

Matt Cutts Responds on Google's Paid Link Campaign - chintan
https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/NAWunDzJSHC

======
mellis
Does anyone else find the strictness of these policies disturbing? It sounds
like they found one post that violated their policy and as a result you can't
find Chrome on Google for the next two months. While I appreciate the
evenhandedness in applying the rules to their own company, should these things
allow for a bit more leniency and discretion in enforcement?

~~~
patio11
Somehow I think people will be able to find Chrome.

[http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/chrome-
on...](http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/chrome-on-
google.png)

~~~
dvdhsu
It also shows up as an advertisement (above the results) when searching for
"chrome", provided you don't have an ad blocker installed.

[https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...</a>

~~~
el_presidente
It's also the second result for "browser" in the news section. This isn't
wrong, it's just one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112508/quotes?qt0403070>

~~~
Natsu
Are you referring to the article "Google demotes Chrome browser"? Because
that's what I get.

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Google...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Google-
demotes-Chrome-browser/articleshow/11360386.cms)

------
parfe
Meanwhile Google banning its own browser will generate more buzz and downloads
in the next few weeks than the video campaign no one knew about could have.

------
fl3tch
I like how there's a link to an article pointing out that Chrome no longer
ranks on the first page for searches of "browser". I confirmed the same for
"web browser" and "new browser", however in every case, an ad for Chrome was
at the top, while an ad for IE9 was at the very bottom of the page (below the
bottom of most screens, and out of view). In other words, Chrome is still the
first search result.

~~~
elsalgo
Which is fair. They are paying for the position via ppc. Companies that are
docked for blackhat techniques can still do ppc, assuming they are reputable
enough.

~~~
chewxy
While I realize that it involves different business units entirely, but a
company paying itself for its own products seem a bit weird to me, doesn't it?

~~~
thurn
It still costs Google money to run ads, in the form of opportunity cost
(they're not getting the money someone else would pay to be there).

------
daveman692
Really like the transparency and applying the same rules, but at the same time
when I search for "Google Chrome" the single ad in a yellow box above all of
the results is for <http://www.google.com/chrome>. I guess I wonder if this
page rank demotion will really make a difference since Google still controls
that ad spot.

~~~
psychotik
AdWords trumps PageRank, but understand that Google is (or rather, should be)
technically outbidding the market to show that ad.

Though in many ways for them it's like taking money from their left pocket and
putting it into their right pocket, so I suspect they will be able to outbid
others until infinity.

~~~
Flenser
_Though in many ways for them it's like taking money from their left pocket
and putting it into their right pocket_

But that means they're not taking money from anyone else for that ad spot and
putting it in their pocket.

------
sams99
Clearly Matt did the right thing here, but the cynic in me says that all press
is Good Press ... and now Chrome is going to get lots of it for free. Mission
accomplished.

~~~
numlocked
Will this really get picked up outside of tech press? While this will generate
lots of chatter, it seems most of it will be visible only to people who
already know about Chrome.

I think most of the reactions so far are overly cynical - it really seems like
Google is trying to do the right thing here.

~~~
sams99
This issue has reached Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian,
Washington Post ... and so on
[http://news.google.com.au/news/more?q=chrome&hl=en&r...](http://news.google.com.au/news/more?q=chrome&hl=en&rlz=1C1_____enAU389AU389&prmd=imvnsu&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1670&bih=861&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dB1nfWgfon7lAUMSsPAG6SapueIpM&ei=Mc8DT9SVAsHmmAX2-r2jAg&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-
results&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQqgIwAA)

------
jshen
"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."

How can a site know if they've been demoted, manually or algorithmically? How
can they find out why they've been demoted in order to clean up?

~~~
paulsilver
If you have the site registered in Google Webmaster Tools, you get a message
within the GWT system about the penalty, and an area where you can appeal it.
You also get warned about malware infections, and I think now old installs of
Wordpress.

I had a client get caught in one a while ago, the notification isn't perfect
and at the time (I don't know about now) they didn't e-mail the account holder
as well, which I thought was a bit daft as they have your e-mail as it's your
login.

For the client, when I cleaned up their site and wrote an appeal saying what
had been done, the Webspam team were very quick at processing our appeal and
restoring the site. It wasn't a buying links penalty though, it was about
stuff they had on the site from some dodgy advice they'd had a few years
before that I'd been trying to get them to remove, so it was easy to show
they'd learnt their lesson in the appeal.

------
AznHisoka
You need to ban the entire domain! If someone else did the same thing, you
wouldn't just ban that 1 page, would you?

------
juddlyon
This must be mortifying for Cutts & Co., although being the PR pros they are
they'll brush it off as an inadvertent mistake.

This isn't the first time by the way, they penalized Google Japan in a similar
situation a couple years back.

------
edcrfv
I'm curious as to whether this was misused by malicious website owners buying
links for competitors and then reporting the competitor to the Webmaster team
to get them lose their top ranking?

What steps does Google take to ensure this does not happen? A poster below
asked the same question and someone else responded saying there are no
documented cases of this happening, but let's just assume it's a hypothetical
situation for now. What will Google do when something like this happens? How
will they verify who was wronged?

------
drm237
Are there any provisions to this policy to ensure that it's not abused? It
would be trivially easy to create "sponsored" links on behalf of your
competitor in order to get them penalized.

~~~
byrneseyeview
This comes up as a hypothetical risk whenever stories like this break, but I
know of no cases where it happens. That includes situations where individual
link-buyers and link-buying sites have been publicly outed by commentators or
competitors.

The economics of this only work out well if you have high marketshare (if
you're 5% of the market, and you blow up a competitor, 95% of the benefit
accrues to the other 95% of the market). So I think this threat is overblown.

Every time it comes up, I've asked for examples--if you hear of any after the
fact, I would greatly appreciate it if you'd get in touch. Email's in the
profile.

~~~
uriah
Isn't the relevant "market" searches for whatever keyword group you are
considering?

The marketshare of clicks is mainly divided among the 10 sites on the front
page. I imagine the benefit, when shared among only 1-9 sites, could be
significant. Also consider the benefit of moving from ranking 11 to 10 or from
2 to 1, for example.

Though I can't speak for the efficacy of this technique, this fairly old
article suggests submitting competitors articles to directories to reduce
their perceived (by search engines) quality: [http://www.bluehatseo.com/open-
questions-when-to-never-do-ar...](http://www.bluehatseo.com/open-questions-
when-to-never-do-article-submissions)

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theseanstewart
I'm sorry but this is a complete joke. Matt, I know you read HN so I'd love to
have an answer to this. How does demoting www.google.com/chrome improve the
searcher's experience if they are in fact looking for information on Google
Chrome? I thought Google was all about returning the best results possible.
Also, why wouldn't you just devalue the link placed in the sponsored post?
There's no way that one link was significantly holding up the ranking of that
page.

~~~
theseanstewart
Also, what if Google had asked the bloggers to put rel="nofollow" on the links
but they forgot to add it. Would you guys still penalize the page that
received the link?

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joshmanders
While I applaud Google and the spam team for trying to hold up the rules for
EVERYONE. I think this is the stupidest thing I've read in a while.

------
lubujackson
Ugh, the tediousness of the response is only equaled by the bureaucracy of the
offense.

------
peterb
I would see this in a more positive light if searching for the word "Chrome"
did not find the Google Chrome homepage. However, they chose the word
"browser", which isn't quite the same thing.

~~~
jaylevitt
No, I think they demoted the URL, no matter what the search term; the initial
searchengineland article was written while the demotion was still propagating,
and "chrome" was still ranking. Now:

'In fact, the page no longer ranks for “chrome” or for “chrome browser,”
either.'

[http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-
pag...](http://searchengineland.com/google-chrome-page-will-have-pagerank-
reduced-due-to-sponsored-posts-106551)

~~~
peterb
Thanks for the clarification. They only demote the URL and not what it linked
to.

