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January 04, 2012

Google to Lower Chrome's Page Ranking for Violating Its Own Rules

By Ashok Bindra, TMCnet Contributor

The search engine giant Google (News - Alert) has been accused of favoring its own products in search results, as well as paying bloggers to publish material that promotes Chrome. Thus, for breaking its own rules, Google has agreed to lower Chrome’s page ranking as a penalty. It will downgrade Chrome’s page ranking for next two months, reports Search Engine Land.



In a statement sent to Search Engine Land, Google stated, "We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."  

According to Foxnews.com, Google has been strictly enforcing paid links policies. Consequently, Foxnews.com reports that advertisers like JC Penny and Forbes have been penalized in the past for manipulating search results. In fact, as per the report, Google banned one of its own subsidiaries, Beat That Quote, last year for the same reason.

Google said that it had hired the ad agency strictly to buy online video ads. In a statement emailed to the Wall Street Journal, a Google spokeswoman said, “The company had only meant to purchase online video advertisements through media agency Essence Digital. Google never agreed to anything more than online ads… We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products, because these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. We're now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again," added Google spokeswoman.

In a statement posted on Google's social networking service, Essence Digital stated, “Google never approved a sponsored-post campaign, and had only agreed to buy online video ads,” reports Wall Street Journal.

In the meantime, Business Insider reports that Chrome advertising, authorized or not, certainly has not hurt the company. Chrome is on the verge of overtaking Internet Explorer in 2012. Reporting data from research firm StatCounter (News - Alert), Business Insider wrote that Chrome is now used as primary web browser on 27 percent of computers worldwide, while Internet Explorer captures 39 percent of the global web browser market.

 


Ashok Bindra is a veteran writer and editor with more than 25 years of editorial experience covering RF/wireless technologies, semiconductors and power electronics. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves
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