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Google has flexed its clout by dropping BMW
Germany from its search engine after realizing
the iconic car manufacturer's German website (bmw.de)
was artificially boosting its popularity
ranking.
This sends out a strong warning to all online
businesses employing aggressive optimization
techniques to maximize their exposure and
traffic in the search engines. Whilst most
company's are using ethical procedures that are
acceptable in the eyes of Google and other
search engines, it's fair warning to anyone
using black-hat techniques (those not in line
with the search engine's guidelines).
Google has openly stated they will be clamping
down on web spam this year. Many smaller, or
lesser known websites have probably suffered the
consequences of these anti-spam efforts already,
but BMW Germany is the highest profile company
to experience the true impact of Google flexing
its muscles.
JavaScript re-directs were the reason that BMW's
website was dropped from Google's search engine.
As Matt Cutts highlighted, this is in violation
of
Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines, which
clearly address the issue of deceiving users or
search engines by showing different content to
each - also known as cloaking.
Not only has the website been dropped from the
search engine, but its strong page rank has also
been zeroed, meaning it will need to start again
and build up its ranking from scratch. A costly
exercise not only in re-optimization efforts,
but in lost revenue and exposure.
In a sign that this is not an isolated case,
Ricoh.de is rumored to be the next large company
website to suffer the same fate. So it appears
that these aggressive techniques, which were
synonymous with pornographic and gambling sites,
are being employed on a much larger scale, and
will not be tolerated by Google or any other
search engines.
This situation highlights two very important
facts. When large companies are resorting to
these tactics, it reinforces the importance that
is placed on getting a top ranking in the
organic search results.
Secondly, it should be a clear warning that,
whether you are undertaking your own
optimization efforts or employing a company to
conduct your search engine marketing for you,
you need to confirm that the techniques being
used are ethical and inline with Google's (and
Yahoo!'s) guidelines. Most professional search
engine marketing companies will promote this
fact somewhere within the product or service
pitch.
You have all been warned...
Well, you could probably say that BMW
Germany deserved to be taken
off. I think it was a backdoor thing to make
their link higher in the search results. When I
type “american cars” in google, see more about
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