The lawsuit had been filed by 57-year-old Lana Lawless, a former police officer who had a gender reassignment surgery in 2005. In 2008, she won the world women’s championship in long drive golf, but in 2010, Long Drivers of America which oversees the contest, changed its rules to match the policies followed by the LPGA. The new rules found Lawless ineligible for the tournament.

She wrote a letter to the LPGA qualifying tournament, but was turned down. She filed a lawsuit against the LPGA, Long Drivers of America, and a few tournament sponsors. The lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco, claims damages as well as a permanent injunction preventing the LPGA from holding tournaments in California, while it continues to discriminate against transgender players.

This week, players of the LPGA Tour tried try to undo some of the damage from the lawsuit by voting to modify the Constitution, removing the clause that requires players to be female at birth. The LPGA tour will soon implement the revised policy.

This is a more unusual case, but it is not entirely unheard of for California civil rights lawyers. At least one other female transgender golfer, Denmark’s Mianne Bagger has toured Europe and Australia. However, the LPGA has retained the same policies even as more and more transgender athletes have made inroads into the sporting arena. Even the International Olympic Committee has begun to allow transgender people to compete, provided they have had gender reassignment surgery and have undergone at least two years of postoperative hormone replacement.

What is Search Wiki?  I’ve heard people describe it as a DIGG for search, and it certainly LOOKS like Digg with its up and down arrows.  I’ve also heard people who latch onto the term WIKI and insist that it is some sort of collaborative ranking system.  So far, neither of those seem to be true.  

As of this moment, whatever effort you put into “voting” for search results is only for your own personal use.  Your votes DO NOT affect the SERPS of any other Google user.  To see for yourself, log out of Google and see how the voting disappears (in fact, you can only vote if you logged in).

The only indelible mark you can leave on the SERPS is with comments.  Comments ARE viewable by other users, and the thinking goes that users will get the most out of searches if they get the SERPS from the traditional algorithm but can then discern value of those results by reading the comments of searchers who came before them.  It’s actually an idea with great merit (I look at Amazon reviews before buying anything), but unfortunately they still have to work a few kinks out.

The biggest problem so far is that it took about 5 minutes for spammers to start seeding the comments sections with their advertisements.  Likewise, I am sure that people will start to setup fake Google accounts so that they can write terrible things about their competitors.   The nice thing about the traditional Google algorithm is that it really cannot be gamed so easily.   We trust the Google “reference librarian” and assume that the sites that are recommended are given to us based on an objective, not subjective formula.  

So while I see some value to Search Wiki, here is hoping that Google keeps its impact to a minimum.  I’d also like to see them allow users to turn it off without logging out.  As a Gmail user it is getting annoying having to log out of Gmail just to do a traditional Google search.  

One final note to my clients & prospects who often meet with companies that tout how they can move you up in the Google results.  Anytime someone is demonstrating how well their sites do in the organic results, make sure they are LOGGED OUT of google.   If you see Green Arrows on the page, or their email in the top right corner, then they are logged in and potentially manipulating the results.  This has actually been a best practice for a while since Google has been personalizing results for a few years now, but Search Wiki has made it all the more important.  Don’t let some snake oil salesman fool you.

Google has posted a You Tube video explaining Search Wiki.  I’ve embedded it below.
Google SearchWiki video

You spend so much time and money building your online brand & your standing with the search engines, only to have it ripped away by changing your domain. Attorneys and law firms are especially susceptible to this since they so often change their names with the coming-and-goings of partners to the firm. This is one reason I so often tell my clients to go with generic, keyword loaded URLs such as these:

Los Angeles Child Custody and Support Lawyer
Los Angeles Landlord Tenant Attorneys
Pasadena Personal Injury Attorney

Another option is to just commit to keeping the URL of the original partners, regardless of who comes or goes.

All that being said, sometimes it just cannot be avoided. If you do need to change your URL, I certainly recommend consulting with someone like me who can walk you through the process. To get an idea of what I or another Internet Consultant might recommend, you should have a look at the following article from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog. If you must try to do this on your own, I highly recommend following their advise as closely as possible.

Article: BEST PRACTICES WHEN MOVING YOUR SITE from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog

One of the most common things I hear is that these salesmen will say things like “our company has a deal with Google to list our sites first.” That is an outright lie.

Google (and most search engines) should be looked at like a reference librarian for this incredibly vast library we call the Internet. We use the search engines because we trust that they will give us the best results. We recognize what the Pay-Per-Click Ads are, and how they are different from the organic “library” results.

When I explain this I think that most everyone understands it, but I also like to have them do a Google search to prove my point. I ask them to do a Google search for the term “news”. Have a look for yourself:

Google Search for “News”

Clearly, if Google played favorites with anyone, it would be with Google.  And Google News is one of their big properties.  But where is Google News showing up?   It shows up in the 5th spot, behind CNN, ABCNEWS, FoxNews, and even Google’s rival, Yahoo!. 

So if Google won’t help themselves, why should anyone think they would help another company?  Of course, they don’t.

So the bottom line is this. Getting good search results is a multi-faceted process. There is no scheme to vault you to the top that will keep you there. You need to work with consultants and companies with proven track records.

For more information on my services, click here: Los Angeles Lawyer Marketing Site

*Addendum:  I’ve also been told of companies claiming to have a relationship with Google Local.   It is true that Google Local does scan some directory and Yellow Page types sites to glean information, but this is hardly something worth paying for.   Google DOES NOT give that information any advantage over information they get from other sources, it is simply a way for them to get information that the companies themselves have not supplied.  And the truth is, every business that wants to be on Google Local should take control of their own profile on Google Local to be certain that it is listed exactly as they see fit.   It’s free to do, and really easy.   Don’t get suckered into paying for something that is free – you can find the Google Local business center here:

www.google.com/local/add