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Traffic-Power sues blogger for false and defamatory information

Aaron Wall, a Search Engine Optimization blogger has been sued by the SEO company Traffic-Power.com. Traffic-Power offers a search engine placement program, providing customers with keywords, meta tags, advertising pages, directory submission, link building strategies, online tracking and free customer support with the promise of higher search engine placement. Many customers were quite surprised when their sites dropped from search engines after signing up for Traffic-Power services instead (Here is what you should try if your sites has been removed from the index according to Google: First, you need to make sure that you've removed any redirecting/spammy pages that were on your site. Make sure that every junky page like that is completely gone before you write, then you can send an email to webmaster@google.com with the subject line "reinclusion request" and give us as much detail as possible about the situation.") Several internet publications such as WebProNews published articles about this story. The Better Business Bureau has received over 100 complaints about Traffic Power in the last 36 months. There's even an official hate website - http://www.trafficpowersucks.com/. Traffic-Power.com sued their webmaster Aaron Wall for defamation and the disclosure of company trade secrets. The charge comes after comments were posted to his blog criticizing Traffic-Power.com.

According to the lawsuit, the false and defamatory information includes but is not limited to the following:

a. Claims that the search engine giant Google has banned and is banning from its search engine listings websites of Traffic-Power.com clients because of the search engine optimization strategies used by Plaintiff.

b. Claims that clients of Traffic-Power.com run the risk of being banned from Google search engine listings if they use Traffic-Power.com services;

c. Claims that Traffic-Power.com plagiarizes its web page optimization work;

d. Claims that Plaintiff has started several new businesses under different names to hide its identity;

e. Claims that two new businesses started by Plaintiff are under investigation by several agencies;

f. Claims that and/or innuendo that Plaintiff is engaged in extortion of its clients because of the techniques used by Plaintiff in optimizing search engine listings;

g. Claims that Plaintiff's business constitutes a scam and that clients of Plaintiff are "victims;"

h. Claims that Plaintiff stole from defendants;

i. Claims that the business practices of Plaintiff constituted some kind of actionable violation of the rights of its clients and that the filing of a class action lawsuit against Plaintiff by its clients was imminent; and

j. Claims that Plaintiff formed and operates fake Internet forums on search engine optimization to promote its services.

 

In a reaction to the lawsuit, Google (in this case Matt Cutts) gave the following information: "I can confirm that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by Traffic Power from our index because of search engine optimization techniques that violated our webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html."

For more information on the lawsuit visit: http://trafficpowersucks.com/

 

 

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