5 ms·

Matt Cutts Responds on Google's Paid Link Campaign

139 points by chintan 15y ago

mellis 15y ago
Does anyone else find the strictness of these policies disturbing? It sounds like they found one post that violated their policy and as a result you can't find Chrome on Google for the next two months. While I appreciate the evenhandedness in applying the rules to their own company, should these things allow for a bit more leniency and discretion in enforcement?
- thegyppo 15y ago
  I think that their response is also proving a point to the general SEO community that this sort of activity is frowned upon. It's very unlikely that your typical website would get such a harsh punishment for something so small & trivial.
  - jamesaguilar 15y ago
    Or even that it would be noticed.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  I can't speak for them, but I'd guess you have to be a lot harsher on yourself than you are with others when you have power, or else people are going to feel that you are using your power unfairly.
- baddox 15y ago
  The problem with "leniency and discretion in enforcement" is exactly what we've seen: people will reflexively be outraged at Google when they appear to break their own rules. Now, if Google's policy was to be lenient and to "give each offender a chance," think about how they would respond to two situations: The first situation is some unknown marketing agency that's clearly violating the rules and arranging the selling of links to inflate their PageRank or their clients' PageRanks. This would be the typical case that their policy was designed to weed out, and Google's webspam department would have no reason to be lenient. And they likely wouldn't. The second situation is when another department at Google appears to violate the Google webspam rules. Someone from Google webspam would see that Google Chrome is in violation, and of course they would feel the need to be lenient. Sure, it's a big company, but I'm sure any employee would assume they could work things out with the Chrome department. This would just end up being the exact situation we've seen unfold today: Google Chrome would appear to get a pass, while the "obvious spammers" would be punished normally. I don't see how "leniency and discretion" could possibly result in anything other than unequal application of Google's policies.
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    What about looking even-handed to those eyeing Google on antitrust issues?
- patio11 15y ago
  Somehow I think people will be able to find Chrome. http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/chrome-on-google.png http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/chrome-on...
  - dvdhsu 15y ago
    It also shows up as an advertisement (above the results) when searching for "chrome", provided you don't have an ad blocker installed. https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=chrome+ https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...
    - el_presidente 15y ago
      It's also the second result for "browser" in the news section. This isn't wrong, it's just one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112508/quotes?qt0403070 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112508/quotes?qt0403070
      - Natsu 15y ago
        Are you referring to the article "Google demotes Chrome browser"? Because that's what I get. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Google-demotes-Chrome-browser/articleshow/11360386.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Google...
  - bambax 15y ago
    Maybe. Maybe they don't go through the home page; maybe they go through the Google home page but don't look at it. But the problem is the same when other companies that make an honest mistake in good faith, get punished in this manner: 1. there wasn't anything they could have done to prevent this mistake (if the Chrome team can't figure out the rules, who can??) 2. the people who end up being punished are Google's users themselves, who won't understand why they can't find BMW when searching for "bmw", and will probably think they did something wrong. I'm not defending spammers, BTW, or even SEO (which I think is borderline evil regardless of the color of its hat). What I'm trying to say is that Google should find a way to punish spammers without punishing its own users.
- jaylevitt 15y ago
  From Google's statement: "While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site." http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551 http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pag...
- bambax 15y ago
  That Google applies the same rules to itself as to everyone else is commendable. What seems strange is how much of this needs to be done by hand. In essence, Google is admitting that they're unable to detect spam / low quality content, and therefore their "policy" is to punish the perpetrators when/if they get caught. This may be needed to enforce the rules, but it's an obvious disservice to Google's users, who are apparently considered "collateral damage".
  - bdonlan 15y ago
    The actual problematic link was a single link, apparently - I don't think it's reasonable to have automated systems ban a site from google for a _single_ link, which might well be a false positive. They're trying to show they don't have a double standard though, hence the manual action.
    - bambax 15y ago
      > I don't think it's reasonable to have automated systems ban a site from google for a _single_ link No, but it would be reasonable to ban the post sporting the offending link. It also would be in the benefit of Google's users to demote pages that are content-free. I thought this was what "Panda" was all about, but I'm not sure if it's working?
- bdonlan 15y ago
  I think they're trying to show that they hold themselves to a higher standard by applying a stronger measure than they would for others.
parfe 15y ago
Meanwhile Google banning its own browser will generate more buzz and downloads in the next few weeks than the video campaign no one knew about could have.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
sams99 15y ago
Clearly Matt did the right thing here, but the cynic in me says that all press is Good Press ... and now Chrome is going to get lots of it for free. Mission accomplished.
- numlocked 15y ago
  Will this really get picked up outside of tech press? While this will generate lots of chatter, it seems most of it will be visible only to people who already know about Chrome. I think most of the reactions so far are overly cynical - it really seems like Google is trying to do the right thing here.
  - sams99 15y ago
    This issue has reached Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Washington Post ... and so on http://news.google.com.au/news/more?q=chrome&hl=en&rlz=1C1_____enAU389AU389&prmd=imvnsu&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1670&bih=861&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dB1nfWgfon7lAUMSsPAG6SapueIpM&ei=Mc8DT9SVAsHmmAX2-r2jAg&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQqgIwAA http://news.google.com.au/news/more?q=chrome&hl=en&r...
- ericd 15y ago
  Noone who hears about this does not already know all about Chrome, unless it reaches the mainstream press due to the extremity of the self-punishment.
- swang 15y ago
  Regardless of what actions Google decided to take, this was going to make the news. They could either do this in a positive way by showing that they themselves are not above the law of PageRank, or they can do nothing at all and have Google Naysayers saying, "See! Their own rules don't apply to them." This sends a strong message to the rest of the Internet: We won't stand for even the perception of impropriety when it comes to our money maker: search (well ads, but you know what I mean)
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  Is there anything they could have done that would not have triggered the cynic in you? Don't punish -- Google is evil. Punish but leniently -- Google is applying its policies unevenly. Punish as they did -- it's all good press!
fl3tch 15y ago
I like how there's a link to an article pointing out that Chrome no longer ranks on the first page for searches of "browser". I confirmed the same for "web browser" and "new browser", however in every case, an ad for Chrome was at the top, while an ad for IE9 was at the very bottom of the page (below the bottom of most screens, and out of view). In other words, Chrome is still the first search result.
- elsalgo 15y ago
  Which is fair. They are paying for the position via ppc. Companies that are docked for blackhat techniques can still do ppc, assuming they are reputable enough.
  - chewxy 15y ago
    While I realize that it involves different business units entirely, but a company paying itself for its own products seem a bit weird to me, doesn't it?
    - thurn 15y ago
      It still costs Google money to run ads, in the form of opportunity cost (they're not getting the money someone else would pay to be there).
    - danshapiro 15y ago
      The bit about shifting budget dollars around is an accounting issue. many (if not all) advertising businesses have "house ads" that they run for their own products. It's similar to when you see an ad for an NBC show while watching a different NBC show, or an ad for Consumer Reports auto pricing service in Consumer Reports magazine.
daveman692 15y ago
Really like the transparency and applying the same rules, but at the same time when I search for "Google Chrome" the single ad in a yellow box above all of the results is for http://www.google.com/chrome http://www.google.com/chrome. I guess I wonder if this page rank demotion will really make a difference since Google still controls that ad spot.
- eli 15y ago
  You're right, but what's the answer? Should Google not be allowed to use AdWords for its own products?
  - protomyth 15y ago
    Would Google of closed the AdWord account of a third-party over this? [edit: for the down voter, if they would for a 3rd party, they should for themselves and remove the Ad. If they wouldn't take it away for a 3rd party, they should leave the Ad. Simple consistency]
    - MatthewCampbell 15y ago
      I'm not the downvoter, but perhaps they were annoyed with "Would Google of" rather than "Would Google have." That particular error really gets on people's nerves.
      - protomyth 15y ago
        If people are down voting others based on grammar, then English-as-a-second-language folks are going to have problems.
        Terretta 15y ago
        60% of my interactions are with ESL or ETL engineers. Would of, could of, should of, on accident, and the like, are hallmarks of a generation holding the less well read attitude that grammar doesn't matter. The ESLs I work with thank one for a correction, incorporate it, and move on. Bad grammar is a bug. We all make them, reading clean code reduces them, and peer review helps too.
drm237 15y ago
Are there any provisions to this policy to ensure that it's not abused? It would be trivially easy to create "sponsored" links on behalf of your competitor in order to get them penalized.
- theseanstewart 15y ago
  Great point. I'm about to pay some bloggers to link to google.com and have them add "This post was sponsored by Google". Think they'll ban themselves?
- byrneseyeview 15y ago
  This comes up as a hypothetical risk whenever stories like this break, but I know of no cases where it happens. That includes situations where individual link-buyers and link-buying sites have been publicly outed by commentators or competitors. The economics of this only work out well if you have high marketshare (if you're 5% of the market, and you blow up a competitor, 95% of the benefit accrues to the other 95% of the market). So I think this threat is overblown. Every time it comes up, I've asked for examples--if you hear of any after the fact, I would greatly appreciate it if you'd get in touch. Email's in the profile.
  - uriah 15y ago
    Isn't the relevant "market" searches for whatever keyword group you are considering? The marketshare of clicks is mainly divided among the 10 sites on the front page. I imagine the benefit, when shared among only 1-9 sites, could be significant. Also consider the benefit of moving from ranking 11 to 10 or from 2 to 1, for example. Though I can't speak for the efficacy of this technique, this fairly old article suggests submitting competitors articles to directories to reduce their perceived (by search engines) quality: http://www.bluehatseo.com/open-questions-when-to-never-do-article-submissions http://www.bluehatseo.com/open-questions-when-to-never-do-ar...
peterb 15y ago
I would see this in a more positive light if searching for the word "Chrome" did not find the Google Chrome homepage. However, they chose the word "browser", which isn't quite the same thing.
- jaylevitt 15y ago
  No, I think they demoted the URL, no matter what the search term; the initial searchengineland article was written while the demotion was still propagating, and "chrome" was still ranking. Now: 'In fact, the page no longer ranks for “chrome” or for “chrome browser,” either.' http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551 http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pag...
  - peterb 15y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. They only demote the URL and not what it linked to.
theseanstewart 15y ago
I'm sorry but this is a complete joke. Matt, I know you read HN so I'd love to have an answer to this. How does demoting www.google.com/chrome improve the searcher's experience if they are in fact looking for information on Google Chrome? I thought Google was all about returning the best results possible. Also, why wouldn't you just devalue the link placed in the sponsored post? There's no way that one link was significantly holding up the ranking of that page.
- theseanstewart 15y ago
  Also, what if Google had asked the bloggers to put rel="nofollow" on the links but they forgot to add it. Would you guys still penalize the page that received the link?
AznHisoka 15y ago
You need to ban the entire domain! If someone else did the same thing, you wouldn't just ban that 1 page, would you?
jshen 15y ago
"In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would." How can a site know if they've been demoted, manually or algorithmically? How can they find out why they've been demoted in order to clean up?
- paulsilver 15y ago
  If you have the site registered in Google Webmaster Tools, you get a message within the GWT system about the penalty, and an area where you can appeal it. You also get warned about malware infections, and I think now old installs of Wordpress. I had a client get caught in one a while ago, the notification isn't perfect and at the time (I don't know about now) they didn't e-mail the account holder as well, which I thought was a bit daft as they have your e-mail as it's your login. For the client, when I cleaned up their site and wrote an appeal saying what had been done, the Webspam team were very quick at processing our appeal and restoring the site. It wasn't a buying links penalty though, it was about stuff they had on the site from some dodgy advice they'd had a few years before that I'd been trying to get them to remove, so it was easy to show they'd learnt their lesson in the appeal.
juddlyon 15y ago
This must be mortifying for Cutts & Co., although being the PR pros they are they'll brush it off as an inadvertent mistake. This isn't the first time by the way, they penalized Google Japan in a similar situation a couple years back.
lubujackson 15y ago
Ugh, the tediousness of the response is only equaled by the bureaucracy of the offense.
eurohacker 15y ago
Adwords ads show up before first search results anyway , so why bother with organic traffic after getting exposed
joshmanders 15y ago
While I applaud Google and the spam team for trying to hold up the rules for EVERYONE. I think this is the stupidest thing I've read in a while.
edcrfv 15y ago
I'm curious as to whether this was misused by malicious website owners buying links for competitors and then reporting the competitor to the Webmaster team to get them lose their top ranking? What steps does Google take to ensure this does not happen? A poster below asked the same question and someone else responded saying there are no documented cases of this happening, but let's just assume it's a hypothetical situation for now. What will Google do when something like this happens? How will they verify who was wronged?

139 points by chintan 15y ago

Does anyone else find the strictness of these policies disturbing? It sounds like they found one post that violated their policy and as a result you can't find Chrome on Google for the next two months. While I appreciate the evenhandedness in applying the rules to their own company, should these things allow for a bit more leniency and discretion in enforcement?

thegyppo 15y ago
I think that their response is also proving a point to the general SEO community that this sort of activity is frowned upon. It's very unlikely that your typical website would get such a harsh punishment for something so small & trivial.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago
  Or even that it would be noticed.
jamesaguilar 15y ago
I can't speak for them, but I'd guess you have to be a lot harsher on yourself than you are with others when you have power, or else people are going to feel that you are using your power unfairly.
baddox 15y ago
The problem with "leniency and discretion in enforcement" is exactly what we've seen: people will reflexively be outraged at Google when they appear to break their own rules. Now, if Google's policy was to be lenient and to "give each offender a chance," think about how they would respond to two situations: The first situation is some unknown marketing agency that's clearly violating the rules and arranging the selling of links to inflate their PageRank or their clients' PageRanks. This would be the typical case that their policy was designed to weed out, and Google's webspam department would have no reason to be lenient. And they likely wouldn't. The second situation is when another department at Google appears to violate the Google webspam rules. Someone from Google webspam would see that Google Chrome is in violation, and of course they would feel the need to be lenient. Sure, it's a big company, but I'm sure any employee would assume they could work things out with the Chrome department. This would just end up being the exact situation we've seen unfold today: Google Chrome would appear to get a pass, while the "obvious spammers" would be punished normally. I don't see how "leniency and discretion" could possibly result in anything other than unequal application of Google's policies.
- joezydeco 15y ago
  What about looking even-handed to those eyeing Google on antitrust issues?
patio11 15y ago
Somehow I think people will be able to find Chrome. http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/chrome-on-google.png http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/chrome-on...
- dvdhsu 15y ago
  It also shows up as an advertisement (above the results) when searching for "chrome", provided you don't have an ad blocker installed. https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=chrome+ https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...
  - el_presidente 15y ago
    It's also the second result for "browser" in the news section. This isn't wrong, it's just one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112508/quotes?qt0403070 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112508/quotes?qt0403070
    - Natsu 15y ago
      Are you referring to the article "Google demotes Chrome browser"? Because that's what I get. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Google-demotes-Chrome-browser/articleshow/11360386.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Google...
- bambax 15y ago
  Maybe. Maybe they don't go through the home page; maybe they go through the Google home page but don't look at it. But the problem is the same when other companies that make an honest mistake in good faith, get punished in this manner: 1. there wasn't anything they could have done to prevent this mistake (if the Chrome team can't figure out the rules, who can??) 2. the people who end up being punished are Google's users themselves, who won't understand why they can't find BMW when searching for "bmw", and will probably think they did something wrong. I'm not defending spammers, BTW, or even SEO (which I think is borderline evil regardless of the color of its hat). What I'm trying to say is that Google should find a way to punish spammers without punishing its own users.
jaylevitt 15y ago
From Google's statement: "While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site." http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551 http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pag...
bambax 15y ago
That Google applies the same rules to itself as to everyone else is commendable. What seems strange is how much of this needs to be done by hand. In essence, Google is admitting that they're unable to detect spam / low quality content, and therefore their "policy" is to punish the perpetrators when/if they get caught. This may be needed to enforce the rules, but it's an obvious disservice to Google's users, who are apparently considered "collateral damage".
- bdonlan 15y ago
  The actual problematic link was a single link, apparently - I don't think it's reasonable to have automated systems ban a site from google for a _single_ link, which might well be a false positive. They're trying to show they don't have a double standard though, hence the manual action.
  - bambax 15y ago
    > I don't think it's reasonable to have automated systems ban a site from google for a _single_ link No, but it would be reasonable to ban the post sporting the offending link. It also would be in the benefit of Google's users to demote pages that are content-free. I thought this was what "Panda" was all about, but I'm not sure if it's working?
bdonlan 15y ago
I think they're trying to show that they hold themselves to a higher standard by applying a stronger measure than they would for others.

parfe 15y ago

Meanwhile Google banning its own browser will generate more buzz and downloads in the next few weeks than the video campaign no one knew about could have.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

sams99 15y ago

Clearly Matt did the right thing here, but the cynic in me says that all press is Good Press ... and now Chrome is going to get lots of it for free. Mission accomplished.

numlocked 15y ago
Will this really get picked up outside of tech press? While this will generate lots of chatter, it seems most of it will be visible only to people who already know about Chrome. I think most of the reactions so far are overly cynical - it really seems like Google is trying to do the right thing here.
- sams99 15y ago
  This issue has reached Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Washington Post ... and so on http://news.google.com.au/news/more?q=chrome&hl=en&rlz=1C1_____enAU389AU389&prmd=imvnsu&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1670&bih=861&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dB1nfWgfon7lAUMSsPAG6SapueIpM&ei=Mc8DT9SVAsHmmAX2-r2jAg&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQqgIwAA http://news.google.com.au/news/more?q=chrome&hl=en&r...
ericd 15y ago
Noone who hears about this does not already know all about Chrome, unless it reaches the mainstream press due to the extremity of the self-punishment.
swang 15y ago
Regardless of what actions Google decided to take, this was going to make the news. They could either do this in a positive way by showing that they themselves are not above the law of PageRank, or they can do nothing at all and have Google Naysayers saying, "See! Their own rules don't apply to them." This sends a strong message to the rest of the Internet: We won't stand for even the perception of impropriety when it comes to our money maker: search (well ads, but you know what I mean)
jamesaguilar 15y ago
Is there anything they could have done that would not have triggered the cynic in you? Don't punish -- Google is evil. Punish but leniently -- Google is applying its policies unevenly. Punish as they did -- it's all good press!

fl3tch 15y ago

I like how there's a link to an article pointing out that Chrome no longer ranks on the first page for searches of "browser". I confirmed the same for "web browser" and "new browser", however in every case, an ad for Chrome was at the top, while an ad for IE9 was at the very bottom of the page (below the bottom of most screens, and out of view). In other words, Chrome is still the first search result.

elsalgo 15y ago
Which is fair. They are paying for the position via ppc. Companies that are docked for blackhat techniques can still do ppc, assuming they are reputable enough.
- chewxy 15y ago
  While I realize that it involves different business units entirely, but a company paying itself for its own products seem a bit weird to me, doesn't it?
  - thurn 15y ago
    It still costs Google money to run ads, in the form of opportunity cost (they're not getting the money someone else would pay to be there).
  - danshapiro 15y ago
    The bit about shifting budget dollars around is an accounting issue. many (if not all) advertising businesses have "house ads" that they run for their own products. It's similar to when you see an ad for an NBC show while watching a different NBC show, or an ad for Consumer Reports auto pricing service in Consumer Reports magazine.

daveman692 15y ago

Really like the transparency and applying the same rules, but at the same time when I search for "Google Chrome" the single ad in a yellow box above all of the results is for http://www.google.com/chrome http://www.google.com/chrome. I guess I wonder if this page rank demotion will really make a difference since Google still controls that ad spot.

eli 15y ago
You're right, but what's the answer? Should Google not be allowed to use AdWords for its own products?
- protomyth 15y ago
  Would Google of closed the AdWord account of a third-party over this? [edit: for the down voter, if they would for a 3rd party, they should for themselves and remove the Ad. If they wouldn't take it away for a 3rd party, they should leave the Ad. Simple consistency]
  - MatthewCampbell 15y ago
    I'm not the downvoter, but perhaps they were annoyed with "Would Google of" rather than "Would Google have." That particular error really gets on people's nerves.
    - protomyth 15y ago
      If people are down voting others based on grammar, then English-as-a-second-language folks are going to have problems.
      - Terretta 15y ago
        60% of my interactions are with ESL or ETL engineers. Would of, could of, should of, on accident, and the like, are hallmarks of a generation holding the less well read attitude that grammar doesn't matter. The ESLs I work with thank one for a correction, incorporate it, and move on. Bad grammar is a bug. We all make them, reading clean code reduces them, and peer review helps too.

drm237 15y ago

Are there any provisions to this policy to ensure that it's not abused? It would be trivially easy to create "sponsored" links on behalf of your competitor in order to get them penalized.

theseanstewart 15y ago
Great point. I'm about to pay some bloggers to link to google.com and have them add "This post was sponsored by Google". Think they'll ban themselves?
byrneseyeview 15y ago
This comes up as a hypothetical risk whenever stories like this break, but I know of no cases where it happens. That includes situations where individual link-buyers and link-buying sites have been publicly outed by commentators or competitors. The economics of this only work out well if you have high marketshare (if you're 5% of the market, and you blow up a competitor, 95% of the benefit accrues to the other 95% of the market). So I think this threat is overblown. Every time it comes up, I've asked for examples--if you hear of any after the fact, I would greatly appreciate it if you'd get in touch. Email's in the profile.
- uriah 15y ago
  Isn't the relevant "market" searches for whatever keyword group you are considering? The marketshare of clicks is mainly divided among the 10 sites on the front page. I imagine the benefit, when shared among only 1-9 sites, could be significant. Also consider the benefit of moving from ranking 11 to 10 or from 2 to 1, for example. Though I can't speak for the efficacy of this technique, this fairly old article suggests submitting competitors articles to directories to reduce their perceived (by search engines) quality: http://www.bluehatseo.com/open-questions-when-to-never-do-article-submissions http://www.bluehatseo.com/open-questions-when-to-never-do-ar...

peterb 15y ago

I would see this in a more positive light if searching for the word "Chrome" did not find the Google Chrome homepage. However, they chose the word "browser", which isn't quite the same thing.

jaylevitt 15y ago
No, I think they demoted the URL, no matter what the search term; the initial searchengineland article was written while the demotion was still propagating, and "chrome" was still ranking. Now: 'In fact, the page no longer ranks for “chrome” or for “chrome browser,” either.' http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551 http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pag...
- peterb 15y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. They only demote the URL and not what it linked to.

theseanstewart 15y ago

I'm sorry but this is a complete joke. Matt, I know you read HN so I'd love to have an answer to this. How does demoting www.google.com/chrome improve the searcher's experience if they are in fact looking for information on Google Chrome? I thought Google was all about returning the best results possible. Also, why wouldn't you just devalue the link placed in the sponsored post? There's no way that one link was significantly holding up the ranking of that page.

theseanstewart 15y ago
Also, what if Google had asked the bloggers to put rel="nofollow" on the links but they forgot to add it. Would you guys still penalize the page that received the link?

AznHisoka 15y ago

You need to ban the entire domain! If someone else did the same thing, you wouldn't just ban that 1 page, would you?

jshen 15y ago

"In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would." How can a site know if they've been demoted, manually or algorithmically? How can they find out why they've been demoted in order to clean up?

paulsilver 15y ago
If you have the site registered in Google Webmaster Tools, you get a message within the GWT system about the penalty, and an area where you can appeal it. You also get warned about malware infections, and I think now old installs of Wordpress. I had a client get caught in one a while ago, the notification isn't perfect and at the time (I don't know about now) they didn't e-mail the account holder as well, which I thought was a bit daft as they have your e-mail as it's your login. For the client, when I cleaned up their site and wrote an appeal saying what had been done, the Webspam team were very quick at processing our appeal and restoring the site. It wasn't a buying links penalty though, it was about stuff they had on the site from some dodgy advice they'd had a few years before that I'd been trying to get them to remove, so it was easy to show they'd learnt their lesson in the appeal.

juddlyon 15y ago

This must be mortifying for Cutts & Co., although being the PR pros they are they'll brush it off as an inadvertent mistake. This isn't the first time by the way, they penalized Google Japan in a similar situation a couple years back.

lubujackson 15y ago

Ugh, the tediousness of the response is only equaled by the bureaucracy of the offense.

eurohacker 15y ago

Adwords ads show up before first search results anyway , so why bother with organic traffic after getting exposed

joshmanders 15y ago

While I applaud Google and the spam team for trying to hold up the rules for EVERYONE. I think this is the stupidest thing I've read in a while.

edcrfv 15y ago

I'm curious as to whether this was misused by malicious website owners buying links for competitors and then reporting the competitor to the Webmaster team to get them lose their top ranking? What steps does Google take to ensure this does not happen? A poster below asked the same question and someone else responded saying there are no documented cases of this happening, but let's just assume it's a hypothetical situation for now. What will Google do when something like this happens? How will they verify who was wronged?