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Google Slams the Brakes on BMW

 - Wednesday 8th February 2006

If you thought that Google does not punish anyone for spamming, especially larger organisations, then you're in for a surprise. Google recently dropped BMW's German website (www.bmw.de) in Google index, effectively making it invisible to people looking for it. The BMW site now has a Page Rank (PR) of 0.

If you search Google for "BMW Germany", you used to get the German car manufacturer's site at the top of the results, now their site is not returned in the search results at all!

BMW had been using a Search Engine spamming technique known as "cloaking" to show a web page full of keywords to Google, whilst showing a normal page to visitors. This is sometimes referred to as a "doorway page", although this is technically correct, a doorway page does not have to be spam and there are legitimate uses of a doorway page, but when your website shows keyword rich pages to the Search Engines, and a normal page of content to everyone else, you will be punished through your ranking on the Search Engine.

The keywords targetted by the site were based around the phrase "used cars", which BMW temporarily ranked well for, until their unethical marketing techniques caught up with them. Now they are unlikely to rank for that term until they have cleaned up their act, contacted Google direct to request re-inclusion in their main index, and waited a long period of time. After which, there is no guarantee that they will acheive the same position as they had before.

BMW Germany promptly removed the offending pages from their site, 2 hours after learning of the ban, but it was obviously too late, and it will be a minimum of 30 days that the BMW site will not appear in the Google results for any search.

Businesses looking to become successful on the Internet must look at ethical Internet marketing methods, as these are designed to provide long term success for the business, not quick-fix short-term only success. Most of us are in business for the long haul, but do you know for sure that your corporate website is not spamming the search engines? You asked the Internet marketing company you hired to make you top, but did you consider at what cost, and what will happen if you too get punished for unethical marketing.

Google publish webmaster guidelines, which are designed to ensure that webmasters, and especially Internet marketing companies know about what is acceptable and what is not in Google's index. Have a look at our Ethical Internet Marketing information for more details on how to protect yourself from Search Engine spam penalties.

adamantean have always used ethical Internet marketing techniques for our clients, so they are safe from ranking penalties imposed by the Search Engines. You could sleep soundly at night too, like our clients do - contact us for more information on how adamantean can help you acheive the position on the Search Engines that you deserve. All without having to worry about your revenue stream dissappearing at the most inopportune moment, and landing you with a large headache and a number of bosses and directors baying for your blood - and possibly even a P45. Worse still it could be your own business, and a penalty like this could drive you under.

Google says "Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as 'cloaking',", so do as they say, and ensure the long term success of your business in the Search Engines.

Internet Marketing is such a large part of any companies success online that it unwise to skimp on this stage, or to trust an unethical company promising you top results. We have helped our clients acheive top ranking on the Search Engines for relevant terms that potential customers are searching for, and thus ensuring the long-term success of our clients.

If you want to take advantage of adamantean's expert Internet Marketing experience, contact us now, we're here to help.



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