This comes on the heels of yesterday’s news that Microsoft is the number one submitter of copyright-related URL removal requests to Google. It sent more than 500,000 such requests in the past month, asking Google to remove URLs that host pirated copies of Microsoft products and other copyright-infringing material.

TechDirt pointed out that some of the URLs that Microsoft asked Google to remove were still appearing in Bing’s search results.

A Microsoft spokesperson explained that to us today, saying that it’s because the infringing URLs hadn’t been indexed in Bing when the takedown notices were sent:

Microsoft sends takedown notices to search engines, including Bing, only after it verifies that content has been indexed. At the time of the takedown notice in question, the link to the particular piece of infringing content was not included in Bing’s search results.

The TorrentRoom.com URL that TechDirt showed as listed in Bing yesterday is no longer showing in Bing’s index.

In this case, then, it appears that Google’s speed in indexing URLs — which it often does more quickly than Bing — is the main reason why Google had received the takedown request in question before Bing did.

But I have to add … Bing isn’t going to make many friends with related searches like the one above that helps searchers find a site to download Spartacus.

iAcquire was cited as the agency behind Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation’s link buy request emails. For more on that see our story named What Can We Learn From The Latest Brand To Be Called Out For Paid Links?

A site command search for [site:www.iacquire.com] returns no results. Here is a screen shot:

iAcquire’s robots.txt file and source code has no signs of them manually requesting to be deindexed from Google. So this seems to either be a weird bug or an intentional penalty delivered to the agency by Google.

It also appears that the parties discovered in this investigation are all delisted from Google.

We reached out to Google for a comment but at the time of publishing this story, we have not heard back. If and when Google does reply, we will update the story.

Mike King, the Director of Inbound Marketing at iAcquire, responded to a tweet I sent him asking if Google delisted iAcquire. He said, iAcquire “sure was” delisted by Google. He then went on to explain that there was “no network” for Google to ban so they had a “hissy fit” and decided to ban the agency.

Here is his tweet:

@rustybrick sure was. There’s no network for them to kill so that’s them throwing their hissy fit.

— MyCool King (@iPullRank) May 25, 2012

I am not aware of another agency that was banned by Google for this practice. There were link networks and link brokers that have been banned but I don’t believe there was ever an agency that was banned for this practice.

We will update the story when we learn more.

Postscript From Danny Sullivan (May 25, 4:15pm ET)

As noted in the comments below, this is probably not the first time an agency has been banned because Google believes that it has bought or sold links — if that’s why iAcquire was indeed banned. We still don’t have an official word from Google on this, but it seems the most likely explanation.

However, it’s also likely the iAcquire was banned not for buying links but because Google believes it actually does control a paid link network or operates at least in significant part as a paid link company, despite iAcquire’s denials.

From my story yesterday, iAcquire said:

To be clear, we are not a link network. Every link we build is based on the very same principles touted throughout the industry. Our links are contextual and relevant through outreach performed by 40 actual in-house people that sit in our Arizona office and everything is pushed through strenuous quality assurance….

We are not a paid link company.

This leads to an important graphic from Josh Davis that connects iAcquire with companies that apparently are buying links (click to enlarge it):

The graphic, from Davis’s article here, explains why Davis believes the link request he originally received from a company called InternetReach.org is either owned by, controlled by or works in close association with iAcquire.

The companies in the graphic are mostly the same as the companies that DBBC listed in a letter it sent out yesterday to Google and DBBC’s SEO agencies, in hopes of getting the paid links removed.

InternetReach.org (where the original link request is said to have come from), MediaFinders.net and iOutReach.org all have the same San Francisco address listed on their contact pages, as does LinkBuilding.net (it’s LinkBuilder.net in the chart above, but that’s clearly a typo — Davis uses LinkBuilding.net in his story). MediaFinders.net and iOutReach both use virtually the same site template.

LinkBuilding.net has a Better Business Bureau logo on its site leading to a BBB listing for iAcquire, for its office in Arizona. That’s the connection between all four of the companies above to iAcquire. Certainly anyone might have added a BBB listing to iAcquire as some type of set-up, but this seems more farfetched than the idea that iAcquire has some assocition with LinkBuilding.net.

The story from Davis outlines other connections, such as things he was told when he called the number in the link request, that further seem to tie these companies back to iAcquire. By the way, InternetReach.org, LinkBuilding.net and DigitalPros.org all appear to have also been banned by Google.

In addition, there’s evidence that iAcquire acquired the paid link operations of Conductor, when it sold that operation last year, including three iAcquire employees having gone directly from Conductor to iAcquire, according to their LinkedIn profiles (see here, here and here).

I asked Joe Griffin, cofounder and partner with iAcquire, if the companies involved were part of iAcquire, subsidiaries or contractors and if iAcquire had purchased Conductor’s paid link service. I was told, similar to yesterday, that because of confidentiality reasons, iAcquire couldn’t comment on any of this.

As for an official comment on apparently being banned, Griffin emailed me:

iAcquire doesn’t take the position that Google is throwing a hissy fit. Mike mentioned that on Twitter to Barry, and perhaps he is right, but that’s not our position on the matter. Google has a job to do. This was a harsh lesson, but our position is to grow from this, make the required changes, get back in Google, and continue to offer world class WHITE hat services to our customers (financial compensation will not be considered in the outreach process).

We’ve also received an email from someone who said they were an iAcquire client and asked the company about the current situation. This is the email they say iAcquire sent back:

Thank you for the email.  Rest assured that we have always followed best practice and as we don’t have a network and our publishers and clients won’t be impacted.

Going forward we will be ending the ability to compensate for new links. That said, our non-compensated link services are VERY good. This is a good opportunity for us all to evolve our practices and a powerful lesson for our agency, your agency, our clients, your clients.

Our outreach technology continues to be the best in our industry and we have been working on all white-hat options aggressively for the past year. While I understand your concern we have been evolving and have been performing incredible work.

Let’s use this opportunity to serve the greater goals we all have. We know how to deliver amazing white hat off-page SEO solutions – this pushes us all to focus on the right things.  Feel free to contact me anytime if you have any questions.

I’m set to talk with Griffin further on Tuesday, after the long holiday weekend here in the US, and I expect he’ll have more to share on the situation then.

In making the changes to this prime real estate on a search results page, Google is lessening somewhat the visibility of Google+. But it’s still using the space in the upper right of its search results to keep searchers on Google — something well within its rights, but something that may attract criticism in the same way that the Google+ box did.

Let’s look at what’s going on now….

Background: People and Pages On Google+

When Google launched “Search Plus Your World” in January, it made content from Google+ much more visible in the search results.

Part of the Google+ push was a content box called “People and Pages on Google+” that would appear adjacent to the top organic results. It didn’t matter if you were logged in to a Google account, or used Google+ — there was the “People and Pages on Google+” content box in the top right of the search results page. It showed primarily for generic search terms like “music,” “cars” or “Facebook.”

Search results like that — especially the one for “Facebook,” which has been the most popular search term in the U.S. for the past three years — brought on a lot of criticism because Google was promoting Google+ ahead of what were often more relevant social profiles. In the third example, Google was leading searchers to Mark Zuckerberg’s inactive Google+ page rather than to his Facebook profile. Danny Sullivan covered that and several other relevance issues in his article, Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy.

Now: People and Pages on Google+ Is Gone

Now that the dust is settling on last week’s Google Knowledge Graph launch, we’re no longer able to see the “People and Pages on Google+” content box on any searches. It’s gone, replaced instead by different Knowledge Graph-related content boxes.

That search (from above) for “music” now shows a Knowledge Graph box for “People related to music.”

A search for “cars,” which used to include links to the Google+ pages of brands like Toyota, Nissan, Ferrari and others, now shows a Knowledge Graph box that invites searchers to “See results about” the Pixar movie Cars.

Other searches that previously showed the “People and Pages on Google+” content box, like “Facebook” and “seo,” don’t show anything from the Knowledge Graph. Search Engine Land’s editors did a number of searches yesterday and none displayed the old Google+ “People and Pages” content box.

Google: We’re Blending Content

A Google spokesperson explained that Google is blending different content sources, including Knowledge Graph connections and Google+ profiles, to return the most relevant content on the search results page.

And it’s true that searchers are seeing content from different sources; a search for Google CEO Larry Page, for example, shows this in action. The photo is from (and links to) his Google+ profile, and further down the Knowledge Graph box is a clipped version of his most recent post there.

There’s also text from (and a link to) his Wikipedia page, along with several links related to the Knowledge Graph data. And, even though those links don’t promote Google+ like the old “People and Pages on Google+” did, they do keep people on Google and may lead to some of the same criticisms that Google faced before.

Possible Knowledge Graph Criticisms

To be clear: It’s Google’s search engine and I’m a big believer that they can link to their own properties if they want. But, as with the Search Plus Your World examples from January, if they do so in a way that’s not relevant and/or not user-friendly, they leave themselves open to vocal critics. (And if they do it in a way that appears anti-competitive, those critics may include the U.S. government.)

A search for “seattle mariners” offers an example of what I’m talking about:

In this case, like many others, the Knowledge Box is showing a mix of content — text from Wikipedia, latest post from Google+, and other information. The possible issues are:

• the Mariners’ logo and the light text below it send searchers to the Mariners Google+ page, not to the Mariners’ official site, which would seem to be the most authoritative, relevant and user-friendly link for that spot in the Knowledge Graph box (and the fact that the team logo says “Mariners.com” is likely to mean users will think a click there leads to the official site)
• the links on “Eric Wedge,” “Safeco Field” and the others are links to conduct more Google searches; will users expect to get links to search results there? or will they expect to be linked to the official Safeco Field page? or, since Wedge doesn’t have an official site, will they expect to be linked to his Wikipedia page or his bio on the Mariners website?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. But I do know that, when a Knowledge Graph box about the Seattle Mariners doesn’t contain a single link to Mariners.com, and has several internal Google links instead, critics have an opportunity to continue accusing Google of promoting itself at the expense of relevancy.

The Knowledge Graph box has its pros and cons. The data is, in many cases (but not all) excellent — it’s very cool to be able to scroll through the Mariners’ roster right from inside the Knowledge Graph box, for example. But the fact that all of the links keep searchers on Google, either sending them to Google+ or creating another search, probably won’t quiet the criticism about Google promoting itself too heavily in search results.

Bottom line: The “People and Pages on Google+” content box brought Google a fair amount of flak, but what’s replacing it isn’t necessarily going to change that.

When I met with Yahoo earlier this week to hear about it I received the now familiar speech that Yahoo is still very much in search and continuing to “innovate” around the UI and UX. There have been some interesting efforts along those lines on the PC in the past (Yahoo Search Direct), but Axis actually is genuinely different and noteworthy.

Three screen experience

Axis is available for all three screens: PC (as a browser plug-in), the iPad and the iPhone (as apps). Android is coming.

Axis is a fully functional browser that syncs content across all screens if users are signed in. Like other browsers Axis features tabs and book marks and can render any web page.

On the PC it functions more as a “companion” search bar at the bottom of the page on each of the major browsers: IE, Chrome and Firefox. Below is an example of how it looks on Chrome in the context of a search for “Hawaiian vacations.” I’ve got the standard Google results and then Axis results horizontally across the bottom of the screen:

It doesn’t automatically insert or mirror the query you’ve done on Google or Bing or launch the module you see above. You have to manually enter the query at the bottom of the page. Then it offers a visual preview (live pages) of the top ranked sites. The ranking of these sites is somewhat different than conventional Yahoo search results. Clicks and time on the underlying sites are factored into the ranking of these Axis results.

Users can then horizontally scroll through results rather than clicking back and forth on links. These images run for the equivalent of the first two pages of search results and then you get text and descriptions. However Yahoo suggested that most people aren’t going to go beyond a page or two of results anyway. My sense is that people will horizontally scroll for “longer” than vertically.

While this PC experience is useful and provides a kind of secondary or back-up search capability, Axis is ultimately about delivering a better, mobile-optimized search experience that completely eliminates the “10 blue links.”

Getting rid of blue links

Yahoo special products director Ethan Batraski said that Yahoo was trying to get rid of the interim “second page” of search results (the list of links) and go right from the query to the web results in “one step.”

There have been other PC search engines and mobile apps to present visual results rather than links, most recently in mobile by Do@ (now Everything.me). All of those essentially failed. But Yahoo has the advantage of scale and greater visibility than any of the visual search startups that came before.

Whenever you’re on a specific website, you can pull down the page and see the horizontal bar of search results. It’s always there in the background. Touching another image loads that page but the search results remain in the background and accessible until you do a new query. You’re not hitting the back button to return to search results.

This functionality works relatively well on the iPhone (especially image search) but it really is best shown on tablets (iPad only for the moment). The larger screen enables the visual nature of Axis to shine.

There’s also a personalized home page with bookmarks and saved articles that carries across screens when signed in. Users can sign in with Yahoo, Google or Facebook log-in credentials to access the capability.

About the “Axis” name

I asked Yahoo about the name “Axis,” which I said reminded me of World War II. They responded that they went through many names and there are “negative connotations” to others as well, including Chrome and Safari (though not many readily come to mind). Another interesting element here is the black aesthetic.

Yahoo has done market testing and sees an opening with young, affluent early adopter males. (Perhaps the “Spike TV” crowd.) Jokes aside, the company is seeking to cultivate new audiences with Axis and the edgier image is part of that effort. It struck me a bit like a sports team adopting tougher-looking uniforms and colors.

Yahoo went to some length with me and in the press materials to underscore that there’s innovative technology on the back end behind Axis:

Axis is built upon the Yahoo! Cocktails mobile development platform, which is designed for creating deeply personalized products that are built for connected devices first. Comprised of Mojito, an open source JavaScript MVC framework and Manhattan, a cloud-based hosted environment, Cocktails is a blend of open, standard web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and Node.JS.

Differentiated but will it “move the needle”?

Doing my best Walt Mossberg, I can say that after using it for several days on both the iPhone and iPad, and to a lesser degree, on the PC I think Yahoo has created a useful and differentiated mobile search experience. The syncing and multi-screen capability are also useful, although not unique.

Search Direct is the mother/father of this experience. And if it “takes” we may see traditional Yahoo search on the PC incorporate some or many of these UI/UX features and elements. That very much remains to be seen and is contingent on the success of Axis.

There will inevitably be questions like, “Will it move the needle for Yahoo?”

I don’t know. It depends on how aggressively Yahoo promotes Axis, how many people try it out and how many continue to use it. However I don’t think we’ll see any dramatic change in user behavior in the near term. But it does put some additional UI pressure on Google in mobile search, which just released a new version of its iPhone app today.

There are no ads for now. But one can easily imagine display ads showing up among the visual search results in the not too distant future. Yahoo wants to build an audience before it starts inserting ads, however.

Because Axis is quite distinct from the traditional PC and mobile search experience some will like it but some may find it too foreign. However I would encourage you to try it. It’s definitely worth a test drive.

See also related coverage from around the web on this topic from Techmeme.

Josh Davis drew attention to the DBCC situation in his post today, documenting how after receiving three link requests from the same person, he finally followed up, only to be pitched on placing a link from one of his articles to the DBCC site in return for $30 per month.

What’s Dun & Bradstreet — the nearly 200-year-old Fortune 500 company that brokers information about people and companies for business decisions — doing buying links? It’s not. DBCC was spun-off from D&B in 2010 and is a privately-held company, providing credit solutions to small businesses, with a license to use the D&B brand.

That DBCC isn’t a Fortune 500 company takes some of the “wow” factor out of the story. In addition, we’ve already had stories about big companies ranging from JC Penney to Overstock to even Google itself getting caught for paid links. That makes what DBCC was doing seem even less newsworthy to some. After all, doesn’t everyone do this now? What’s really new or unique here?

I supposed there is nothing particularly new, but clearly there’s a bunch of reminders that are useful to have out there.

Client Beware

Judy Hacket, the chief marketing officer of DBCC, sounded pretty horrified when I talked with her today about the situation. Her department was scrambling to discover how exactly it ended up with these links being purchased.

Davis connects the link request in his story back to iAcquire. Hacket wouldn’t say if DBCC is working with that firm, citing possible confidentiality clauses in contacts. She did say, however, “we have absolutely no agreement with iAcquire or anyone else allowing them to use any grey hat or black hat practices.”

Hacket was also adamant that DBCC had no desire to violate any of Google’s guidelines.

“We would never endorse something like this,” she said.

Of course, we’ve heard this type of denial / shock before. Recall what JC Penney said last year, after the New York Times profiled it for using paid links:

J.C. Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links that you sent to us, as it is against our natural search policies.

Curious to learn more, I asked JC Penney what those policies were after the New York Times story came out. A JCP spokesperson emailed me back:

We are not going to provide our policies, but obviously, they would include staying within Google’s guidelines.

Well, obviously! Except they didn’t, otherwise JC Penney wouldn’t have been banned. When JCP said it didn’t authorize or was involved with paid links, it meant that its SEO firm did all that. As I was told further in my email exchange:

SearchDex ran our SEO program. We do not pay for links as they go against Google’s guidelines. SearchDex was terminated because as our SEO provider they should have known. This was a clear failure on their part.

It was also a clear failure on JCP’s part, for not understanding what its SEO company was doing. The same is true for DBCC. Indeed, I’ve been joking that for some time, whenever some large brand gets dinged for paid links, it’s handy to have an SEO firm they can pin the blame on.

The reality is that for the large companies or brand names, this type of behavior seems to get a 90 day slap, then they’re back in Google’s good graces. It’s difficult for Google to permanently remove an important company that people expect to find. That means as a client, or as an important brand, keep these lessons in mind:

• Do you fully understand how your SEO company will obtain links for you?
• If you don’t want paid links, have you made that crystal-clear?
• If you approve of buying paid links, are you prepared for a potential short-term PR black eye?
• If you approve of buying paid links, is that worth a potential short-term Google penalty?

If you’re not a major brand or an essential resource that Google has to list, there’s really only one question you need to ask. Are you prepared to lose all your traffic from Google? That’s because for the non-essential people, being caught for paid links can be a death sentence, not a temporarily set-back.

SEO Company Beware

As for the SEO company buying links, you’d better be prepared for your client to toss you to the wolves, if a paid link campaign comes to light. Also do be prepared for that campaign to come to light, unless you’re incredibly careful with whom you are soliciting.

In this case, the SEO company pitched someone whose “About” page explains that he writes about marketing. That should have been a warning that this person is probably somewhat savvy about paid links, so some disguised pitch for one wasn’t wise.

I get these types of pitches myself. So does Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team. If I’d gotten this type of email sent to me on behalf of a major brand, I might very well have written about it myself and concerns about “outing” be damned. I’d view it as a protective service to the general human population. It’s like watching someone drive backwards on the freeway. They’re a danger to everyone.

As for iAcquire itself, it won’t comment on the case, citing client confidentiality. It won’t acknowledge that it was involved in any way, nor confirm if it has worked with DBCC. But the company did give me this statement:

We work with many of the largest brands in the world. It’s very common that we run into large brands everyday buying links from blog networks and large paid link marketplaces, and our mission as a business is to direct brand strategy towards whiter hat link building approaches.

That movement often takes time and effort – and, in the real world in working with big brands with pre-established objectives it frequently is a multi-step process, and requires a lot of education at both the SEO manager, online marketing marketing manager and CMO-levels. We are literally driving the education process every day.

To be clear, we are not a link network. Every link we build is based on the very same principles touted throughout the industry. Our links are contextual and relevant through outreach performed by 40 actual in-house people that sit in our Arizona office and everything is pushed through strenuous quality assurance.

Our business is to push brands to white hat strategy, but we frequently acquire new customers that are still on that path, and we support these companies toward that white hat direction. We have been investing significantly into our content marketing, social media, and digital PR channels to more rapidly make those changes internally and for these brands.

Regarding the article written about our company, we can’t talk about specific strategy for specific customers or potential customers – due to confidentiality agreements. Financial compensation for links does not represent the strategic direction of our company. iAcquire’s services are holistic and include a great deal of content marketing, digital PR and social media promotion, and on-page SEO consulting.

We’ve never had a problem with Google’s algorithm and our clients – and, we understand that it is important for us to continue to drive the market towards techniques that best represent the guidelines established by search engines. iAcquire continues to evolve its service lines, and recently brought in Mike King to help drive that direction to ensure we are considering search engine guidelines and industry best practices. In addition, he continues to promote these best practices at various conferences worldwide.

Wait, is iAcquire suggesting that DBCC — assuming it eventually emerges as a client — was one of those companies needing to be nudged into the white hat world? Cofounder Joe Griffin effectively said no, when he emailed this follow-up statement:

We aren’t talking about D&BCC (when we mention that we transition people from grey to white in the second sentence) – we can’t talk about specifics of clients or potential clients – we are prevented from doing so.

The enterprise world has a lot of nuances, and we believe we have more than anyone helped to correct SEO brand strategy as it relates to off-page SEO and specifically as it relates to killing black hat link networks.

At the end of the day we run into a lot of different goals, and different approaches, and we try to bring all clients to a fully white hat solution. Our team is heavily focused on high quality editorial content and creative development to attract links. We do a TON of link reclamation as well.

We brought Mike on board specifically to continue to build upon this direction. Mike is one of the best in the business in educating SEOs about how to properly implement off-page SEO strategy – he’s helping us here as well.

We are not a paid link company. We deliver holistic off-page SEO to small and large companies – and are the leading charge in proper off-page SEO education.

By Mike, Griffin is referring to Michael King, who I’d say has built a good reputation for himself in some SEO circles over the past year in his writings and speaking. He’s spoken at our own SMX events and is slated to again next month. He’s sharp, has lots of insight, and he seemed a win for iAcquire when they hired him about two months ago.

Suffice to say, I was pretty surprised that he appeared mixed up with all this. He’s seemed very white hat. I think it’s great if he’s going to help iAcquire and/or its clients move to white hat activities, but I’d say the sooner the better, if iAcquire really doesn’t want to be known as a paid link company.

Right now, however, if that link request is effectively coming out of iAcquire’s work, it might not be a paid link company, but it sure seems as if it has been buying links. That’s tough to square talk of following search engine guidelines.

Google, Oh Google

Meanwhile, there’s Google. This time last year, it was counting the news about JC Penney as a win in the war against paid links. A year later, has anything changed? Was it really that much a deterrent?

I honestly don’t know. I’ve heard some say that many SEOs buy links. That’s it’s just what you have to do. I don’t have any good survey data to back those types of statements up or knock them down.

Fair to say, however, today’s news didn’t surprise many. Even if it it had been D&B itself, I’m not sure if the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal would have cared to run stories, as they did last year with JC Penney and Overstock.

I do know that Google has got to come up with something better than counting links. I keep expecting that social will be a larger signal, and my previous story below explains more about why this makes sense:

• When Everyone Gets The Vote: Social Shares As The New Link Building

In the meantime, we’re stuck with the increasingly creaking, rotting link signal. But for anyone who thinks that’s an excuse for anything goes, look again to what I said the Client Beware section above. Are you really big enough to take a chance on being dropped from Google?

There are plenty of people who bought links who did get caught in the Penguin Update. Some of them are learning to their horror that the only chance of coming back will be to start completely over.

Finally, I did ask Google if it had any comment on the DBBC situation. Nothing specific, just this general warning:

Our guidance on paid links remains the same as ever: paying for links that pass PageRank violates our guidelines, and Google takes appropriate action in response.

If you don’t know what PageRank is, well, read our guide: What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters.

Publisher Beware; Link Broker For Shame

For those being approached about selling links, this is a reminder that Google really doesn’t like you to do that and has penalized sites for doing so since 2007. If you’re approached out of the blue with a link request, unless you block that link by using something like the nofollow attribute, you’re placing your site at jeopardy.

Don’t expect the link request to alert you to any of these things. The request that went out on behalf of DBCC was a classic example of non-disclosure. It lacks warnings about possible Google penalties. It even required that there be no visible disclosure, which might very well violate US Federal Trade Commission guidelines. From the request:

Link must not be marked as Paid in the visible content or source code (Common designations include: Partner, Links, Paid Links, Ads or Sponsored Links)

The link can’t have any disclosures, we want it to appear natural.

The whole thing reminds me of the type of spammy requests I get all the time. While people in the SEO space may want to debate whether it’s fair or required or commonplace to buy links or not, I don’t see much room for debate that you shouldn’t try to foist a paid link on someone without full disclosure.

As I wrote before, in my Conversation With An Idiot Link Broker article from 2008

There are plenty of people who disagree over the paid link issue, plus whether Google actually penalizes sites that hard for it. That disagreement is no excuse for unethical behavior. And there is unethical behavior in search marketing, and this is a perfect example of it. No risk was disclosed. When asked repeatedly about risk issues, they were denied….

You want to buy links or be a link broker? Then be upfront that this is an activity that Google does not like and that the faint hearted shouldn’t apply. Only after you’ve scared the heck out of them should you start talking about the ways that you’ll try to reduce the risk, if they choose to carry on.

Personally, I’m somewhat amazed, or really, disheartened, over some of the comments Davis is taking over his post. As I said, some dismiss the paid links as old news. Some are angry, viewing his post as some unnecessary “outing” of paid links.

No one seems bothered that some SEO firm was potentially getting a third-party web site into trouble with Google. That’s the most disturbing aspect of all of this. That’s not new, either, but it ought to be stamped out.

Postscript: DBCC has now sent a letter out to its SEO agencies saying in part:

Without our knowledge or approval, certain parties have reached out to other parties to link to our website (the “Unauthorized Links”) for no valid reason….

Please be informed that we are not affiliated with nor do we have any relationship with these companies.

We ask that you remove any Unauthorized Links immediately unless you believe the content is relevant and provides value to your users. Under no circumstances will we authorized payment or pay for any Unauthorized Links.

You can see the full letter below:

DBBC says a copy was also sent to Google, and it’s part of what DBBC is doing to try and rectify the situation. The list of companies it named in the letter are:

• InternetReach.org
• DigitalPros.org
• MediaFinders.net
• iOutReach.org
• LinkBuilder.net
• SolarPros.com
• Conductor

DBCC said it also sent a copy of the letter to the published contact addresses of those listed. The list matches those that Josh Davis listed in his original post on the paid link situation, companies he connects with iAcquire.

iAcquire was not listed in the DBBC letter. However, iAcquire has now been banned from Google since this story came out, probably because Google believes it either works in association with some of the companies named above or that it controls them.

iAcquire Banned From Google After Link Buying Allegations is our story has more about that, plus has a postscript where I explain the connections more.

Related Stories

• Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google
• Time For Google To Give Up The Fight Against Paid Links?
• Conversation With An Idiot Link Broker
• New York Times Exposes J.C. Penney Link Scheme That Causes Plummeting Rankings in Google
• 90 Days Later, J.C. Penney Regains Its Google Rankings
• Google’s Action Against Paid Links Continues: Overstock & Forbes Latest Casualties; Conductor Exits Brokering Business
• Google’s Chrome Page No Longer Ranks For “Browser” After Sponsored Post Penalty
• Google Chrome’s Paid Link Penalty Now Lifted
• Home Depot To Correct Misleading Link Request
• Google Launches “Penguin Update” Targeting Webspam In Search Results
• Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO

“For a given keyword, the report tells you in aggregate how you’re doing as compared to other participants,” Bhanu Narasimhan, group product manager for AdWords, told us.

While the report lists the landing page domains for all of the other competitors in a particular auction, Google stresses that the information provided about competitors is no more than a marketer would get by performing the search on Google.com.

The reports won’t give the competitors’ keywords, quality or settings. For example, you can see that a competitor’s ad will be triggered by your keyword, but the other advertiser may not be actively bidding on that specific keyword — perhaps they are using broad match, for example.

The new report provides new data at the keyword level on five different statistics:

• Impression share: the percentage of total impressions the ads will get based on current settings.
• Average position: the average rank of your ad, compared to other domains appearing for the auction.
• Overlap rate: how often your ads overlap with those of another domain.
• Position above rate: how often your ads are above a certain other domain.
• Top of page percent: how often your ads appear in the ad block on the top of the page.

The report, rolling out globally in the next few days, is only available for highly-trafficked keywords, as there’s not enough data available for less-popular ones. Marketers can only see one keyword at a time, currently.

To find the report, go to the Keywords tab, click the box next to the keyword — available keywords will show an icon that indicates the report is available for that keyword. Click the “Keyword Details” tab and choose “Selected (single keyword)” under “Auction insights.”

Google has nearly 25,000 employees (according to a search I did on Google just now), and they’re involved with all types of projects. Many have nothing to do with search.

In the email I saw, a Googler (yes, it really was someone who worked for Google) was asked about the Penguin update, if they knew anything. Response?

I assure you 100% that there has been nothing at Google referred to as “Penguin.”

If you notice on those search results you sent me, not a single source is from Google itself.

The person asking had forwarded the Googler search results for “Penguin Update.” I’m not surprised there was no source from Google itself in those results. That’s because Google didn’t formally give Penguin its name until I pried it out of them two days after the launch, two days after the official blog post went up.

The Googler went on:

From what I just saw on this whole Penguin thing–it sounds to me like a lot of SEO companies that use shady and unethical practices are upset that their loop holes have been cut out!

Actually, it’s not really been a lot of SEO companies that I’ve seen complaining. It’s been a lot of individuals who have been hit, and quite likely for black hat SEO tactics that Penguin was intended to punish.

Bottom line: should you encounter one of those 25,000 Googlers, don’t assume that they have inside knowledge about ranking issues. Chances are, they don’t.

The intent, says a Google spokesperson, is to give users more information: “As part of our ongoing efforts to show ads that are relevant and informative, we are including more information about why users are seeing certain search ads.”

If I know Google, this effort at transparency is also meant to spur click-through rates — and has likely done so in extensive testing. Perhaps users are more likely to click when they understand better why they’re getting the ads they’re getting.

Google already provides information on why certain ads appear if users click on “Why These Ads?” at the top right of the yellow ad block, but this text provides the information at a glance.

Almunia acknowledges Google’s prior statements about a willingness to settle and suggests that if a settlement can be reached Europe and Google will be able to put the matter behind them:

I believe that these fast-moving markets would particularly benefit from a quick resolution of the competition issues identified. Restoring competition swiftly to the benefit of users at an early stage is always preferable to lengthy proceedings, although these sometimes become indispensable to competition enforcement

Almunia clearly doesn’t want years of litigation and he’s banking that Google doesn’t either. I’m not an antitrust expert and even less familiar with European antitrust law.  However it’s not clear that Europe has a conclusive case against the company. It is clear, however, that the European legal system is somewhat more sympathetic than US law to the various antitrust arguments against Google (e.g., search neutrality).

The four areas of “concern”

Here are the four areas of concern from Almunia that involve a potential “abuse” of market power by Google:

1. Almunia does buy into the “search bias” or “search neutrality” idea. He says, “In general search results, Google displays links to its own vertical search services differently than it does for links to competitors. We are concerned that this may result in preferential treatment compared to those of competing services, which may be hurt as a consequence.”
2. The second area concerns Google indexing reviews that “it uses in its own offerings” (e.g., Places). Almunia characterizes this as plagiarism of a sort: “Google may be copying original material from the websites of its competitors such as user reviews and using that material on its own sites without their prior authorisation. In this way they are appropriating the benefits of the investments of competitors.”
3. If I understood it correctly, the third area of “abuse” involves AdSense: “The agreements [with publishers displaying Google ads] result in de facto exclusivity requiring them to obtain all or most of their requirements of search advertisements from Google, thus shutting out competing providers of search advertising intermediation services.”
4. The fourth area is one that Microsoft has been arguing for some time. This involves the “portability” of ad campaigns from AdWords to adCenter: “We are concerned that Google imposes contractual restrictions on software developers which prevent them from offering tools that allow the seamless transfer of search advertising campaigns across AdWords and other platforms for search advertising.”

Anti-Google lobbying group FairSearch.org welcomed these findings. It issued an upbeat statement attributed to its European attorney Thomas Vinje:

Today’s statement by European Commission Vice President Joaquín Almunia, identifying four concerns where Google business practices may be considered as abuses of dominance in violation of competition and consumer protection laws, is a welcome development. We are pleased that Commissioner Almunia’s investigation has validated the concern that FairSearch members and many other businesses and consumer advocates have raised about Google’s practices that distort the free market and deprive consumers of the transparency and real choice that only results from competitive markets.

As for Google, it gave us this statement:

We’ve only just started to look through the Commission’s arguments. We disagree with the conclusions but we’re happy to discuss any concerns they might have. Competition on the web has increased dramatically in the last 2 years since the Commission started looking at this and the competitive pressures Google faces are tremendous. Innovation online has never been greater.

Some matters more easily resolved

Google can relatively easily address items 3 & 4 above on the list. These are largely contractual issues and don’t implicate Google’s presentation of search results. Number 2 above also appears relatively easy to resolve. Google can refrain from indexing third party reviews for display in its vertical services (and general search results if necessary).

It does raise a question, however, about whether Google would need to obtain authorization to index other kinds of content ahead of time. Google would have to agree to all of this of course.

A more difficult issue is the first item, where Google is being asked not to display its own “vertical” content (think Maps) in a way that’s more elaborate or otherwise different than competitors’ products. This goes to Google’s ability to innovate with its UI and could have very broad implications for “universal search” and its subsequent iterations (SPYW, knowledge graph, etc). This is the potential stumbling block for any early resolution and the issue that could prevent a complete settlement of the case.

Settlement might not happen across the board

If Google and the European Commission fail to reach a settlement across all areas, it’s not clear to me whether it has the immediate power to start imposing fines or would have to successfully litigate against Google — as the FTC would in the US. While in the US the FTC only has access to “injunctive relief” (non-monetary remedies), the European Commission can impose financial penalties of up to 10 percent of a company’s annual global revenue. In this case that would about to nearly $4 billion.

Both the European Commission and Google have clear incentives to settle. The question is what will they do about the “search neutrality” issue (#1 above)?

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: I’m in agreement with Greg’s analysis here. It’s difficult to see how Google is supposed to resolve the first issue, especially when Bing and Yahoo have done exactly the same things with their vertical search results. For more about this, see:

• Dear Congress: It’s Not OK Not To Know How Search Engines Work, Either
• Bing’s Travel Search & Kayak Favoritism Angers No One, While Google’s Gets Headline Attention From WSJ

However, it could be that if Google agrees to settle over the other concerns, the EU will suddenly discover that the first point is no longer a worrisome issue. Alternatively, I’ve found governments around the world seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings of how search works. Given this, Google could provide some token agreement that makes the EU believe the “problem” here is solved.

It’s also important to note there’s not a fifth finding — that ad spend had any impact on search results. That was one of the questions that the EU raised during its “fishing expedition” survey last year. Clearly it didn’t find enough evidence to raise this as a fifth point to resolve.

Like Greg, I tend to view this letter as a sign of weakness, that the EU isn’t sure that it has a strong enough case to win, so telling Google what its concerns are, and getting back some promises of resolution of any type might allow it to move on.

The story interviews a few small business owners who were hit hard by the update. One business owner saw his sales drop to $25,000 this month, down from $68,000 the previous month. Another small website owner saw roughly 30% of his traffic disappear over night. And another lost 20% of their traffic. Most of the article goes through small business owners who lives have changed for the worse due to this update. But there are some stories that lead me to believe they are not directly related to Penguin.

Again, there were several updates last month – Penguin was happened on the 24th. But there were two Panda refreshes, link network penalties, bugs and many more updates.

Even if all those cases were not Penguin related, Penguin is now main stream after hitting a major publication like the Wall Street Journal.

You can read the story over here.