Being blacklisted means you have done something wrong in the eyes of the search engine and is probably the worst fate a site can suffer.

It is still a gray area that differentiates legitimate search engine optimization techniques from those that are not allowed. Google won’t tell you precisely what constitutes "blacklist worthy" behavior so most webmasters use research and some common sense as guides.

The trouble is the pressure to get your site ranked higher that drives more and more companies closer to the edge of allowable SEO. To date there was nothing that could be done about being blacklisted except to hope that Google will take you off the blacklist at some point in the future.

It is unclear if Google blacklisted the site but KinderStart’s lawsuit alleges Google’s policing efforts have penalized web sites that have done nothing wrong. To make matters worse, the suit alleges the banished sites can’t determine how they can restore their standings because the company [Google] doesn’t explain its actions.

"The world is becoming increasingly ‘Googlized,’" said Gregory Yu, a lawyer for KinderStart. "For most people, that has been a good thing, but not for everyone."

Yu hopes to prove Google has become an "essential facility" that should be required to warn Web sites before dropping them from the index. "We don’t really feel there is enough transparency and openness in a service that has become so important," Yu said.

This is a really interesting lawsuit but Google would obviously have to give up trade secrets if it were to comply with Yu’s requests. And although virtually every company in the world would benefit from the knowledge of how to come up higher on Google searches, it just doesn’t seem likely that KinderStart.com can win this case.

In addition, if Google is required to pay a company if they lower its search ranking, is Google entitled to money if it gives a site a high ranking?

Perhaps however this case will act as a catalyst and a number of sites that feel they have been wronged by Google will come together to try to get Goggle to be more forthcoming about how it works.