• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 15, 2017

Search engine optimization company e-ventures Worldwide will ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to restore a lawsuit against alleging that Google wrongly removed e-ventures' sites from the search results.

e-ventures initiated the appellate process last week, but has not yet made its arguments to the 11th Circuit.

The company is seeking to revive a lawsuit against Google that was dismissed last month by U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson in the Middle District of Florida, who ruled that the company has a free speech right to decide which search results to display.

"Google’s actions in formulating rankings for its search engine and in determining whether certain websites are contrary to Google’s guidelines and thereby subject to removal are the same as decisions by a newspaper editor regarding which content to publish, which article belongs on the front page, and which article is unworthy of publication," Magnuson said in a ruling issued last month.

The battle dates to 2014, when e-ventures alleged that Google removed 231 sites associated with e-ventures' Webmaster tools. Google allegedly notified e-ventures that the sites would be de-listed because they were "pure spam."

Magnuson noted in his decision dismissing the case that e-ventures' consultant told the company its sites were spam.

Google has prevailed in prior lawsuits brought by companies who alleged they were wrongly demoted in the search results. In 2003, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit about that issue brought by SearchKing, and three years later a different judge threw out a similar lawsuit by KinderStart.