Chrome Drops in Google’s Own Search Results

Google’s Webspam team, lead by Matt Cutts, have deemed that Google Chrome’s download page has violated their quality guideline, falling under spam territory. This has led to the demotion of Google’s own download page for their browser, which is now buried down in the seventh page of results.

The drop in natural search results under the term “browser” has meant that rivals Opera, Safari and Firefox get a huge advantage over Google in the race for web browser dominance. However, Chrome does still make an appearance on page one through Google’s ads and news features.

The search fall from grace is due to the search giant compromising their own code of conduct, put in place to keep the quality of search results high. They managed to do this by running a sponsored campaign to get people to watch a Chrome video but were indivertibly were deemed to have been running a link building campaign; a black hat technique which they themselves frown upon.  Link schemes are listed in Google’s guidelines as being:

• Links to bad neighbourhoods on the internet or to spammers
• Links that aim to manipulate Page Rank
• Extreme number of reciprocal links or link exchanges between sites
• Passing PageRank by buying or selling links

Ironically, the video promotion campaign didn’t include any links to the download page and only one of dozens of sponsored misleading posts, where it is claimed that Chrome is the internet so the content quality is marked as poor as they lack accuracy, actually contained a link to the download page. However, the link was seen to be passing PageRank, which ignores the link quality, manipulating the Google algorithm. This was enough to break their own quality guidelines.

This has meant that in penalty of this breach of conduct, the Google Chrome download page (www.google.com/chrome) has been demoted for at least 60 days. In order to be re-listed a reconsideration request must be submitted once their mistake has been ‘cleared up’. It has also had a negative effect on the page’s page rank, so outgoing links from the page lose some of their trust and affect the page’s ability to rank highly on particular search terms.

The debacle seems to have been caused by Unruly Media, hired through Essence Digital, who are a media company hired to use video to promote the browser through video ads content marketing. This led to the team to create the offending sponsored posts, so the blame isn’t entirely with Google. However, it is nice to see that they are taking the webspam team’s penalty on the chin and complying with their own quality guidelines, despite the potential impact on the browser race. Their honesty is quite refreshing.

One of the main things to take away from this is that while content marketing is still one of the best ways to improve your ranking if you stray into dodgy marketing territory chances are you will be penalised. But you are unlikely to be able to turn what could be an oversight into a gleaming PR opportunity. Make sure you take a look at this article on ‘how to win the content marketing race in 2012’ to make sure you don’t overstep the mark.

While even Google seem to try every thing to get top search engine results for themselves maybe they could have done with some SEO Training so they could have avoided this debacle. Based in Brighton, Silicon Beach Training offers comprehensive SEO Training Courses so you can learn how to get your site to rank well and NOT have a run in with Google’s webspam team.

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