Disclaimer

General information, not legal advice

This site is general information about search technology, search evidence, and expert testimony. It is not legal advice and it is not offered as legal advice to anyone.

The distinction is real. These pages describe what a rule says, what a procedure involves, what data a platform actually produces, and where opinions in this discipline commonly fail. Legal advice is a different thing: the application of law to one client's specific facts, by someone licensed and accountable for getting it right. A published page cannot do that, and no page here attempts it.

Bill Hartzer is not an attorney. He is a search and domain name consultant who is retained as an expert witness. Where these pages describe rules of evidence and procedure, they describe them as a testifying expert works with them — accurately, and as a practitioner rather than as counsel.

Nothing here creates a relationship

Reading this site creates no relationship of any kind. Neither does printing a page, citing one, completing the contact form, or receiving a reply.

No attorney-client relationship is created, because no attorney is involved. No expert relationship is created either; retention as an expert follows a conflict check and an executed written engagement with counsel, and nothing short of that establishes one. Because no relationship exists, none of the protections that come with one exist either — nothing sent through this site is confidential, privileged, or protected as work product. Do not send privileged material, protected discovery, or anything covered by a protective order.

Nothing here is an opinion in any pending or contemplated matter, and nothing is offered as testimony.

Rules change, and so does the technology — verify

Both subjects here move, on different schedules.

Rules of evidence and civil procedure are amended, courts decide cases that change how those rules are applied, and local rules, standing orders, and state-court analogues differ from the federal defaults described here. Search platforms change their interfaces, metrics, documentation, and data retention windows without notice, which can make an accurate description of what evidence exists simply wrong a year later.

You must verify current authority before relying on anything published here. Read the rule as it now stands, read the opinion rather than a description of it, and check what your court's own orders require. A citation on this page is a starting point for that check, not a substitute for it.

No outcome is predicted or promised

Nothing on this site forecasts a result. Descriptions of how a challenge to an expert opinion proceeds, of what evidence tends to survive, or of how a method holds up describe process and recurring patterns — not your matter. Well-supported opinions are excluded and weak ones admitted, on variables that include the judge, the record, and the quality of the briefing.

Where a page refers to the author's own experience, that is background on the practice. It is not a representation about what any other matter will produce, and prior engagements have no bearing on a future one.

Get counsel, and preserve the evidence now

If you have a live dispute in which search results, analytics, server logs, or the history of a website matter, engage qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. Do not treat this site, or any general reference, as a reason to wait.

The urgency is specific to this field, because the evidence expires on its own. Search reporting properties hold performance data on a rolling window, server logs are discarded on the host's schedule, analytics accounts vanish with the employee who owned them, and third-party archives capture what they happen to capture. Preservation is a step for the beginning: no expert can analyze a record deleted while the parties were still deciding whether they needed one.