Media Advisory

10 October 2011

What are the risks to investors from search engine penalties on public companies?

US and UK experts host open debate before a Wall Street audience

International news aggregator One News Page (www.onenewspage.com) is hosting a seminar to debate some of the technical, legal and commercial aspects of search engine penalties in relation to public companies.

The event will be held at the Millennium Hilton, 55 Church St, New York City on Tuesday, October 18, at 6pm to an audience of fund managers, brokers and journalists. Limited places are available and attendees should register online. A simple registration form is at http://www.haveibeenpenalized.com/nycseminar.php.

Speakers will be James J. O’Connell, Partner, Covington & Burling LLP, an expert on antitrust and competition law, Bob Sakayama, TNG/Earthling Inc., and expert on search penalties, Dan Savage, Tradecomet, a media strategy and search engine marketing expert, and Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, the founder of One News Page Ltd, and former CEO of a public UK technology company.

One News Page Ltd suffered a long search engine penalty and this led it to launching the ‘Have I Been Penalized..?’ Campaign (see www.haveibeenpenalized.com), which argues in favour of much greater search engine transparency.


Neil Boom
MD, Gresham PR Ltd.
+44 (0)7866 805 108
neil.boom@greshampr.co.uk

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer
CEO, One News Page Ltd.
+44 (0) 7770 588 173
marc@onenewspage.com



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, as AIM-quoted Media Corp found to its cost a couple of years ago. It said it lost an estimated £1m in revenues after a two-year penalty drastically reduced searches to a couple of its sites.

In November 2010, media around the world reported the European Commission’s anti-trust investigation into Google. The Commission launched the investigation after receiving complaints that Google was abusing its dominant market position in web search to gain an unfair competitive advantage over its rivals.

More recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) followed suit when it launched its examination of Google for anti-competitive practices in June 2011.

Internet search is one of the areas of focus of the investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and search penalties are a critical mechanism by which dominant search engines restrict the all-essential visitor traffic to selected websites.

Search engines apply penalties to rogue or malicious websites in order to limit their exposure to internet users.

Penalties have a severe impact, effectively causing websites to ‘disappear’ from the internet. In most cases, penalties are imposed for a good reason (spamming, spreading viruses). However, legitimate sites can also find their visitor traffic severely restricted by a penalty which has been imposed accidentally.

In the U.S., a massive 98% market share is commanded by the top three search engines, making them the gate keepers of the web. They do not confirm penalties or outline the reason why a penalty has been imposed – leaving affected websites and online businesses in the dark. They are able to act as judge, jury and executioner.

Search penalties – typically several months or even years in duration - could be potentially prove ruinous to smaller quoted companies, representing a real risk to investors.


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.

• First, to bring in a simple mechanism that tells the site owner that they have suffered a search penalty

• Second, to establish a communication mechanism which allows site owners to find out more about the nature of the penalty

• 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. The campaign is supported by ICOMP, the Initiative for a Competitive Online Market Place, an industry consortium promoting fairer competition on the Internet.

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:
• Global » http://www.onenewspage.com (English Language)
• United States » http://www.onenewspage.us (English Language)
• United Kingdom » http://www.onenewspage.co.uk (English Language)
• India » http://www.onenewspage.in (English Language)
• Australia » http://www.onenewspage.com.au (English Language)
• Deutschland » http://www.newsdeutschland.com (Deutsche Sprache)
• Global » http://www.paginanoticias.com (Idioma español)
• España » http://www.paginanoticias.es (Idioma español)
• México » http://www.paginanoticias.mx (Idioma español)