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SEATTLE – A Washington-based company that sells search engine optimization (SEO) services to small businesses is prohibited from selling or advertising them to new customers under the terms of a settlement announced by Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna.

While the SEO standards debate rages, the search marketing industry continues to be perceived as purveyors of snake oil and predators of small business owners.

SEOMoz honcho Rand Fiskin denies that SEO standards are needed while raging against Internet Advancement to no avail for more than two years:

That was in February, 2006 before hundreds of additional complaints were filed against SEOMOz competitor, Internet Advancement.

Under the agreement filed in King County Superior Court, Internet Advancement must allow its customers to exit existing contracts. The SEO firm’s Web site is still online so advertising apparently doesn’t include a Web presence.

So will the lawsuit put the SEO firm out-of-business?

Amazingly, no.

The agreement allows Internet Advancement to offer search-engine optimization services to existing customers. The company may provide Web site design services to new customers, as well, provided such services don’t include the creation of metatags or keywords or submission to search engines.

The agreement states that Internet Advancement cannot:

* Advertise or offer search optimization (SEO) services to new customers;

* Misrepresent its success rate, ability to provide top search-engine rankings or increase Web traffic or its number of repeat customers;

* Fail to disclose all material contract terms before customers have agreed to pay for services;

* Fail to respond promptly to consumer complaints, refund requests or other requests for services or information;

* Charge customer credit cards without authorization;

* Fail to process requests to cancel service or bill consumers after they have cancelled contracts;

* Represent that a customer isn’t entitled to a refund because the customer performed changes to the source code of his/her Web site unless a third-party technical expert confirms that the changes were made or authorized by the customer.

More astonishing: Google, Yahoo, MSN , AOL and Ask have allowed their logos to be used on the Internet Advancement Web site.

Internet Advancement of Redmond, which also does business as 4GreatBuys.com, was accused of misrepresenting its ability to provide top search engine rankings and increase Web traffic, even after being sued by Washington State.

The defendants admitted that some of the violations had occurred and agreed to the new settlement filed today in King County Superior Court, but denied that all of the alleged violations were part of a repeated pattern. They will pay a $118,386 civil penalty and $35,959 in attorneys’ fees. The defendants also agreed to comply with a lengthy list of injunctive provisions or else be slapped with an additional $450,000 penalty.

According to today’s settlement, Internet Advancement guaranteed that a customer’s Web site will appear within the first 25 links on major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and AOL, when Internet users search for specific keywords.

Customers paid $999-$3,000 in “set-up†fees and a $149 monthly fee.

SEOMozzer Rand Fishkin disagreed with SEW Expert Chris Boggs, blogging that “I think you (Chris) need to have some statistics to back up the point that the public is ‘increasingly victimized by unscrupulous practitioners of SEO.’ To be honest, my personal anecdotal experiences suggest that it’s actually falling from a height in 2004-5, but without data to back it up, it seems like a fallacy to claim that ‘fact’ to help bolster your argument.”

Small businesses filed 82 complaints about Internet Advancement with the Attorney General’s Office between Oct. 28, 2004, and March 10, 2008. The Federal Trade Commission and Better Business Bureau also received complaints.

All righty then.

REFUND REQUESTS
Internet Advancement agreed to a refund program. Customers eligible for refunds fall into three categories:

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A majority of U.S. adults are uncomfortable about search engine data collection practices, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive. 59% are uneasy about the ads that are based on search behavior.

Search engines maintain that the targeted ads help them keep services free, and introducing that concept to survey participants did seem to alter the majority opinion. In light of that information, a 55% majority said it was ok after all to have those ads based on collected user data.

But that doesn’t mean searchers don’t retain some reservation. Only 9% are very comfortable with the ads knowing that they help produce free products, an increase from 7% without that knowledge.

Related Reading:
Google Responds to FTC’s Self-Regulatory Principles
European Group Wants to Cut Search Engine Data Storage
Election Year Brings New Efforts to Regulate Search Engine Data Collection

When concerns over data collection and behavioral advertising arise, it seems that the glass half empty people are the loudest. But in a recent response to the FTC’s Self-Regulatory Principles, Google has pointed out the impact that online advertising has had on the economy.

Google highlighted that in 2007, they paid out $4.5 billion to publishers utilizing the Adsense network. These monies either supplements or provides full-time income to many site owners including bloggers. They pointed out that many people have opportunities that just weren’t available 10 years ago.

Additionally, the revenue that Google generates enables them to provide services for free to the general public.

Google wrote that these innovations only occur within a self-regulatory framework:

“To be effective and credible, however, self-regulation must have as its foundation agreed-upon fair information practices and must be informed by ongoing dialog with and input from consumer advocates, the Commission, and other stakeholders. The FTC staff’s draft self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising provides an excellent foundation for developing the most effective consumer protection, while maintaining an online environment in which innovation and competition can thrive.”

But Google is careful to distinguish its advertising from being labeled “behavioral advertising.”

“As currently drafted, the proposed principles would apply to contextual advertising, which we define as advertising that is provided in response to the current activities of a user. For example, our AdWords program allows us to provide ads on Google.com in response to search queries entered by our users. In addition, our AdSense product allows us to provide ads to visitors to the web sites of third-party publisher partners based on the content of pages visited. In essence, then, our contextual advertising allows for the delivery of advertisements based on search queries or our analysis of the content of a web page being viewed. We believe that this type of advertising should not be considered behavioral advertising, even if such analysis takes into consideration previous search queries.”

These comments also come in the wake of news from Europe of a policy adopted by the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which would reduce data collection by search engines to just 6 months. Such a regulation could greatly impact the ability of search engines to provide relevant ads, which could have a ripple effect on the greater revenue streams generated by their ad networks.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

News Flash: A Google Product Came Out of Beta!
Google has announced that its AdWords API is out of beta. European Group Wants to Cut Search Engine Data Storage
Almost a month after the EU approved Google’s DoubleClick acquisition, officials from 27 EU nations have unanimously adopted a proposal that could force search engines to reduce the amount of time they store personal information. The Offline Benefits of Online Advertising
The offline effects of online advertising has been a curious issue in the search engine marketing industry over the years. But according to published reports, new study conducted by comScore is shedding more light on the issue. Yahoo Unveils Details of New AMP Advertising Platform
In the midst of firmly responding to Microsoft’s ultimatum, Yahoo has released details of the new AMP advertising platform. Yahoo to Microsoft: We Already Dumped You
After Microsoft issued its ultimatum to Yahoo this weekend, giving them three more weeks before things get ugly, Yahoo’s board of directors responded this morning, reminding Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that it already rejected Microsoft’s offer, and Yahoo still thinks Microsoft’s offer is too low. Microsoft Gets Tired of Waiting
Microsoft is apparently tired of waiting for Yahoo to respond to its unsolicited takeover bid, and has issued a deadline of April 26 for Yahoo to come to terms on an acquisition agreement, or face a hostile takeover. SEW Experts: A Look at Demographic Bidding for AdWords
Google’s new demographic bidding for content campaigns seems to promise much better control over where ads are served, and hence better ROI. How to (Actually) Earn Money (Now) with Social Media (Really): Part 2
Short term financial success in social media can be a multi-layered enigma, ranging somewhere between daunting and infuriating. HackerSafe & The Power of Trust
There are no universal truths about what to test on a landing page. However, there are common themes that work well across a range of industries. One of these is the use of trust and credibility indicators.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Almost a month after the EU approved Google’s DoubleClick acquisition, officials from 27 EU nations have unanimously adopted a proposal that could force search engines to reduce the amount of time they store personal information. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party met for 2 days in Brussels last week and agreed that six months should be the maximum amount of time data is stored.

Last year Google cut its data storage to 18 months to comply with EU rules. Microsoft and Yahoo followed suit by reducing their storage to 18 and 13 months respectively.

Experts think this could have implications for online advertising. The booming industry is expected to see tremendous growth in the coming years, but relies heavily on personal data to target ads.

In the U.S., efforts have been made by various state officials to limit the way search engines collect information but to largely no avail. Most recently, state officials in New York and Connecticut introduced bills to thwart data collection.

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PDFs are particularly significant in B2B marketing, which makes optimizing them for the web is an important piece of SEO strategy in that sector. Thankfully, Galen de Young of Francis Marketing has a new post on optimizing PDFs on their B2B marketing blog.

Here are the key take away points from Galen’s post:

Other quick tips include:

PDFs can be forgotten when developing or redesigning a web site and lost in a greater SEM strategy. But when properly optimized they can be a powerful content tool for your business.

Related Reading:
Yahoo to Distribute Contextual Ads on PDFs
Yahoo Adds Support for Page-Level Exclusion Tags for Non-HTML Docs
Search Marketing Works for B2B, Too
Vertical Search: B2B Survey Says … Blazing Hot

Writing an article title that is optimized for your chosen keyword phrase will help your article to be found by people using the search engines and people searching through article directories.In ad…
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When searchers can’t find something on Google, they might turn to another search engine like Yahoo, Windows Live or Ask. Or they might turn to one of the growing answers sites.

But lately, more and more people are turning to Twitter.

Yes, Twitter.

Brian Clark, author of the popular Copyblogger.com, turned to Twitter when searching for software recently. “I’d been looking for a photo editor, and Google wasn’t really giving me what I need. [I'm] not sure any other search engine would have either.”

Clark was looking for was direction on which product to choose. “What I needed was a personal recommendation, either from someone I knew and trusted, or by consensus from multiple people.”

He’s not alone. Lisa Creech Bledsoe, director at Calvert Creative, a social media consulting firm, has been using Twitter for both business and personal use. She’s finding that Twitter offers her something that the search engines can’t: human interaction.

“Because I deliberately cultivated a Twitter community of my industry peers, I knew they could give me the answer quickly. I can also ‘refine’ my ’search’ on Twitter because I’m talking to actual people, as opposed to posing questions to an algorithm,” said Bledsoe

Human feedback is what Wendy Piersall needed recently when launching the process of rebranding her site, eMoms at Home. Her reader base had expanded beyond moms, and she wanted her site to reflect that.

“I just needed real input from real people, which obviously Google can’t provide like that,” said Piersall. “It was more important to determine what our readers thought of this word — that’s when I turned to Twitter.”

Twitter has certainly not replaced Google. Instead, Piersall finds that the two complement each other. When Piersall was looking for a new word that reaches her audience, she needed to research what was already out there. “I certainly first Googled it to determine how [a] word is already being used by other companies/sites.”

Lisa Creech Bledsoe shares that sentiment. “Searching for the right information isn’t necessarily an ‘either/or’ situation (either I use either Google or Twitter), it’s sometimes a ‘both/and.’”

But where are Yahoo, MSN, AOL or Ask in this discussion? A recent comScore report showed that Google has increased its dominance over the search landscape. And that is reflected in Bledsoe’s search behavior. “I use Twitter for search and for business reasons all the time now, and I go to all four major search engines when I’m doing research for my clients, but interestingly, I rarely use Yahoo, MSN, or Ask.com for personal use.”

Some of the major search engines are expected to begin adding more social media elements to their sites. Until then, Twitter and other social sites, may well be on their way to being the Google alternative.