You’re familiar with Ego Surfing, right? Typing your name into Google to see what Google says about you. But what if you don’t like what Google says? Well this is America, so of course the answer is — sue ‘em! Frankly, I’m suprised it took this long.

Of course, we all know that Google isn’t really “saying” anything about you when they deliver search results . . . right? Maybe not. Mark Maughn, a CPA in SoCal, just filed a lawsuit against Google (and AOL, TimeWarner, and Yahoo) for libel, based on what came up in the Google search results.

A year ago, friends of Mark told him that typing his name into Google delivered “alarming, false, misleading and injurious results” about him and the business. (Why Mark’s friends and family were looking him up is not clear.)

By the way, typing your own name into Google is “ego surfing.” Typing in your friends’ names is something else — depending on the context. Looking up your blind date is far different, for example, than searching about a potential boss or employee. But these days, all can be much fun. Also, all of these things are different than “google bombing,” where non-competitive search results can be manipulated with links. For example, searching: “coolest guy in the world” brings up my blog in the #1 spot (ha), but I’m only #2 for “coolest guy on the planet,” currently held by Snoop Dogg.

Anyway, according to Mark’s proposed class action lawsuit filed in L.A., Google’s “search results falsely represent that plaintiffs Maughan and/or Brown & Maughan have been disciplined for gross negligence, for failing to timely submit a client’s claim for refund of overpayment of taxes, and for practicing as a CPA without a permit.”

Apparently, the text comes from some language from the California State Board of Accountance that is not even on their web site. Of course, Google says they can’t help what their crawlers find and the CSBA says it’s not on their web site and there’s nothing they can do.

But the argument is interesting. If Google is “publishing” false and damaging information, based on the way they choose to present things, are they culpable? Mark’s lawyers say yes in their attempt to certify a class.

I think it’s hilarious. According the Associated Press, Mark’s lawyer wants a court order to prevent Google from using PageRank. Huh? PageRank is just a part of Google’s proprietary algorithm that calculates the “importance” of incoming links. The lawyer characterizes it as reformatting information obtained from accurate sources, resulting in changing of the context in which information is presented.

Good grief. Any search engine based on web crawling is going to take snippets from web sites and display it differently. Now, a lawyer says the search engine can be liable if the snippets are displayed improperly.

Hmm. Well I suppose if the snippets got pasted together in a certain way, one could make an argument. Google usually displays truncated information. If the part that got truncated was the word “not.” As in “Brad Fallon was not convicted of bank robbery in 2001.” If Google just displayed a listing that said the opposite whenever someone was search for information on Brad Fallon, I probably wouldn’t like it either.

But a class action lawsuit to force Google to “stop using PageRank”? Please.

Why not just continue the manual tweaking where appropriate. Like in the case where another lawyer, my law school roommate, just politely asked Google to remove a cloaked porn page that had his entire name in the title tag. They did — and no one had to get sued.

Of course, the reason they removed the offending listing was because the offending page was “spam” according to Google — not because my friend didn’t like the content. At Google, any content they crawl is ok to display — as long as it doesn’t violate their Terms of Service. But content that reads like libelous material isn’t part of their TOS. Yet.

Just when I was starting to feel guilty for not even commenting on Google’s “local search” feature, here’s something you may not have seen. (Enough with the local search already.)

As you know, Google is still the top dog but now Yahoo matters a lot too. When both Yahoo and Google delivered Google results it was a bit easier for SEO’s. Just focus on Google and forget about everything else. Eighty – twenty and all that. Now, you have to pay attention to Yahoo.

Well here’s a site that lets you compare your results (and all the competitors’ results) in both Google and Yahoo — at a glance. It draws a row of 100 dots from left to right, showing the Top 100 search results of Google across the top and Yahoo across the bottom. Then, it connect the dots of all the sites that are appear in both the Google and Yahoo Top 100.

In the example pictured below for the search term “beach wedding favors,” my wife’s wedding favor site appears #1 and #2 on both Google and Yahoo for the search phrase. Dots in solid blue have a “match” in the other search engine. White dots are sites that appear in the Top 100 in one, but do not make the Top 100 in the other.

Try this for a few searches. You notice that in many cases, there are a few sites near the top that do pretty well in both, but in the middle of the bell curve there are many sites that rank well on one but not the other. And all the white dots give a real sense of the difference between the engines. See how many are ranked relatively high for one major search engine, including the Top 10, but don’t even make the Top 100 for the other top engine.

My wife, Jennifer’s, online wedding favor business appears to be taking off. So much so that we just signed a lease for an office/warehouse. (I thought the idea was to work at home and not have to go anywhere.) She’s already got three employees doing the packing and shipping (even if they are relatives). Not bad for a brand new web site that launched January 5th!

Our record is 30 orders in one day on www.myweddingfavors.com. I think it’s due to my stellar manning of the Live Support on the site — the same one you see to the left.

Jen thinks its because of her excellent product selection. Really, it’s probably because we’re already #9 on Google and #4 on Yahoo for wedding favors. The amount of work for her to do now is ridiculous. Now, she alternates between telling me to get her higher on Google and telling me to take down the site for awhile so they can catch up.

I think Yahoo stores, eBay, and the like are the coolest thing. While the manufacturing jobs are going to China and the programming and customer service jobs are going to India, thousands of Americans are leaving the “workforce” for the comfort of their garages, basements, and spare bedrooms to launch online businesses. I’m not sure where they’re counted in the “jobless” statistics. All I know is Jen is working 3 times harder than her last two jobs combined — and loving it.

If you know anyone who’s getting married, send ‘em here: wedding favors.

People home school for different reasons. Sometimes, it’s because the public school officials kick out a student for being bullied. Nice work, Chris Rhoton. (Click the big head to read about the bone head.)

I conducted a teleseminar yesterday on “Advanced Link Building Strategies” for Annie Jennings PR. If you’re interested in getting more quality links to your web site (as you should be if you want to increase your rankings), you can order a CD of the seminar for free here.

Here’s a good CNET summary of all the new players in the search space. Clearly Google’s most worried about Yahoo and MSN as direct competitors. But there are several other interesting additions to the search game, dealing with personalization, better ad delivery, etc.

Yahoo, which has a pretty good “online yellow pages” already, is adding new features to Yahoo Maps. If you’re interested in the hot hot “Local Search industry,” don’t miss the Kelsey Group’s conference in Santa Clara this month. I’ll be on one of the panels.

This link is for both of you who like to follow the domain name industry. Fun stuff! But I used to work at a registry, and it’s interesting in a nostalgic sort of way to watch the old industry. ICANN, the nonprofit organization, has the technical power and authority, but Verisign has billions. They’re suing ICANN, funnily enough, complaining that ICANN is doing what they’re supposed to do — regulate Verisign. Read GoDaddy’s (a large registrar’s) letter to the U.S. Government (which granted the monopoly over .com domains) here.

So we’re leaving the movie theatre last night and there’s a dog in the parking lot, looking lost. It was between many of the exiting patrons and their cars, and a little crowd was forming as everyone eyed the large pit bull. A lonely, scared, strange dog is always something to be wary of, but the pit bull was earning an especially wide berth.

Except from my wife. Jennifer decides that the lost dog just needs someone to talk to — and it should be us. (I think it helped that Buckhead Backlot serves drinks during the movies. A couple glasses of red wine later and she was ready to make friends with anyone, pit bulls included. How do you think we met?)

Long story short, the dog walked us amicably to our car and hopped in when we opened the door. Next thing you know, we’re stopping at the grocery store to get dog food on the way home. Now this is a big dog, and not having much (any) experience with pit bulls other than what you hear on TV, I was more than a little nervous. Looking at this dog up close you can’t help thinking, quite often, that he could kill you in two seconds. After we’re home for awhile, Jen decides it’s a good idea to introduce him to our two Yorkies, one 3.5 pounds and one 6 pounds — neither a full-sized snack for her new friend.

The big fellow was actually fine with them . . . so far. I ran a lost dog ad in the paper today (that’s a great free service from the local paper), but Jen and I are already about moving to a bigger house in the country and keeping him. We probably won’t though — I hope we find his owner. He has a nice collar and a red bandana, and he knows both “sit” and “lie down,” which is way more than I can say for our dogs with brains the size of Rice Krispies. We’re still working on “go outside to go potty.”

Here’s a picture of him — and the other two. He’s very friendly, but as you can see he gets first choice on where to sit. When he’s not around, Jackson or Tucker sits even closer, as shown in the picture below of us flying back from Dog Island in Florida a couple weekends ago. (More on Dog Island to come, I hope. A very cool small island off the coast of Florida, East of Panama City that can only be reached by boat or plane. Neat little grass landing strip.) Note the excellent sunset in the background.

UPDATE: “Zeus” is reunited with his owner!

I called the Atlanta Humane Society and, sure enough, the big dog (that’s what we were calling him — as in, “Tucker, stop trying to bite the big dog. He could kill you by looking at you,”) but the big dog’s owner had been calling around trying to find him. I also had two calls so far from the ad in the paper wanting him if no one claimed him. His roommate came over to pick him up, and Zeus seemed happy to see him. Actually he was pretty nonchalant about the whole adventure.

The funniest part was Zeus playing tug of war with Tucker yesterday. Tucker (the 3.5 pound Yorkie and General of the house) grabbed onto the toy Zeus had; Zeues raised his head, gave it a little shake and sent Tucker flying through the air. Undeterred, Tucker went right back after him.

Dog Island, Florida. (Shhh don’t tell anyone.)

Annie Jennings, the creator of pay-for-performance PR model, is interviewing me today for a free teleseminar on “Advanced Link Building Strategies.” If you are visiting this site as a result of listening to this seminar, please join my mailing list at the right to keep on top of related topics. Thanks!

The seminar notes with additional resources are here.

The sample link exchange email request is here.