According to the site’s owners, FarmDate.nl has approximately 3,000 members and describes itself as a “respectable meeting website for farmers.”
If one of the sites 3,000 members — or any single Dutch farmer looking to join the dating site — types the query “Farm Date” into the Google search box, they’ll find the site precisely where the owners of the site would like it to be located — namely at the top of Google’s search page. But it is the link next to the site’s entry that has the owners of FarmDate up in arms.
A single sponsored link, from which Google generates ad revenue, beckons surfers to click on another type of dating site — SexDatePersonals.com.
While both are dating sites, SexDatePersonals features softcore nude pictures on its homepage and tempts users with the lure of easy sex. FarmDate offers users a forum for building relationships and forbids its members from uploading or transmitting “offensive material, including pornography.”
Calling the link “pornographic,” a spokesman for the Dutch farmer’s union FNV Bondgenoten, which is defending FarmDate’s decision to litigate the matter, said that the links are “very damaging” to the site’s reputation.
A Dutch court is expected to hear the case Aug. 24.
