India's CUTS Institute for Regulation and Competition (CIRC) recently hosted a seminar entitled "SME Vulnerability & Resilience in the Online Economy" in Mumbai, during which Dr. Marc Pinter-Krainer of One News Page highlighted the risk factors associated with obscure Google search penalties - an issue of great concern and the focus of the "Have I been penalized..?" campaign for greater search engine transparency.


MUMBAI, India -- Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) require a whole lot of transparency in the online domain in order to grow their business predictively without any unforeseen pitfalls. This was the fundamental sentiment expressed by speakers at a seminar on “SME Vulnerability & Resilience in the Online Economy”, organised by CUTS Institute for Regulation and Competition (CIRC) at The Leela, Sahar, Mumbai today. The seminar was attended by senior industry professionals and representatives of consumer organisations and government.

Speaking at the event, Mr Mahendra Swarup, Chairman of the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace (Icomp) India chapter, and President of the Indian Venture Capitalist Association (IVCA), said: “Since internet usage is driving both small and big businesses in India today, it is imperative for users to know what they are clicking on and why. Transparency and justifiable perceptions are important components of a healthy growth of internet in India. The CIRC initiative achieves a major objective in this direction.”

A case in point was highlighted by Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, CEO of UK based news aggregation portal, One News Page. Demonstrating the adverse effects, caused by an erroneous penalisation of his portal by Google, Pinter-Krainer cautioned internet businesses in India against staying oblivious to the reality of non-transparent policies of bigger players.

Tejas Karia, Partner at Amarchand Mangaldas, a leading law firm, outlined the legal and policy framework surrounding the online markets. He specifically highlighted “how after the enactment of IT Act, 2000, online market place has grown and has assumed a prominent place in commercial and social spheres.”

R Chandrasekhar of Consim Info, publishers of Bharatmatrimony.com, shared his first-hand experiences on how the regulatory burden affects a new enterprise and can lessen competitiveness significantly. He stressed on the futility of government regulations, that are formulated without giving proper consideration to specific SME concerns.

Bringing the SME perspective from experience, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, CTO of JustDial.com, underlined how SMEs are sometimes forced to make peace by unfair means due to lack of transparency in regulatory and policy process.


Notes to Editors

Search engine penalties are designed to restrict visibility of ‘illegitimate’ websites, such those involved in spamming.

But search engines can also inflict penalties accidentally and at present there is no way of confirming this with leading search engines, nor is there a provision for an effective apeals process - leaving concerned website owners in the dark.


About “Have I been penalized..?”
The new “Have I been penalized..?” campaign at www.haveibeenpenalized.com asks leading search engines such as Google to introduce three transparency measures on penalties.

1. First, to bring in a simple mechanism that tells the site owner that they have suffered a search penalty
2. Second, to establish a communication mechanism which allows site owners to find out more about the nature of the penalty
3. Third, to instigate a fast and efficient appeals process if site owners wish to challenge the penalty

The campaign is spearheaded by One News Page, a news aggregator which suffered an eight-month Google penalty, causing a 96% fall in Google organic visitor traffic to its site.


For further information, please access the campaign website at http://www.haveibeenpenalized.com.

About One News Page
One News Page is an international news navigator website featuring original news coverage and syndicated news content from major trusted news sources around the world. The One News Page portal provides users with a powerful search engine to locate relevant news coverage easily. Users are referred to the source website directly by clicking on a news headline.

One News Page Sites:
1. Global » http://www.onenewspage.com (English Language)

2. United States » http://www.onenewspage.us (English Language)
3. United Kingdom » http://www.onenewspage.co.uk (English Language)
4. India » http://www.onenewspage.in (English Language)
5. Australia » http://www.onenewspage.com.au (English Language)

6. Deutschland » http://www.newsdeutschland.com (Deutsche Sprache)
7. Global » http://www.paginanoticias.com (Idioma español)
8. España » http://www.paginanoticias.es (Idioma español)
9. México » http://www.paginanoticias.mx (Idioma español)