What happens to search evidence when it meets the rules of evidence
This is a reference for attorneys handling matters that turn on search results, web analytics, server logs, and the recorded history of a website. 17 kinds of dispute, 16 rules and methods, and 13 guides. Every entry opens with the one thing you need before the prose — the question it turns on — followed by the authority that governs it and the evidence it runs on.
- Working in search since
- 1996
- Expert reports
- 36
- Depositions
- 8
- Trials
- 5
- Arbitration
- 1
The rule that decides whether an expert may testify is the one nobody writes about
Search a phrase like SEO expert witness and you get marketing pages about people. Not one of them cites Rule 702, Daubert, Kumho Tire, or Rule 26 — while every practical failure in a search case happens exactly there. The data expired before anyone asked for it. The exhibit was an illustrative aid and never reached the jury room. The archive capture was dated to a year rather than a day. The causation opinion outran its own method.
Matters and Disputes
17 kinds of dispute that turn on search evidence, each labeled with the question it actually turns on — causation, standard of care, reconstruction, or valuation — because that decides what evidence you need and whether you have a case at all.
Evidence and Procedure
16 rules and methods, in the order they bite: preservation, then authentication, then admissibility, then method. Fail any one of them and the rest of the work was wasted.
The entries counsel reaches for first
Three pillars, in the order the problem arrives
Admissibility is written for the fight over whether the opinion is heard. The evidentiary record is written for everything that has to happen before that fight, most of it on a clock. Damages is written for the part where the inference either holds or does not.
The eight groupings everything here sits in
Commercial and Contract Disputes
4 entriesMoney owed, work not done, and visibility lost out of a commercial relationship.
Reputation and Content Disputes
4 entriesWhat appears about a person or a business, how prominently, and since when.
Trademark, Advertising and Competition
4 entriesUse of a mark, or of a competitor's demand, in organic results and paid placement.
Organic Trademark Keyword Advertising False Advertising Domain Value
Technical and Platform Failures
5 entriesDisputes caused by what was done to a website, or by what a platform did to it.
Migrations Technical Defects Negative SEO AI Overviews Local Search
Admissibility and Qualification
4 entriesWhether the opinion is heard at all.
Disclosure and Discovery
4 entriesWhat must be produced, what is protected, and what has to be preserved.
Rule 26 Report Drafts and Communications Consulting vs Testifying Spoliation
Evidence and Exhibits
4 entriesWhether the underlying material, and the charts built from it, are received.
Authentication Self-Authentication Wayback Machine Summaries vs Aids
Causation and Damages
4 entriesMethod — how a loss is attributed to a cause and then measured.
Before-and-After Yardstick Analysis Algorithm Confounds Division of Labor
A question first, then the rule
Nothing here is for sale and no engagement is taken on this site. Read the entry for what a rule requires, and the guide for the sequence it runs in.