I suspect datadial know exactly what they're doing here - as revenge for this alleged petty act by the lawyers they're now google-bombing the term shopzilla (by deliberately including so many refs to shopzilla in this new blog post), and hoping to teach them a lesson about who is in control of links. They're already on the second page for a simple search for shopzilla, and I'd expect them to move up closer to the top if this gets more publicity and links in from other sites. Does it deserve it?

A very strange attempt by Shopzilla in the first place to control links to them, so it would be interesting to hear their side of this story. I looked up datadial - they're a London SEO shop, and their original blog post is typical of SEO blogs - lots of links to random sites strung together into a blog post to boost their blog's ranking for that topic - ecommerce in this case. I have to wonder if this little storm in a teacup isn't more beneficial to them the more absurd it sounds and the stormier it gets - even if it dies down later the benefit will still be there for them.

It's strange to see the court of public opinion function on sites like reddit and HN - the more controversial and snappier the original post, the more traction it gets, and nuances and truth are lost in the rush to condemn based on a very limited set of facts.