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The Web's No. 1 search engine has caught FindLaw using the illegitimate tactic of selling Web links -- a.k.a. selling "link juice," which contrives to boost a Web site's search engine rankings -- such as the law firms that are FindLaw customers.  See the article on CNN Money.

Shortly after Google discovered FindLaw's shenanigans, Google briefly punished FindLaw by lowering its so-called PageRank from 7 to 5, a move that Steve Matthews, founder of the search engine optimization firm Stem Legal, says is equal to two notches on the Richter scale.  "That basically pulls the rug out from under FindLaw in terms of the value they can deliver to clients by selling links," said Matthews.

Law firms pay FindLaw $1,600 to $2,000 per month for FindLaw's "SEM Advantage" program, billed as a "high-octane" way to double or even triple traffic on their websites. One of the ways Google determines where a law firm website will rank for a specific search is the number and quality of inbound links to a website. The logic is that very interesting pages will be linked to by many other websites and blogs, and get a high PageRank (Google measures on a 1-10 scale called PageRank, with 10=high, 0=low).

FindLaw caught the attention of Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team, when he saw  an email sent out by FindLaw's sales team to prospective clients. The sales pitch offered "up to three hard coded links" for $1,000 per month as part of its new SEM program designed to "leverage FindLaw's authoritative position as the top online destination" for lawyers.

When a highly ranked site like FindLaw pays for and resells links from another website, that's viewed as an artificial attempt to boost a customer law firm's PageRank and search results. Buying or selling links to boost a site's PageRank violates Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.  John Shaughnessy, a FindLaw spokesman, said the email was an "unauthorized communication" about a new corporate advertising product called SEM-Corporate, aimed at corporate customers, not law firms.

"In cases in which we feel that sites are attempting to use links to manipulate rankings, which includes the buying and selling of links for the clear purpose of passing PageRank, we make adjustments to counterbalance and also discourage those efforts," Google spokesman Eitan Bencuya told CNN.

Todd Friesen blogged about the debacle in a post entitled 'Shame Shame Shame Findlaw.'  Kevin O'Keefe followed up with FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers? , saying "FindLaw appears to have been caught gaming Google by selling links to lawyer websites and, in the words of one blogger, possibly scamming their lawyer customers.