Yesterday a UK court judged the case of Metropolitan International Schools Limited against Google. The school was unhappy that the Google results page displays some negative results when the school is searched for.

It is a typical case of SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management). Many other companies are dealing with this issue but very few are going to court anymore because France, Italy and previously Netherland courts did not find Google at fault.

The outcome of the trial was similar to previous ones. Google cannot be guilty as under UK law a search engine is not a ’publisher’ because everything is automatic and it doesn’t pick the content that is displayed.

The judge said that the companies should blame the actual writer/publisher of the negatives articles instead of the search engine, which just indexing the content on the net.

Personally I think that it is a just and fair comment. Google is just a tool/computer…if you have any issues with a search engine results page just do some SEO and contact the people who write negative articles in order to find out why they have been posted and if they can be removed. After do some SERM if there is no  possible negotition with them.