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Does FindLaw Blacklist Clients When They Leave?

by lerxtjr
6 replies
I've been talking with a lawfirm that wants me to take on their seo project. Since they left findlaw two years ago, they've gone through two pretty descent seo firms and neither has been able to get their site any google presence except for a couple of non-competitive pages. They have 180 unique url backlinks, a blog on the site, a couple of supporting blogs outside, just converted to wordpress away from joomla, an active g+ account and twitter, far more than most traditional businesses I work with.

My question is if anyone has heard or experienced findlaw "plaguing" a website domain either by cloning or hidden dns or some sort of dns/domain cave that would prevent google from recognizing a new site launch away from findlaw as being the authority site.
#blacklist #clients #findlaw #leave
  • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
    Originally Posted by lerxtjr View Post

    My question is if anyone has heard or experienced findlaw "plaguing" a website domain either by cloning or hidden dns or some sort of dns/domain cave that would prevent google from recognizing a new site launch away from findlaw as being the authority site.
    Yes. As you know FindLaw was one of the earliest legal sites on the Internet. Although it was later acquired by a major corporation, its early pioneering usefulness allowed it to get special access to the Domain Name System. This predates Google's growth as a major search engine. So you know, I was one of the earliest users of FindLaw.

    Whenever anyone attempts to access a website, including Google's bots, the DNS request is first checked with the FindLaw Update Botlist, also known as FLUB. Included within FLUB is a list of current and former FindLaw clients. Sorry, but I cannot tell you how often this is updated.

    This was one of the benefits of using FindLaw, but as your potential client is finding out also a detriment. If your potential client is listed in FLUB as a former client it is likely being blocked from being accessed by newer bots such as Google. Google is likely taking the FLUB ban and treating it as a negative penalty wherever it finds references to the firm, whether for its domain or elsewhere. The result is little to no visibility in Google.

    That explains why normal SEO efforts are of little use.

    What needs to happen is for your potential client to be flushed from the FLUB list.

    It should be a simple process for you to ask FindLaw to scrub the firm's name from the DNS FLUB list. I'm surprised, since you provide SEO services to the legal community, that you did not already know this.

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    • Profile picture of the author lerxtjr
      I'm surprised, since you provide SEO services to the legal community, that you did not already know this.
      haa, I definitely don't provide services to the legal community. In fact, if a law firm calls me, I'll turn them down flat. Just not my type of personality I prefer to work with and I like where my blood pressure is This one came in from a long-time referrer of other industry clients so I'm feeling a bit compelled to take them on...although hesitantly if I'm already behind the 8 ball with a sabotaged domain. Thanks for the tip.
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  • Profile picture of the author lerxtjr
    So I talked to a couple of people at findlaw and apparently not even in their IT dept does anyone have an idea of a flub list. Can't say I expected they would acknowledge it anyway. What's also odd about this is that it's been almost 2 months now and google has not indexed all the new pages of the new site we launched for this law client. The 2/3 of the pages that have been picked up display the urls but have only page titles <title> from the old site. Any weird correlation?
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