Publilc Records: 30 years old, potentially damaging, and listed on top half of first page of name search

zardoz9552

"I searched for my name and found a public records section on the first page—right below several lines of professional data about me. It displayed a 30-year-old court case that was dropped. The way it's presented makes it look as if I might not have paid child support, which could unfairly suggest that I was not a good father.

Issue one: Why is 30-year-old data appearing so prominently on the first page of search results?
Issue two: Could this be grounds for a lawsuit, given that outdated legal information is being presented alongside current professional details in a way that could harm my reputation and result in financial loss?"

I would expect this data to be on page 5 or not listed at all being so old.

nichu42

zardoz9552 Why do you blame Kagi instead of the source?

RoxyRoxyRoxy

nichu42 Yea, this is just Kagi doing its job of surfacing relevant sites and info. I'm not a lawyer but if this is a real issue and not a bizarre lawsuit trolling attempt, there are options to have records sealed/expunged. OP should pursue such avenues instead of targeting a search engine.

zardoz9552

nichu42 It is misleading to have 30 year old information on the first page of someone who has 15 pages of references on google. Do we not expect a search engine to rank information by date for relevance?

zardoz9552

RoxyRoxyRoxy
Restrictions on Public Information
Even if something is technically public, there are limits on how it can be used and displayed:

Right to be Forgotten (in some jurisdictions): The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) allows individuals to request the removal of outdated or irrelevant information.
Defamation & False Light Lawsuits: If public information is presented in a misleading way that harms someone's reputation, legal action may be possible.
Expungement & Record Sealing: Some criminal records, including dropped cases, can be sealed or expunged, making them no longer legally public.

gladiator2339

Aside from the fact that this feedback is misguided, something like Google's content removal form could be beneficial in the future.

Dustin

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RoxyRoxyRoxy

zardoz9552 Kagi isn’t doing any of that. Any possible complaint under those laws should be taken up with the record site that actually stores and displays them. If theres a business that’s breaking the law the police don’t go after the yellow pages for having that business in their directory.

Edit: zardoz9552 No, this is not misleading. Information being old doesn’t automatically mean it’s not relevant from a search engine perspective. You implied previously this info may not be entirely correct based on how your case is resolved; Kagi (or any search engine) doesn’t know that. Any issue with the information is wholly the fault of the upstream records site.

marcel001122

How is Kagi to blame here? It is a public record. It is out there. You need to contact whoever is hosting that page about you. Kagi is just collecting information about whatever you searched and this is a testament about HOW good it really is at finding things!

It isn't doing anything against GDPR. It would be misrepresentation IF Kagi showed it as a top result when you arrange by 'recency' for example because that is not recent news. Recency filter has been broken for a while so I will not be surprised that even when using that filter, you end up seeing the news on second page. Why doesn't it show on Google on 2nd page? Because half the pages on Google are filled with adverts, with rest floated based on SEO. So the true results are scattered if they aren't SEO optimised or paid adverts.

Kagi should use this thread as an advert to be honest. "The only search engine that finds EVERYTHING."

RoxyRoxyRoxy

marcel001122 Agreed, my first thought (not that OP did this) is that this could easily be someone upset their careful Google SEO manipulation to hide a checkered past isn’t working on Kagi.

Luis

We have a public records widget that uses a free public database containing hundreds of millions of United States court cases and lawsuits, I assume this is what you're referring to.
We can always improve where we rank it based on the data it returns. We'll review it, thank you for sharing.

RoxyRoxyRoxy

Luis Would it be possible to make such widgets user-rankable as well? Ex. a lawyer may want to have that widget front and center.