It’s kinda like a high school football coach benching the quarterback for rule-breaking, even though the kid is his son. Yeah, he’s the coach’s son and he’s the starter, but he got caught drinking at a party—rules are rules.
Google has dinged its own Chrome browser in the search rankings for breaking rules regarding paid sponsorships. Weird, but true. If you search “browser,” Chrome doesn’t come up in the organic rankings (it does in a paid advertisement, but that’s different).
According to the Guardian newspaper, Google hired Essence Digital to promote Chrome through YouTube ads. Essence subcontracted to Unruly Media, who hired bloggers to help promote the videos. The bloggers posted the videos, many including the disclaimer: “This post is sponsored by Google.”
That’s all fine, according to the rules regarding sponsored ads set forth by Google (Coach). But it turns out one blogger (Coach’s Son) violated Google’s rules. Coach’s Son included a direct link to Google in the post, which is a no-no.
Here’s what Google’s own Matt Cutts had to say about it:
In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.gooogle.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.
Isn’t that funny? I love the parts about “someone on the Chrome side” has to jump through hoops to square things with themselves and how Google “won’t trust outgoing links” from their own webpage.
You just don’t see this kind of thing every day. And for those of us dealing with SEO all the time, it’s a breath of fresh air. I mean, you have to take into account what would happen if someone outside the company had made a big media stink about it before Google could rectify things, but still.
It was a tough call but the right one. Nice work, Coach.
