February 05, 2006
BMW Germany De-listed from Google
BMW Germany's website has been removed from Google for deceptive SEO practices. (Coverage is available from BoingBoing, Digg, and the original scoop from Google Blogoscoped.
Allow me to explain what's going on here. The BMW.de site employed a technique known as "doorway pages". These doorways were stuffed with tons and tons of keywords that BMW felt were relevant to its website. Regular users, however, never saw those pages; a JavaScript redirect was embedded to whisk humans way to the normal BMW.de site. Web robots do not process JavaScript, and therefore read the keyword-stuffed page. This is a deceptive practice designed to artificially boost Google rankings, and is specifically against Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines.
Matt Cutts briefly discusses the issue and provides screenshots of the doorway pages in his write-up and confirmation of Google's action. Let this be a warning against overzealous search engine optimization (SEO). No cheating!
Posted by Matt at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2005
Directions from my house to crack.
Lifehacker noticed the recently-released ChicagoCrime.org, a "free database of criminal activity reported in Chicago which uses Google Maps to display where bad things happen." Check out a map of reported armed robberies with a handgun, and charges for possession of crack.
Posted by opperman at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)