bassethound
05-01-12, 10:43
Google has downgraded Chrome from its search index for 60 days following a botched promotion.
The search giant fell afoul of its own regulations after Chrome became the subject of "sponsored posts" in which bloggers were paid to promote a video about it.
The blunder occurred when Google recruited marketing firm Essence Digital to produce video content advertising its browser. The ads were distributed online by Unruly Media, flooding Google's search engine with hundreds of results.
"Even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google's Chrome page and passed PageRank, that's still a violation of our quality guidelines," said Matt Cutts, who heads up Google's anti-spam efforts.
"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.
"During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won't trust outgoing links from that page."
Google says that it did not authorise the marketing campaign, but claims to have taken sterner action against itself than it would towards a third-party site.
"While Google did not authorise 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," said a spokesperson.
Recent browser usage figures suggest that Google's Chrome has surpassed Mozilla's Firefox as the closest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
The search giant fell afoul of its own regulations after Chrome became the subject of "sponsored posts" in which bloggers were paid to promote a video about it.
The blunder occurred when Google recruited marketing firm Essence Digital to produce video content advertising its browser. The ads were distributed online by Unruly Media, flooding Google's search engine with hundreds of results.
"Even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google's Chrome page and passed PageRank, that's still a violation of our quality guidelines," said Matt Cutts, who heads up Google's anti-spam efforts.
"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.
"During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won't trust outgoing links from that page."
Google says that it did not authorise the marketing campaign, but claims to have taken sterner action against itself than it would towards a third-party site.
"While Google did not authorise 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," said a spokesperson.
Recent browser usage figures suggest that Google's Chrome has surpassed Mozilla's Firefox as the closest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.