What could happen if Google found guilty of buying paid links? Well, it sounds strange and funny at the same time, but that’s what happened in Chrome’s video campaign, Google the marketer was trying to buy sponsored reviews for Chrome, then Google the dictator found out about it, and decided to take action!
Why? Because it violates Google’s guidelines against paid links!
So funny!
Do you imagine what could happen if Google the dictator meets Google the marketer?
Ok!
Google Can’t Keep Track of its Own Rules
Some interesting stuff has been going… Danny Sullivan was wondering:
“if Google can’t keep track of its own rules, what hope is there that third parties are supposed to figure it all out?”
Matt Cutts said in response to Danny Sullivan‘s question:
Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that. If you investigated the two dozen or so sponsored posts (as the webspam team immediately did), the posts typically showed a Google Chrome video but didn’t actually link to Google Chrome. We double-checked, and the video players weren’t flowing PageRank to Google either.
However, we did find one sponsored post that linked to www.google.com/chrome in a way that flowed PageRank. Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos–not link to Google–and 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.
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.
Find more on this Google+ post by Matt.
Google’s Getting More Respect!
Some people said that this action added another layer of respect to Google, they think it’s really cool!
While others have a second opinion, especially SEOs, they see it differently!
And, if you ask me what I personally think about this? My answer would be, mm.. ah.. well, I don’t know! Anyways, my personal opinion is not that important, what’s more important is your opinion!
So, you tell me what you think if you discover that Google itself is buying reviews, backlinks or what ever, then they had to punish their own product “Chrome” not to look guilty, maybe to gain respect, or to absorb the anger of SEOs, internet marketers and small business owners!