“Google’s strategy from the start has been to assume that what individuals are interested in is a reflection of what other individuals – who are interested in roughly the same area, but spend more time on it, that is, web page authors – think is worthwhile. The company built its business model around rendering transparent what people and organizations that make their information available freely consider relevant.” (279)
In early February of 2007, Google blacklisted BMW.de (German site) because they violated what Google calls “Webmaster quality guidelines” by means of black hat SEO/SEM (search engine optimization/search engine marketing). What does this mean? The site included “doorway pages” that would automatically redirect its visitors to a different URL. When viewers clicked a BMW.de page, blocks of text with repeated key search words such as “neuwagen” (new car in German). When the visitor clicked on the listed page, they would be automatically redirected to another page with almost no text and mostly pictures. These pages would be scored much lower in Google’s PageRank system. In short, BMW tried to artificially boost its search engine rating through non-approved marketing strategies.
In response, Google removed BMW.de from its Web index. The violation? “Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.” BMW Germany quickly removed their redirect pages and wrote a formal letter of apology to Google. They regained Google listing status shortly after.
Sources: Yochai Benkler, “The Wealth of Networks”. Chapter 8: 273-300
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