In the course of
rankmaniac 2012, we have all learned how frustrating it is to try to get our
content internet famous without violating the anti-spam and fair play guidelines. It seems that even the almighty Google is not above
having such problems.
In January, Google paid
bloggers to post their latest Chrome video in hopes of further popularizing the
browser that was already threatening the kings of the playground, Internet
Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Unfortunately, one of the
bloggers in the promotion linked to the download page without using a nofollow.
A nofollow link dampens the effect of search engine spam. In other words, if a
link is given a nofollow value, the page at the other side of the link is not
promoted by the crawling search engine because of the endorsement of the linking page. Unfortunately, because this wayward
blogger did not use use the nofollow attribute, Google Chrome’s pagerank was
inflated because of the inward-pointing link.
Thus, paradoxically,
Google violated its own guidelines for fair promotion. The idea behind these
guidelines is that paid link endorsements should not have a greater ability to inflate
PageRank than non-paid link endorsements. After all, the web should be a place
where everyone has a chance.
Because the link was part
of a sponsorship deal (Remember that the link was on that page only because
Google was paying the blogger indirectly through a third party advertising service),
this abuse of the system and existing precedents demanded that Google punish
itself for the transgression by demoting Chrome’s PageRank from 9 down to 0. As
we all know, PageRank is on a scale from 1 to 10. This move is tantamount to
taking the senior class valedictorian and forcing him to repeat high school
starting from freshman year.
We do have to give Google
some props for not making itself an exception to the rule; it must be pretty
tempting when you’re both the referee and the author of the law.
But now Chrome has no
choice but to slowly regain its PageRank to get back to its former glory. If
you Google “browser,” now, Chrome no longer appears on the first page. Firefox
lays claim to first result, and Opera is not far behind. The numbers show that Internet
Explorer is gaining ground on market share—though demotion of Chrome’s PageRank
is most likely not the only factor, it is evident that it is at least a
contributing cause. If Google just maybe given the bloggers a few more
guidelines, maybe they could have avoided breaking their own rules and prevented
this unfortunate situation.
Sources:
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