Wednesday, 21 March 2007, 11:35 GMT | news.bbc.co.uk

A legal challenge to the way Google calculates the popularity of websites for its internet search engine results has been thrown out.

US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel dismissed the case, brought by parenting information site KinderStart.

KinderStart alleged Google had severely damaged its business by cutting it from its web search ranking system.

But Judge Fogel said KinderStart had "failed to explain how Google caused injury" to the company.

The ruling in the Northern District of California was issued on Friday, but came to light late on Tuesday.

The judge also imposed as yet undetermined sanctions on KinderStart lawyer Gregory Yu for making unsupported allegations against Google.

"Yu had a professional responsibility to refrain from filing such allegations if he did not have appropriate supporting evidence," he said.

Lawyers representing Google welcomed the decision, saying the claims "were unjustified".

"Courts have consistently rejected complaints over search engine rankings, so we're pleased that Judge Fogel promptly dismissed this case," said Google litigation lawyer Hilary Ware.