A Google effort to promote its Chrome browser misfired with the appearance of some blog posts that fly in the face of Google's own attempts to discourage low-quality Web content.
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The campaign, spotted yesterday by Aaron Wall at SEOBook, is apparent in several blog posts from late December bearing the label, "This post is sponsored by Google Chrome." But there appears to some backtracking now that the campaign is under scrutiny.
The theme of the posts is evident in their titles: "Google Chrome Helps Small Businesses Find Success Online," "Google Chrome Helping Small Business," "The Power of Google Chrome for Small Businesses." The posts appear to be a vehicle to promote a Google video about King Arthur Flour; the posts introduce the video with the words, "Google Chrome helped this small business in Vermont go global. What can Google Chrome do for your future?"
Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, a longtime Google watcher, pointed out that Mariah Humphries' paid post sported a hyperlink to Google's Chrome download page. Such links to a particular Web site can help it rise higher in Google search results through Google's PageRank algorithm, but paying people money to include such links violates Google guidelines. Those guidelines state, "Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results." The links are fine if they're labeled "nofollow," which means search-engine indexing robots won't pay attention to them.
But now on Humphries' blog post, the "Google Chrome" words no longer link anywhere, indicating that perhaps somebody realized the SEO (search engine optimization) bungle. In addition, the video--which Sullivan said had been hosted by Unruly Media--is now missing from that and other posts.
Google didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
In an e-mail to CNET, Unruly confirmed its involvement in the campaign, and shared this comment from Chief Executive Scott Button: "Unruly never requires bloggers to link to back to an advertiser's site. That's because we're in the business of video advertising not search engine marketing, so we couldn't care less about link juice. We don't ask for it, we don't pay for it, and we don't track it."
Unruly spokesman Michael Tive added, "As far as we are aware one one post contained a link that was not marked as 'nofollow'...this was an innocent mistake that has since been addressed and fixed."
In a similar situation in the past, Google punished itself. Google Japan hired a company called CyberBuzz that paid bloggers to post about Google features. After that came to light, Google penalized Google Japan itself in search-engine rankings.
Low-grade content
Even without the hyperlink to the Chrome download page, it's hard to see how the posts help Chrome's fortunes much. The browser is steadily increasing in popularity. But if you were thinking about changing browsers, would these Chrome-sponsored words convince you?
Even without the hyperlink to the Chrome download page, it's hard to see how the posts help Chrome's fortunes much. The browser is steadily increasing in popularity. But if you were thinking about changing browsers, would these Chrome-sponsored words convince you?
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