business Development for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell - lawyers.com, FindLaw's largest competitor, following the acquisition of my prior company. I may never have agreed with everything Martindale did, and God knows I am a vocal critic of Martindale here, but Martindale always looked at itself as having a reputation to uphold because of its history and its role in the legal community as a whole.

I can't believe Martindale senior management would have ever allowed this sort of thing, no matter the pressure for incremental revenue. But if Martindale did get itself in trouble, I have to believe it would have held itself accountable to its lawyer customers and the legal profession.

FindLaw needs to act accordingly if it wants to seriously compete with Martindale and lawyers.com, reduce the damage to the Thomson Reuters FindLaw name, and to attempt to reestablish itself as a respected member of our legal community.

The legal community looks forward to FindLaw's response in the next day or two.

Update: Based on an inquiry from a sales rep I want to make myself clear. In no way did I mean to imply that Martindale ever sold spam links - Martindale, to my knowledge, has not ever sold links like FindLaw did. My point was that the Martindale senior management I knew while serving as a VP of Martindale would never have even thought of doing something like FindLaw did.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

Though there's not much coverage yet on the legal blogosphere, FindLaw's conduct has sure generated emails and phone calls to me. I suspect we'll see blog discussion in the coming days, along with FindLaw's response.

SEO basics to understand the severity of FindLaw conduct

One of the ways Google determines where a given site will rank for a specific search is the number and quality of inbound links to a website. The theory is that very interesting pages will be linked to by many other websites and blogs. A page or website with a lot of links therefore has a lot of authority (Google measures authority on a 1-10 logarithmic scale called PageRank).

Taking it one step further, a link from a high PageRank site (like CNN or FindLaw) is more valuable than a link from a low PageRank site. The more links to your website from sites with a high PageRank, especially from relevant subject sites (links from FindLaw to lawyer websites), the higher your website may appear in Google search results.

Now from Google's webmaster guidelines as to websites and SEO consultants selling links to website owners trying to achieve search rankings.

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results. (emphasis added)

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the < a > tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

It's text links, as opposed to advertising or directory listings, in website copy being sold to game higher search engine rankings that's the clearly outlawed conduct. Throughout the SEO community the practice is called link spam or search engine spam.

Google takes link spam serious enough to have a designated group to prevent such conduct and penalize those who participate in the proscribed conduct. Headed by Matt Cutts, the Search Quality group at Google and Cutts are widely known across the Internet and the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam.

What did FindLaw do?

The best summary is provided by Todd Friesen in a post entitled 'Shame Shame Shame Findlaw.' Friesen's been doing SEO since 1998 and is currently the Director of SEO for Range Online Media which performs work for such clients as Sharper Image, Nike, Neiman Marcus and Accor Hotels North America.

As Friesen outlines:

• FindLaw sent unsolicited emails to lawyers and SEO experts selling a search engine marketing (SEM) program service.
• FindLaw's service sells a law firm up to 3 hard coded links to be placed on editorially relevant pages of content for $12,000 ($1,000 per month for a 12 month contract).
• FindLaw's service educates lawyers how to write the best text for their links (anchor text) so as to achieve higher search results for the lawyer's website.
• A law firm is 'allowed to submit up to 5 articles to be placed' in relevant areas of the FindLaw, with 5 additional links.

FindLaw may contend that the links in any articles submitted are not link spam, but the article submission is optional and the selling of links otherwise appears to be a clear violation of Google's guidelines.

Friesen and the SEO experts who commented to his post sure think FindLaw is guilty of link spam. Friesen goes so far to say, 'It's been nice knowing you Findlaw.'

Matt Cutts acknowledged in a comment on Friesen's blog last Wednesday that he had been forwarded copies of FindLaw's emails selling links. Cutts also posted at Twitter the same day that he enjoyed that post of Friesen's.

Though I don't monitor the PageRank of websites, I'm told FindLaw had a PageRank of 7 as little as a week ago. By Friday night, FindLaw's PageRank was a 5, and remains so today.

A PageRank move is more than just a proportionate thing, it's geometric in nature ala the Richter scale for an earthquake. A drop of 2 on PageRank is a very significant move, something that significantly diminishes the value of links from FindLaw to lawyer websites.

One email I received highlights FindLaw's dilemma:

The most juicy insight that no one seems to have picked up on, however, comes from FindLaw's own letter: "As you may or may not know, FindLaw has been providing SEM programs to law firms for the last four years. The product has been very successful at elevating the natural search results of law firms in all of the major search engines and has helped them generate more business from search engines." (Emphasis in bold). So it seems FindLaw has been doing this for a while and only got caught when it moved outside of the law firm market. This admission means there are already firms paying FindLaw for this program - and now that Cutts has presumably removed the value of the links - a bunch of firms are essentially paying for nothing. By now, FindLaw knows this result - and the ethical thing to do would be to publicize their mistake and refund money. So far, FindLaw hasn't done so.

Another problem for FindLaw is whether Google would penalize the websites which bought links. Imagine being a law firm paying FindLaw $12,000 per year for search engine optimization and having your website adversely effected in search results as a result doing so.

This is an unfortunate situation all around and one that law firm marketing companies, including LexBlog, as well as law firms should take notice of. Search Engine Optimization is something we all want to achieve, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything.

It's now up to FindLaw to do the right thing for its customers and the legal profession as a whole. FindLaw calls itself the leading online law destination. FindLaw now needs to act like it.

Related posts:

• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

But look at the growth in traffic (unique visitors per month) to LinkedIn, Martindale.com, Martindale's consumer-small business lawyer directory, lawyers.com, and FindLaw.com (total traffic, not just lawyers.findlaw.com directory) over the last year. LinkedIn is blowing them all away.

Think LinkedIn is not a lawyer directory? Think again.

Legal marketing pro, Steve Matthews, reports 98,000 more lawyers have added profiles to LinkedIn in the last two months. Brings the number of lawyer profiles at LinkedIn to, as Steve describes it, 'an incredible 216,000.' Up from the 118,000 I reported in April.

Added to this is the fact that all major law firms have detailed law firm profiles at LinkedIn.

I'm a business person and the first place I go to find information on a lawyer is LinkedIn. Before the lawyer's website. And before a lawyer directory such as martindale.com. The profiles are complete, easy to scan, and let me know if the lawyer is on the ball enough to have a LinkedIn profile.

Looks like I am not alone. As of this May, LinkedIn site traffic was at 5.6 million visitors per month, and was growing at an annual growth rate of 351%. LinkedIn has more than 20 million registered users, spanning 150 industries.

With the features LinkedIn keeps adding and the growth in prospective law firm clients using LinkedIn, I don't know how traditional lawyer directories can keep up.

Follow on posts:

• Bastrop, Texas Attorney, Joe Grady: Martindale-Hubbell is the definitive lawyer directory. True or false. Well, false. The correct answer is LinkedIn.

Look at the below example for the Super Lawyers lawyer directory.

Internet users would not need to go to the Super Lawyers website to search for a lawyer. If I'm looking for an environmental lawyer in New York who went to Harvard, I just enter 'environmental lawyer New York Harvard' in the 'search superlawyers.com' box at Google.

Here's the first three results displayed - right in the Google interface without going to Super Lawyers - and in a fraction of a second. When I click on the result I go directly to the lawyer's page in the directory, skipping the website home page and any interim search pages.

Expect the Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, and FindLaw lawyer directories to be next in line for the Google treatment.

What's the implication? For Internet users, there may be advantages. No limited text fields or 'drop-downs' for search such as by practice area and location, the type of things Martindale-Hubbell requires.

Google's search will allow us to do a search for exactly what we want - like I just did for the Harvard environmental lawyer in New York. I could have added an association or two that I wanted the lawyer to belong to limiting my results further. I'm not sure searches at lawyer directory sites themselves would allow me to do that level of search.

For lawyers, it may be great. People can search for someone matching my background and find me immediately. That's impossible if I'm displayed in a Martindale-like directory as one of 165 lawyers in an area of practice in a locale.

For lawyer directories? I think they'll be uneasy allowing Internet users to search their data without going to the directory's website. No adds displayed. No fancy user interfaces with pictures and the like. No branding of the directory. Lots of confusion with lawyers asking directory salespeople questions.

Where do you see this headed? See advantages for people looking for lawyers? See advantages for lawyers?

For you readers employed at legal directories - Martindale-Hubbell, FindLaw, Avvo, & Super Lawyers - what do you think of the development?

First it was The Yellow Book, The Real Yellow Pages and all the other phonebook directories.  Now it's the online attorney directories like LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and Findlaw's attorney listing service that just may be the latest casualties of Google and the other search engines as more and more law firms develop websites and leverage pay-per-click and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. 

As recent as five years ago, it was a sign of success for a law firm to advertise on the back cover of the local yellow pages directory and have firm listings and attorney listings with LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and Findlaw - and it made good business sense.  But the benefits of using these legal directories have been declining for the last several years with many law firms either reducing their spending on directory services or are canceling their agreements altogether.

And the reason per John,

The directories and their ala cart services are typically overpriced for the value they provide as client-acquisition tools, especially when compared to pay-per-click campaigns, banner ads and other web-based marketing efforts.

And it doesn't need to be banner ads or pay per click. Organic search results in Google may be readily obtainable by law firms.

If a law firm's website were optimized to be found on Google, not done with most law firm websites, traffic to the firm's site, practice area pages, and lawyer bio's from Google would far exceed the traffic coming from banners and sponsored links. Would also exceed the traffic coming from from FindLaw or Martindale.

There's got to be firms which have had results from these websites, but that's an awful steep monthly charge. Especially, when there is a significant up front charge.

I practiced law for 17 years and spent a ton of money on yellow page ads. I recall a full page ad cost $60,000/year or $5,000/month. Maybe that's the basis for charging thousands of dollars a month for a law firm website. Law firms moving from yellow pages are an easy target because 2k a month looks like a steal.

What do you guys think? Are other firms getting results from these websites? They look pretty good, but is the return on investment there?

As Bob Ambrogi says there's not a legal site on the list. Perhaps an opening for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell's lawyers.com or Nolo Press' consumer and small business website.

Technorati Tags: FindLaw

FindLaw's communications person responded and we had an exchange of what I thought they could do. May have nothing to do with my prompting, but FindLaw has been offering a Webcast series on Internet marketing, the next one being on August 10, 'Converting Clicks to Qualified Clients.' They did one earlier on the use of blogs for marketing.

And to FindLaw's credit they're smart enough to know they may not have the in-house expertise to conduct the seminars. They invite outside experts with domain expertise who are then hosted by FindLaw.

I may have missed it, but I do not recall Martindale-Hubbell doing anything except having some programs on how to leverage their own products.

Is FindLaw offering near as much as bloggers when it comes to sharing practical information on Internet marketing? No. It's not close. But at least they are trying.

Technorati Tags: Martindale-Hubbell, LexisNexis, FindLaw

American Lawyer Media, through it's own blogs, not the featured law blogs on Law.com, have begun to establish an Internet presence. It's not the blogs alone, but listening to Internet discussion on other blogs and joining the discussion via comments on blog posts, emails to blog publishers, and emails from ALM bloggers to ALM senior management about issues raised on the blogosphere. This is all being done in a transparent fashion that will make people more trusting of ALM, build relationships and serve the company well in the long haul.

Here's specific examples. I blogged about not having widespread WiFi for attendees at ALM's LegalTech Conference a few weeks ago. Monica Bay, an editor with ALM and publisher of The Common Scold blog, commented on my blog that ALM would look into the issue for next year. She also emailed me, copying ALM senior management, that they were working on it and pointing out some places at LegalTech where WiFi could be picked up.

I also recently blogged about another issue of concern to the legal community. This morning there was an email, copying me, from Monica Bay to senior ALM management about the issue.

Marketing these days is a discussion. A company needs to communicate with their customers and their customer's influencers. This communication needs to be done in an open and transparent fashion. The danger of failing to participate is real.

In addition, when a company is the subject of criticism on the net, they better have an effective way to respond. Press releases or, even worse, marketing communications coming weeks or months or later, are way to late to stem the tide of Internet discussion about a company's deficiency.

LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell senior management have posted a comments on my blog a few times and there have been the exchange of emails about my blog posts. Thomson FindLaw has never posted a comment on my blog, that I recall, but I have exchanged emails and had discussions with their communications' person. Rather than jumping into an open Internet discussion and engaging the Internet legal community at large on an issue I posted, the companies were only responding to me.

I urged LexisNexis and Thomson FindLaw to begin corporate blogs almost a year ago. Despite hundreds, if not thousands of corporate blogs having been launched and the legal industry being among the most active blogosphere, the two companies have said no go.

That's disappointing when LexisNexis and Thomson FindLaw are likely earning in excess of a Billion Dollars from law firms. Ought to be equally concerning when I here from law firms that these companies products are often lacking.

ALM still has a ways to go. Take some of that internal email and get it onto your blogs so the legal community as a whole can engage in real time discussion. This discussion is only going to improve your products & services as well as your relations with bloggers, who have the ear of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of your customers.

But at least ALM is entering the discussion. Been waiting 11 months for a LexisNexis or Thomson FindLaw blog. How many more months will it be?

I have both praised and criticized companies here in the past. I think it's part of what makes my blog compelling. I call it as I see it. That may be well and good but what if one day these same companies comes calling on my employer for PR support and they discover these criticisms?

Like Steve, I call it the way I see it. And it costs me. I may never get to speak at the ABA TechShow for comments I have made about their programs. Could also be the same for the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) after LexisNexis' Martindale-Hubbell, a large sponsor of the LMA national conference, got upset about my criticism of Martindale during my presentation at last year's LMA conference. Though partnering with LexBlog is probably the best way for FindLaw or Martindale-Hubbell to deliver a a good & effective blog solution to thousands of their law firm customers, they'll probably shy away because of my candor as to their products on this blog.

Along those same lines, I blog about what potential competitors are blogging. Gets a little scary but if I am going to cover the area of Internet marketing through blogs & RSS, I need to share what's out there.

Mom always said to give the world the best you had and things will work out fine. Goes here too, win or lose.

The bottom line is that it's way way easier to start things than it used to be (opening a movie big costs a tenth of a billion dollars, while opening a blog costs about twenty). The natural, user-driven networks that make a product succeed or fail rarely hit all at once. But the snowball effect online is far more powerful than the old-world scream & dream approach.

So, what's it mean to you?

• Make something worth making.
• Sell something worth talking about.
• Believe in what you do because you may have to do it for a long time before it catches on.
• Don't listen to the first people who give you feedback.
• Don't give up. Not for a while, anyway.

Next week, LexBlog takes its next step in the growth of the company. We'll open our Bozeman, Montana office with a heck of a team I'll be introducing soon. LexBlog has attracted such talented folks because we're making something worth making, we believe in what we do, we don't listen to the blog naysayers and we're not going to give up.

Best of all, the growth of this profitable company is the result of this blog and the support of our clients. We don't have offices and cubes filled with marketing, advertising, PR and sales people. I started talking about using blogs for marketing legal services to an audience of one - me - back in November, 2003. Now, almost 1,000 posts later, many of the largest law firms as well as skilled small firm practitioners across the country are using blogs produced by LexBlog.

Now FindLaw, a web developer for lawyers among other things, is selling something that with a long stretch could be described as a blog product. LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, a lawyer directory which foolishly boasts to be the leading client development company for the legal profession, will surely follow with a blog product driven by profits and not quality. Other developers who pooh-poohed blogs earlier this year will jump on the blog bandwagon to keep up with the Joneses.

It'll be a good fight but for the reasons Seth cites, I like LexBlog's chances of remaining the leading provider of professional marketing blogs to the legal profession.

Now I have to get back to playing catch up on serving our existing clients. We're not bringing on more troops for nothing.

It wasn't happening with law firm Web sites built by old traditional legal publishing companies, who had no inherent skill in helping lawyers market their legal services and certainly had no skills as a technology company. Law firms were buying Web sites from large companies like Martindale-Hubbell and West (now Findlaw) as they knew who these companies were and the companies had a fleet of former book sales people knocking on law firm doors.

I knew that by assembling a small team of talented and driven people who really cared about the customers we could develop a top notch Internet marketing solution that could compete against the big boys. Heck, unlike employees in large corporations, employees like us in small businesses had to do an excellent job for lawyers - the existence of our company depended on it. We weren't merely working for a bonus or a larger office at the end of the year.

One year in, we're alive and kick'en and ready to take on the LexisNexis' and FindLaw's of the world. Sure, they may have more people and more money but we have the better part of a hundred clients I deeply care about and are on our way to having two hundred or more law firm blogs by the end of the year. I expect the big boys to come out with blog products in the coming months. But with the team of young tigers LexBlog has assembled in design, marketing, customer support and programming, LexBlog will be delivering a superior product.

Seth Godin has a great post today about small companies like LexBlog out performing large traditional companies. I couldn't agree more on why Seth says 'Small is the new big.'

And as Seth says "Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big. Don’t wait. Get small. Think big." I am not waiting.