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 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:
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Related Topics: Google: Acquisitions | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | Google: Webmaster Central | SEO: Spamming | Top News
Google is playing a great PR game with this by gaining so many authoritive links. In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine”…
dear me Google really does have less common sense than Annie from being human.
Larry and Sergi need to sit down with Vint and get him to give them the inside story on how MCI got screwed over when on part of the Company went rouge and pursued short term gain that fracked the company up.
the same thing happened in Global Services in BT recently.
Google Philosophy #7 – “You can make money without doing evil.” Not sure if anyone can say this is evil, I think it’s brilliant and shows Google is paying attention to even its own services and there own practice. To buy the service out is simply a business decision, not a search engine decision.
:) !! look at the publicity earned through this venture and penalty slap :D!~ amazing and brilliant. Great work Google, very impressed with your self slapping process!
This episode lends an entirely new meaning to the expression “due diligence”.
We can probably assume that future acquisitions will go through at least a rudimentary SEO audit.