Earlier this year, I was asked to work on a legal case involving a couple of finance sector companies where one was accused by the other of trademark infringement where the defendant\u2019s website abruptly began ranking for the plaintiff\u2019s service mark. <\/p>\n
The only trouble was, the unique phrase was in no way associated with the defendant\u2019s website. In this article, I\u2019ll discuss a unique functionality of Google\u2019s ranking algorithm.<\/p>\n
What I expected to find in this case was quite different from what I ultimately found. Most search ranking factors are very straightforward.<\/p>\n
SEO is an arena where the logical principle of Occam\u2019s razor (\u201cthe simplest explanation is usually the right one\u201d) is typically present in formulating explanations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For instance, if a page ranks for a unique keyword, that keyword will be found within a page\u2019s HTML code such as the title, body text, image alt text \u2013 or, failing that, the keyword might be present in links pointing to the page.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, this case was to prove to be a rare instance wherein media linking the unique, branded phrase, was simply\u2026 absent.<\/p>\n