Over the years Google has had a love/hate relationship with almost everyone!
From affiliate websites to PPC and SEO agencies but now it seems Google has stepped on their own toes!
Websites all over the Internet have been adopting SEO tactics to manipulate Google rankings for years but with the numerous updates continuing to hit marketing agencies it seems Google has had to penalise itself many times!
Link Purchasing
We all know that Google absolutely hates black hat SEO tactics including purchasing links to build authority to your own website.
However in January 2012, Google had to punish themselves for the violation of paid links after ‘accidentally’ purchasing links in a campaign to promote Google Chrome.
As a result, Google failed to rank on the first page for over two months for the keyword ‘Google Chrome’ after the single page received a penalty and had rankings lowered.
In March 2011, Google acquired a comparison service called ‘Beat that Quote’ which was quickly penalised, just one day after Google bought it, for purchasing links and de-ranked the site for it’s own name!
In February 2009, Google Japan was violated for paid links and dropped from a fantastic PR9 right down to a PR5!
The penalty was in place for almost an entire year before the page rank increased to a PR8.
Cloaking tactics
The first ever penalty Google gave itself was for a spot of ‘cloaking.’
In March 2005, Google removed some of its own pages from Google after hidden content was found on the internal pages with the intention of helping Google’s own search tool. The pages were de-indexed as a result of violating its own guidelines.
In July 2010, Google tried a bit of ‘cloaking’ for the second time for the help pages relating to AdWords. These pages fed spiders information that could not be seen by the human eye and the AdWords help pages were quickly penalised and failed to rank on Google for a lengthy period of time for search terms such as ‘AdWords help’ and ‘help with AdWords.’
There are a large number of big brand websites out there that have been penalised over and over again building a strong love/hate relationship with the world’s largest search engine.
Brands that have violated Google guidelines, received unnatural link warning messages in Webmaster Tools and in some cases received lengthy penalties resulting in a reduction in search engine traffic have included:
• BBC
• BMW
• Expedia
• Interflora
• Washington Post
• WordPress
If you have received a penalty from Google for bad SEO tactics from a previous marketing agency, contact us today for a free link analysis and to discuss the next steps to a potential link detox.
