SEO Expert Witness Entity Map

Federal Rule of Evidence 702

What the 2023 amendment changed, and why opinions built on third-party estimates and aligned timelines fail 702(b) and 702(d).

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Rules_of_Evidence

Relations:

• PART_OF → Admissibility and Qualification
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence
• RELATES_TO → Daubert standard
• RELATES_TO → Expert witness

Rule 702 is one sentence and four subsections. On 1 December 2023 two parts of it changed. The rule now reads: A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if the proponent demonstrates to the court that it is more likely than not that : (a) the expert's scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; (c)

Federal Rule of Evidence 702 in Search Cases | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Kumho Tire and Technical Expertise

Gatekeeping reaches technical and other specialized knowledge, and the Daubert factors are neither mandatory nor exhaustive.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumho_Tire_Co._v._Carmichael

Relations:

• PART_OF → Admissibility and Qualification
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence
• RELATES_TO → Daubert standard
• RELATES_TO → Expert witness

Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael , 526 U.S. 137 (1999), is the case that governs a search expert, and almost nobody writing in this field mentions it. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. , 509 U.S. 579 (1993), had held that the Federal Rules, not Frye , supply the standard, that the general-acceptance test was absent from and incompatible with the Rules, and that the trial judge has a gatekeeping role under Rule 104(a).

Kumho Tire and the Technical Expert | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Daubert Challenges in Search Cases

The grounds actually raised against a search expert, what the damages exclusions teach, and the one reported SEO ruling.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard

Relations:

• PART_OF → Admissibility and Qualification
• RELATES_TO → Daubert standard
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence

A motion to exclude a search expert almost never argues that search analysis is an illegitimate field. That argument would fail, and a sophisticated opponent knows it. The motion argues something narrower and harder to answer: that this witness, in this report, stated a conclusion the underlying work cannot support. The distinction determines what defends the opinion.

Daubert Challenges in Search Cases | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Machine-Generated Evidence

What a court asks of an AI-derived score today, and the correct status of proposed Rule 707 — which is not pending adoption.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Admissibility and Qualification
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence
• RELATES_TO → Electronically stored information

Machine-generated output reached this field before any rule was written for it. Four kinds recur. Similarity and duplication scores. A number expressing how much of one page's text matches another's, offered to support copying or scraping allegations. Language-model classification. A large language model asked to sort pages, listings, or reviews into categories — genuine or fabricated, machine-written or human-written. "Toxic" or "spam" link scores.

Machine-Generated Evidence in Search Cases | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

SEO Malpractice and Negligence

How a standard of care gets established in a field with no licensure, and why the date of the guidance decides the opinion.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Commercial and Contract Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization
• RELATES_TO → Expert witness

A malpractice or professional negligence claim against an SEO provider alleges that the provider owed a duty of care in performing technical and editorial work on the client's website and its off-site link profile, that the work fell below the standard applicable at the time, that the shortfall caused a measurable loss of organic search visibility — the unpaid listings a search engine returns, as distinct from advertising the client buys — and that the lost visibility carried revenue with it. These claims are almost never pleaded as negligence alone.

SEO Malpractice and Negligence Claims | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

SEO Agency Contract Disputes

Deliverable ambiguity, guaranteed-ranking clauses, and who owns the accounts when the engagement ends.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Commercial and Contract Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization

SEO retainers are written in categories, not artifacts. On-page optimization. Content strategy. Link building. Technical audit. Monthly reporting. None of those phrases has a definition with an edge to it, and none is defined anywhere with authority a court could adopt. The consequence is structural: performance is almost never measurable against the contract's own terms, so the dispute becomes an argument about what the words meant. That is where a technical expert can help and where one can overstep.

SEO Agency Contract Disputes and Ownership | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Website Traffic Loss Claims

The shape of a traffic loss claim, the evidence it needs, and the ways it comes apart before damages are ever reached.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Commercial and Contract Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics
• RELATES_TO → Lost profits

An organic traffic loss claim asserts three propositions, and they are not equally hard. First, that organic search traffic to an identified set of URLs declined. Second, that the decline was caused by identified conduct rather than by anything else. Third, that the lost traffic converted at a rate and a value supporting a damages figure. The first is usually provable from records. The third is a measurement problem with established approaches.

Website Traffic Loss Claims and Causation | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

E-commerce Search Visibility Disputes

Migrations, faceted navigation, indexation, structured data, and marketplace conflict — the retail-specific failure modes.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Commercial and Contract Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics

A retail site is not a brochure site with more pages. Its architecture is generated: category pages from a taxonomy, product pages from a catalog, and filter combinations on demand from whatever the shopper clicks. Three consequences follow. A defect is rarely confined to one page — it propagates across a template and so across thousands of URLs at once, which makes the loss large and the mechanism specific. The failure modes are technical and leave records, so they are testable in a way a content-quality dispute never is.

E-commerce Search Visibility Disputes | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Rule 26 Expert Report Requirements

What the report must contain, why “considered” is wider than “relied upon,” and how a ten-year publication list gets an expert impeached.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Disclosure and Discovery
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• RELATES_TO → Expert witness

Rule 26(a)(2)(B) applies to a witness retained or specially employed to provide expert testimony, and to a party's employee whose duties regularly involve giving expert testimony. That witness must produce a signed written report .

FRCP 26 Expert Report Requirements | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Expert Drafts and Attorney Communications

What Rule 26(b)(4) protects, the three exceptions that are not protected, and why a spreadsheet from counsel becomes a discoverable item.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Disclosure and Discovery
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• RELATES_TO → Expert witness

Rule 26(b)(4)(B), in the form adopted in the 2010 amendments, is short: Rules 26(b)(3)(A) and (B) “protect drafts of any report or disclosure required under Rule 26(a)(2), regardless of the form in which the draft is recorded .” The text is on Cornell's copy of Rule 26 . The operative clause is the last one. “Regardless of the form in which the draft is recorded” reaches well past a file named report_v3.docx .

Expert Drafts and Attorney Communications | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Consulting Versus Testifying Experts

Why the early technical work in a search matter is consulting work, and why designating a testifying expert too early cannot be undone.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_witness

Relations:

• PART_OF → Disclosure and Discovery
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• RELATES_TO → Expert witness

The distinction the federal rules draw is between an expert retained in anticipation of litigation who is expected to testify and one who is not. Rule 26(b)(4)(D) provides that ordinarily a party may not, by interrogatories or deposition, discover facts known or opinions held by an expert who has been retained or specially employed by another party in anticipation of litigation or to prepare for trial and who is not expected to be called as a witness at trial — except as provided in Rule 35(b), or on a showing of exceptional circumstances under which it

Consulting Versus Testifying Experts | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Spoliation of Search Data

Search evidence deletes itself on a timer. What Rule 37(e) requires, what partially replaces the lost data, and what a demand letter sets off.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence

Relations:

• PART_OF → Disclosure and Discovery
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• RELATES_TO → Electronically stored information
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics

Rule 37(e) governs the loss of electronically stored information. As amended in 2015 it provides that if ESI that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery, the court (1) upon finding prejudice, may order measures no greater than necessary to cure it; or (2) only upon finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use, may presume the lost

Spoliation of Search Data Under Rule 37(e) | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Authenticating Web Evidence

What Rule 901 actually requires of a web exhibit, the three routes that matter, and where search evidence loses its foundation.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentication_(law)

Relations:

• PART_OF → Evidence and Exhibits
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence
• RELATES_TO → Electronically stored information

Rule 901(a) asks for one thing: the proponent must produce evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is. That is not proof of authenticity but a threshold showing, and courts have long treated it that way. In Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite Corp. , No. 02 C 3293, 2004 WL 2367740 (N.D. Ill. Oct.

Authenticating Web Evidence Under Rule 901 | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Self-Authenticating Electronic Records

How FRE 902(13) and 902(14) let machine records and forensic copies come in by certification, and what the certification has to say.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Evidence and Exhibits
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence
• RELATES_TO → Electronically stored information

Rules 902(13) and 902(14) were added to the Federal Rules of Evidence in 2017. They did not lower the standard for authenticity. They changed who has to appear in order to satisfy it. Before them, establishing that a server log was output from the server that generated it, or that a forensic copy matched its original, meant putting a custodian or a technician on a plane to testify to something that was very rarely in genuine dispute. The 2017 rules let a written certification do that work, with notice to the opponent and a fair chance to contest it.

Self-Authenticating Records: FRE 902(13), (14) — published by SEO Expert Witness

Wayback Machine Evidence

The foundation routes for Internet Archive material, the three failure modes, and why a forensic capture beats an archive print.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine

Relations:

• PART_OF → Evidence and Exhibits
• RELATES_TO → Internet Archive
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence
• RELATES_TO → Electronically stored information

Archived web pages are used routinely, are almost never self-authenticating, and sit inside a genuine split of authority on whether a court may take judicial notice of them. Any page telling you archived material is freely admissible is wrong, and any page telling you courts have rejected it is also wrong. Both statements are common online and both are impeachable. The accurate position is narrower and more useful. Archived material is admitted where a party lays a foundation under Rule 901, and there are several routes.

Wayback Machine Evidence in Court | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Summaries Versus Illustrative Aids

Rule 1006 summaries are substantive evidence. Rule 107 illustrative aids are not evidence and stay out of deliberations.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Evidence and Exhibits
• RELATES_TO → Federal Rules of Evidence

Almost everything a search expert produces is a chart or a summary. Rankings over time. Sessions by channel. Link acquisition timelines. Keyword overlap tables. Crawl error rollups. Each compresses a body of underlying data far too large to put in front of a jury. Since 1 December 2024 two rules govern those exhibits, and they have opposite consequences. Rule 1006, as amended, admits a summary, chart, or calculation of voluminous admissible material as evidence , whether or not the underlying material has been introduced.

Summaries and Illustrative Aids Under Rule 1006 — published by SEO Expert Witness

Trademark Infringement in Organic Search

Where a mark can sit in a page's HTML, how each location is captured, and why this is a reconstruction problem

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement

Relations:

• PART_OF → Trademark, Advertising and Competition
• RELATES_TO → Lanham Act
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization

An organic-search trademark claim is almost never about one appearance of the mark. It can sit in a dozen separately provable places in one document, each with a different capture method, a different visibility, and a different evidentiary weight. The <title> element — the text usually rendered as the clickable blue link. Google may rewrite it, so the element and what appeared on the results page are two facts needing two exhibits. The meta description — a <meta> tag holding a short summary of the page.

Trademark Infringement in Organic Search | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Keyword Advertising Disputes

What Google Ads reporting proves about diversion in a keyword case, and the several things it cannot prove at all

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_advertising

Relations:

• PART_OF → Trademark, Advertising and Competition
• RELATES_TO → Lanham Act

Keyword advertising litigation divides cleanly. First: is buying or selling a competitor's mark as a keyword a "use in commerce" at all? Second: is the search results page that follows likely to confuse anyone? The first question is largely settled against defendants. The second is now settled overwhelmingly in favor of them. That asymmetry drives how these matters are worked up. A plaintiff who pleads that the defendant bought its brand term has pleaded almost nothing, because the purchase is not the injury.

Keyword Advertising Disputes | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Competitor False Advertising Online

How Lanham Act false advertising claims appear on search surfaces, and the sharp line between exposure and deception

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising

Relations:

• PART_OF → Trademark, Advertising and Competition
• RELATES_TO → Lanham Act

Section 43(a)(1)(B) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)(1)(B), reaches commercial advertising or promotion that misrepresents the nature, characteristics, qualities or geographic origin of goods, services or commercial activities. The Fifth Circuit's formulation in Pizza Hut, Inc. v. Papa John's International, Inc. , 227 F.3d 489 (5th Cir.

Competitor False Advertising Online | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Domain Name Value and SEO Equity

What the search value of a domain is made of, what survives a transfer or a redirect, and how prior bad use suppresses it

Relations:

• PART_OF → Trademark, Advertising and Competition
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization
• RELATES_TO → Lost profits

The phrase "SEO equity" gets used as though it described one thing a domain either has or does not. It is a bundle of separately owned, separately durable, separately evidenced components, and the first move in a defensible valuation is to break it apart. An opinion that values "the domain" as an undifferentiated asset gives an opponent a single question to ask, repeatedly. Registration age and continuity of use. Treat age as evidence of accumulated history — links, brand searches, index presence — rather than as an input search engines reward directly.

Domain Name Value and SEO Equity | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Site Migration Failures

What a failed migration looks like in the data, and how a report shows the failure was foreseeable before the launch date

Relations:

• PART_OF → Technical and Platform Failures
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics

Most search-visibility disputes founder on the same problem: nobody can point to a day on which something changed. A migration is the exception — a discrete, dated event, performed by an identifiable party, measured against a standard that was public before the work began. Google has documented moving a site with URL changes for years, and archived versions establish what it said on the launch date.

Site Migration Failures: Causation and Evidence — published by SEO Expert Witness

Technical SEO Defects in Litigation

How crawl, index and rendering defects are established, which ones point at which defendant, and where the causal claim breaks

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Relations:

• PART_OF → Technical and Platform Failures
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization

Two words get used interchangeably in these matters and should not be. Crawling is the retrieval of a URL by an automated agent; indexing is the decision to store and rank what was retrieved. They are sequential, independent, and fail for different reasons and by different parties' conduct. The Page Indexing report in Search Console is the primary first-party record of both, and it states its reasons in fixed language.

Technical SEO Defects as Evidence in Litigation — published by SEO Expert Witness

Negative SEO and Link Attacks

What a link attack claim can and cannot establish, and why the disavow file is often the most probative document in the matter

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing

Relations:

• PART_OF → Technical and Platform Failures
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization

“Negative SEO” is not a term of art with a fixed meaning, which is the first problem in any matter that uses it. Stated carefully, the claim is that a third party did something to or about the claimant's website that degraded its visibility in search results, and that the third party did it deliberately. That breaks into three quite different factual theories, and they do not have the same evidentiary strength. The first is an inbound link campaign — mass acquisition of low-quality links pointing at the target.

Negative SEO and Link Attacks as a Claim | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

AI Overviews and Traffic Loss Claims

What Google's AI reporting does and does not contain, which public statistics survive scrutiny, and where the causal claim breaks

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search#AI_Overviews

Relations:

• PART_OF → Technical and Platform Failures
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics
• RELATES_TO → Lost profits

This is the most important fact on the page and it is recent enough that most published commentary predates it. On 3 June 2026 Google introduced generative AI performance reports in Search Console — one for Search and one for Discover. Before that date there was no first-party reporting of AI surfaces at all. AI Overview impressions and clicks were folded into ordinary web-search totals with no way to segment them. That produces a hard line through every matter in this category.

AI Overviews and Traffic Loss Claims | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Local Search and Map Visibility Disputes

Why local visibility has to be measured across a geographic surface, and what a Business Profile account holds before it disappears

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_search_(Internet)

Relations:

• PART_OF → Technical and Platform Failures
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization

Start here, because it disposes of much of what gets asserted in these matters. Google states three local ranking factors: relevance , how well a profile matches the search; distance , how far each business is from the searcher; and prominence , how well known a business is, based on factors including links, reviews and ratings. Google also states there is no way to request or pay for better local ranking, and that where a user does not share a location, Google uses what it knows about it.

Local Search and Map Visibility Disputes | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Before-and-After Damages Analysis

Why a pre-event baseline in organic search is usually confounded, what a clean one requires, and when the model still holds

Relations:

• PART_OF → Causation and Damages
• RELATES_TO → Lost profits
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics

A before-and-after damages model compares a defined pre-event period with the damage period and treats the difference as the loss. The arithmetic is trivial. Everything that matters sits in one assumption: that the pre-event level would have continued but for the defendant's conduct. That assumption is not background to the opinion. It is the opinion, and it is the part that gets tested.

Before-and-After Damages Analysis in Search | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Yardstick and Benchmark Analysis

How other channels, unaffected page cohorts, competitor visibility, and query demand become controls in a testable design

Relations:

• PART_OF → Causation and Damages
• RELATES_TO → Lost profits
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics

A yardstick or benchmark analysis measures the loss against something other than the claimant's own prior performance. It is the accepted alternative where the party's history is unavailable, too short, or too contaminated to serve as a baseline, and it substitutes comparable businesses, undamaged units, or industry-level measures. It matters more in search litigation than in most fields because of who brings these claims.

Yardstick and Benchmark Damages Analysis | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Algorithm Updates as a Confound

How update dates are established, what volatility trackers can and cannot show, and how each side argues the confound

Relations:

• PART_OF → Causation and Damages
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization
• RELATES_TO → Web analytics

For years, the argument that an expert failed to account for a Google algorithm update was treated as a matter of weight, for cross-examination. That framing is no longer safe. Federal Rule of Evidence 702 , as amended effective 1 December 2023, requires the proponent to demonstrate that it is more likely than not that the testimony rests on sufficient facts or data and that the expert's opinion reflects a reliable application of the principles and methods to the facts.

Algorithm Updates as a Damages Confound | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Dividing Work With the Damages Expert

Where the search opinion ends and the accounting opinion begins, and why crossing that line puts both opinions at risk

Relations:

• PART_OF → Causation and Damages
• RELATES_TO → Lost profits
• RELATES_TO → Expert witness

Where search traffic is the injury, two experts are usually required and the line between them is not a matter of taste. The defensible split: the search expert opines on causation and the traffic or visibility counterfactual, and stops. The financial expert takes that traffic delta as a stated assumption and converts it into revenue and incremental profit.

Dividing Work With the Damages Expert | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Defamation in Search Results

What appeared, for which queries, on which dates, and to whom - and why a single screenshot proves none of it.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

Relations:

• PART_OF → Reputation and Content Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Internet Archive
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization

In a defamation matter the search expert is not retained to decide whether the statement is false. That is for the finder of fact. The expert's questions are narrower: what appeared, where, for which queries, on which dates, to whom, and for how long. That is a reconstruction problem, and it is harder than it sounds, because what is being reconstructed was never stored anywhere as an authoritative record.

Defamation in Search Results: Proving What Appeared — published by SEO Expert Witness

Online Reputation and De-indexing

What de-indexing actually does, why a removal can expire, and how an expert verifies whether it happened at all.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

Relations:

• PART_OF → Reputation and Content Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Search engine optimization
• RELATES_TO → Internet Archive

An index is a search engine's stored representation of the web: the pages it has crawled, parsed, and made eligible to be returned for a query. To de-index a page is to make it ineligible. The page is untouched - it still resolves, and it can still be copied.

De-indexing and Online Reputation Evidence | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Fake Reviews and Review Manipulation

The FTC rule, what it actually prohibits, and why proving a set of reviews is inauthentic is easier than proving who wrote them.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Reputation and Content Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Lanham Act

Review litigation looks like a truth dispute and behaves like a records dispute. What decides these matters is rarely whether a sentence about a business is fair. It is which reviews existed, when each arrived, from which accounts, and who had the ability to cause them. That is reconstruction, and it hits a structural obstacle immediately: the record you can see is a filtered, present-tense view of something curated by a non-party. Three things follow.

Fake Reviews and the FTC Consumer Review Rule — published by SEO Expert Witness

AI-Generated Defamation

Model output varies by session, account, retrieval, and sampling. Establishing what was said is a Rule 702(c) methodology problem.

Relations:

• PART_OF → Reputation and Content Disputes
• RELATES_TO → Electronically stored information

A defamation plaintiff must establish that the statement was made, that it was published, and that the defendant is responsible for it. Against a newspaper the first is free: the article exists, it is dated, everyone reads the same words. Against a generative system it is the hardest element in the case, because the words were produced on demand for one user in one session and may never appear that way again.

AI-Generated Defamation and Reproducibility | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Federal Rules of Evidence

The rules governing the admission of evidence in United States federal courts, including the reliability requirements an expert opinion must satisfy before a jury is permitted to hear it.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Rules_of_Evidence

The rules governing the admission of evidence in United States federal courts, including the reliability requirements an expert opinion must satisfy before a jury is permitted to hear it.

Federal Rule of Evidence 702 | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

The rules governing procedure in United States federal civil cases, including what a retained expert must disclose, what is protected from discovery, and what follows when electronically stored information is not preserved.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Rules_of_Civil_Procedure

The rules governing procedure in United States federal civil cases, including what a retained expert must disclose, what is protected from discovery, and what follows when electronically stored information is not preserved.

Rule 26 Expert Report Requirements | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Daubert standard

The framework under which a trial judge acts as gatekeeper over the reliability of expert testimony, extended by later authority to technical and other specialized knowledge rather than scientific testimony alone.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard

The framework under which a trial judge acts as gatekeeper over the reliability of expert testimony, extended by later authority to technical and other specialized knowledge rather than scientific testimony alone.

Daubert Challenges in Search Cases | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Expert witness

A witness permitted to offer opinion evidence on the strength of specialized knowledge, subject to disclosure obligations and to the court's assessment of whether the opinion is reliable enough to be heard.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_witness

A witness permitted to offer opinion evidence on the strength of specialized knowledge, subject to disclosure obligations and to the court's assessment of whether the opinion is reliable enough to be heard.

Consulting Versus Testifying Experts | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Electronically stored information

Information created and held in digital form that is subject to discovery, and the category into which analytics exports, server logs, crawl output and archived web pages all fall.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronically_stored_information

Information created and held in digital form that is subject to discovery, and the category into which analytics exports, server logs, crawl output and archived web pages all fall.

Spoliation of Search Data | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Search engine optimization

The practice of configuring a website and its content so that search engines can crawl, index and rank it, and the discipline whose records become the evidence in a search-related dispute.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

The practice of configuring a website and its content so that search engines can crawl, index and rank it, and the discipline whose records become the evidence in a search-related dispute.

Technical SEO Defects in Litigation | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Web analytics

The measurement and reporting of website traffic, and the primary first-party record from which a claimed loss of visitors is proved or disproved.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics

The measurement and reporting of website traffic, and the primary first-party record from which a claimed loss of visitors is proved or disproved.

Website Traffic Loss Claims | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Internet Archive

The organization whose crawled and stored copies of web pages are the most commonly offered evidence of what a website displayed on a past date, and whose capture process is what any foundation for that evidence has to describe.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive

The organization whose crawled and stored copies of web pages are the most commonly offered evidence of what a website displayed on a past date, and whose capture process is what any foundation for that evidence has to describe.

Wayback Machine Evidence | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Lanham Act

United States legislation governing trademarks and false advertising, and the statute under which most disputes about a competitor's use of a mark or claims in search and paid placement are brought.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanham_Act

United States legislation governing trademarks and false advertising, and the statute under which most disputes about a competitor's use of a mark or claims in search and paid placement are brought.

Competitor False Advertising Online | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Lost profits

The profit a party would have earned but for the conduct at issue, and the quantity a search expert's traffic counterfactual is built to support without itself becoming a financial opinion.

Same as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_profits

The profit a party would have earned but for the conduct at issue, and the quantity a search expert's traffic counterfactual is built to support without itself becoming a financial opinion.

Before-and-After Damages Analysis | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Commercial and Contract Disputes

Money owed, work not done, and visibility lost out of a commercial relationship.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → SEO Malpractice and Negligence
• INCLUDES → SEO Agency Contract Disputes
• INCLUDES → Website Traffic Loss Claims
• INCLUDES → E-commerce Search Visibility Disputes

Money owed, work not done, and visibility lost out of a commercial relationship.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Reputation and Content Disputes

What appears about a person or a business, how prominently, and since when.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Defamation in Search Results
• INCLUDES → Online Reputation and De-indexing
• INCLUDES → Fake Reviews and Review Manipulation
• INCLUDES → AI-Generated Defamation

What appears about a person or a business, how prominently, and since when.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Trademark, Advertising and Competition

Use of a mark, or of a competitor's demand, in organic results and paid placement.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Trademark Infringement in Organic Search
• INCLUDES → Keyword Advertising Disputes
• INCLUDES → Competitor False Advertising Online
• INCLUDES → Domain Name Value and SEO Equity

Use of a mark, or of a competitor's demand, in organic results and paid placement.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Technical and Platform Failures

Disputes caused by what was done to a website, or by what a platform did to it.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Site Migration Failures
• INCLUDES → Technical SEO Defects in Litigation
• INCLUDES → Negative SEO and Link Attacks
• INCLUDES → AI Overviews and Traffic Loss Claims
• INCLUDES → Local Search and Map Visibility Disputes

Disputes caused by what was done to a website, or by what a platform did to it.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Admissibility and Qualification

Whether the opinion is heard at all.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Federal Rule of Evidence 702
• INCLUDES → Kumho Tire and Technical Expertise
• INCLUDES → Daubert Challenges in Search Cases
• INCLUDES → Machine-Generated Evidence

Whether the opinion is heard at all.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Disclosure and Discovery

What must be produced, what is protected, and what has to be preserved.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Rule 26 Expert Report Requirements
• INCLUDES → Expert Drafts and Attorney Communications
• INCLUDES → Consulting Versus Testifying Experts
• INCLUDES → Spoliation of Search Data

What must be produced, what is protected, and what has to be preserved.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Evidence and Exhibits

Whether the underlying material, and the charts built from it, are received.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Authenticating Web Evidence
• INCLUDES → Self-Authenticating Electronic Records
• INCLUDES → Wayback Machine Evidence
• INCLUDES → Summaries Versus Illustrative Aids

Whether the underlying material, and the charts built from it, are received.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Causation and Damages

Method — how a loss is attributed to a cause and then measured.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Before-and-After Damages Analysis
• INCLUDES → Yardstick and Benchmark Analysis
• INCLUDES → Algorithm Updates as a Confound
• INCLUDES → Dividing Work With the Damages Expert

Method — how a loss is attributed to a cause and then measured.

Disciplines | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Matters and Disputes

The kinds of civil dispute that turn on search evidence — the commercial relationship the work came out of, reputation and content, trademark and competition, and technical or platform failure — each labeled with the question it actually turns on.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → SEO Malpractice and Negligence
• INCLUDES → SEO Agency Contract Disputes
• INCLUDES → Website Traffic Loss Claims
• INCLUDES → E-commerce Search Visibility Disputes
• INCLUDES → Trademark Infringement in Organic Search
• INCLUDES → Keyword Advertising Disputes
• INCLUDES → Competitor False Advertising Online
• INCLUDES → Domain Name Value and SEO Equity
• INCLUDES → Site Migration Failures
• INCLUDES → Technical SEO Defects in Litigation
• INCLUDES → Negative SEO and Link Attacks
• INCLUDES → AI Overviews and Traffic Loss Claims
• INCLUDES → Local Search and Map Visibility Disputes
• INCLUDES → Defamation in Search Results
• INCLUDES → Online Reputation and De-indexing
• INCLUDES → Fake Reviews and Review Manipulation
• INCLUDES → AI-Generated Defamation

The kinds of civil dispute that turn on search evidence — the commercial relationship the work came out of, reputation and content, trademark and competition, and technical or platform failure — each labeled with the question it actually turns on.

Matters and Disputes | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness

Evidence and Procedure

The rules and methods that decide whether search evidence survives, in the order they bite: preservation and disclosure, authentication and the form of the exhibit, admissibility of the opinion, and the method by which loss is attributed and measured.

Relations:

• INCLUDES → Federal Rule of Evidence 702
• INCLUDES → Kumho Tire and Technical Expertise
• INCLUDES → Daubert Challenges in Search Cases
• INCLUDES → Machine-Generated Evidence
• INCLUDES → Rule 26 Expert Report Requirements
• INCLUDES → Expert Drafts and Attorney Communications
• INCLUDES → Consulting Versus Testifying Experts
• INCLUDES → Spoliation of Search Data
• INCLUDES → Authenticating Web Evidence
• INCLUDES → Self-Authenticating Electronic Records
• INCLUDES → Wayback Machine Evidence
• INCLUDES → Summaries Versus Illustrative Aids
• INCLUDES → Before-and-After Damages Analysis
• INCLUDES → Yardstick and Benchmark Analysis
• INCLUDES → Algorithm Updates as a Confound
• INCLUDES → Dividing Work With the Damages Expert

The rules and methods that decide whether search evidence survives, in the order they bite: preservation and disclosure, authentication and the form of the exhibit, admissibility of the opinion, and the method by which loss is attributed and measured.

Evidence and Procedure | SEO Expert Witness — published by SEO Expert Witness