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Google punishes Chrome following ad blunder

Google has downgraded Chrome from its own search results for a period of at least 60 days, following a botched promotion of the web browser.

Google faced criticism for breaching its own regulations after Chrome became the focus of ‘sponsored posts’ in which bloggers were paid to promote videos about the web browser. As a consequence, the ranking of the Google Chrome home page was boosted in Google’s search results, posing an unfair advantage to its competitors.

The blunder occurred when Google recruited London-based digital agency Essence Digital to produce video content advertising Google Chrome. The ads were distributed online by Unruly Media, which recently secured a $25m Series A round of funding.

“Even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines,” said Google’s Matt Cutts.

“While Google did not authorise 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 that we would against a typical site,” added a spokesperson for Google.

Essence Digital issued the following apology: “Google has consistently avoided paid postings to promote its products, because in its view these kind of promotions are not transparent or in the best interests of users. In this case, Google was subjected to this activity through media that encouraged bloggers to create what appeared to be paid posts, were often of poor quality and out of line with Google standards. We apologise to Google who clearly didn’t authorise this.”

Jenni Baker, London