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 post:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?

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 post:

• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct

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.

It's wonderful that Thomson-FindLaw is engaging in this online discussion and is looking for ways to have a presence on the blogosphere. Here's a little of what Kyle and I discussed in an email exchange covering both what FindLaw is doing to educate lawyers and their request to learn how to enter this online discussion on the blogosphere.

• A free white paper, Five Fundamentals to Successful Law Firm Marketing Online.
• Hosting the Law Marketing Partners Forum each year, giving legal marketers a chance to learn, share best practices and network.

Kyle also liked my idea of leveraging FindLaw's salesforce to hold brown bag lunches to help lawyers develop Internet strategies. He believed some of their sales reps already do this on an informal, case-by-case basis, but would like to explore developing something a little more structured.

Though supporting some Internet marketing education, I challenged Thomson-FindLaw to do more.

• The 'Five Fundamentals' is alright, but its primary focus was pitching the merits of FindLaw. The sites and blogs published by individuals, whether they be my blog, Justia’s blog & SEO Resource Center, Larry Bodine’s law marketing site and quite a few more Web sites and blogs offer a lot more concrete Internet marketing information. All have a lot less money than Thomson-Findlaw.
• The Law Marketing Forum appears to be for larger firms who can afford a seminar at a high priced resort. But smaller firms who do not have large marketing departments were probably not well represented. Plus when it came to some nuts and bolts on Internet marketing you had a program on blogs & SEO where none of the presenters published personal or marketing blogs nor were search engine optimization experts.

I really appreciate the offer to do more low key programs and offered to have the Seattle area Thomson-Findlaw sales rep contact me so we could set up brown bag lunches and/or Internet marketing education programs. A program or series on creating an effective Internet presence could cover directories, sponsored links, Web sites, blogs, SEO and the like.

Kyle asked me to elaborate on my statement that as far as their failure to be accountable on the Internet marketing front. I agreed with Thomson-FindLaw's assessment that if customers do not receive value they are free to go elsewhere.

However, I am talking about the dualopoly's failure to provide solid information on Internet marketing and what lawyers' Internet marketing alternatives may be. Thomson-Findlaw's educational materials such as the 'Five Fundamentals' and I am guessing the sales people’s calls are focused on the FindLaw directory and the related Web site products the company sells.

I may be an idealist but I would like to see readily accessible, free and practical information on Internet marketing for lawyers. Information that can be put to immediate use and that will make lawyers informed buyers of Internet marketing solutions.

In less than a year I have published almost 600 entries to my blog offering a ton of free info and inspiration on legal marketing. And I have 5 kids, am launching a start up and have no marketing & communications budget, let alone a staff of professionals.

Kyle indicated Thomson-Findlaw is looking at ways to enter the blogosphere and asked what to do to enter the online discussion if I were in Thomson-FindLaw's shoes?

Jump in. Look at the blogs being published by CEO’s and line employees of companies. Blogs could be publsihed by various Thomson-West-FindLaw employees including CEO Mike Wilens, developers, division heads, SEO experts, and sales people. They would personally publish what lawyers are looking for, their insights on legal marketing, what they are reading on the relevant topic and allow comments and feedback from lawyers and legal marketing professionals.

Great to have this dialogue going. Look forward to days, which hopefully will be soon, where the dualopoly is actively engaged in the blogosphere discussion.

I saw lawyer Bill Portanova, a friend from law school, on the Abrams Report on MSNBC last night and wanted to drop him an email. Knowing he practiced federal criminal defense law in Sacramento, I thought I may be able to find him listed in the FindLaw directory. Forget it.

There is no way to distinguish these lawyers by the type of criminal work they do or if they even do that much criminal defense work. Remember the days when we just checked boxes on the Martindale-Hubbell listing to make certain we covered everything the firm ever conceivably did. I expect that same shot gun approach goes on here.

For sophisticated Internet users, which now comprises the majority of people, this type of a yellow pages 2.0 is not going to cut it. Folks don't have the time to go in and out of Web sites for hours. In addition many of those law firm Web sites are indistinguishable 'brochure-ware' anyway. People looking for a lawyer are going to do searches on the search engines directly and find law firm Web sites or blog sites of lawyers who have criminal defense experience and which have legal information about the legal situation they face.

Are consumers warming up to this type of FindLaw directory of lawyers as a way to select a lawyer? I would be surprised to hear so. But let me know if I am wrong.

If lawyers are not getting great results, could it be that FindLaw will make a lot of sales as they have sales people on the road, just like the yellow pages people do, and most lawyers do not really understand Internet marketing? That's entirely possible.