Google Bans Itself Again By Banning BeatThatQuote.com

Google both acquired and then penalized BeatThatQuote within a single day. Yesterday the financial price comparison site, BeatMyQuote.com was purchased by Google for £37.7 million. And within the same 24-hour period Google decided to slap on a penalty to lower it’s ranking due to violating Google’s webmaster guidelines. As the news came out that Google […]

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Google Beatthatquote BannedGoogle both acquired and then penalized BeatThatQuote within a single day.

Yesterday the financial price comparison site, BeatMyQuote.com was purchased by Google for £37.7 million. And within the same 24-hour period Google decided to slap on a penalty to lower it’s ranking due to violating Google’s webmaster guidelines.

As the news came out that Google acquired the price comparison site, SEOs like SEOBook called out the site’s aggressive SEO tactics. Aaron Wall shows how the site was using techniques that went against Google’s guidelines, such as link buying, doorway pages and other questionable techniques.

Shortly after, BeatThatQuote.com was penalized in Google. It wasn’t an all outright ban, being that the site is still indexed but if you search for the name of the site, it does not come up at the top of the results anymore.

Here is a picture and yes, it ranked yesterday:

Screen Shot 2011 03 08 At 10.31.35 AM

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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