VW Gets Google Pardon, MySpace Buys PhotoBucket
Written By: admin Posted On: May 7, 2007 Tags:
VW Caught Up Using Blackhat SEO
VW was busted using invisible divs in their flash site to further their campaign for a top Google ranking.
Barry points out the VW site was featured on Google’s Enterprise blog with a screen capture smack-dab in the middle, before any of this came about. This makes you wonder if they hadn’t already known what was going on before VW got busted? If it were you or I who would’ve got caught doing this kind of thing– our sites would be thrown in to Google hell for eternity(de-listed, or de-indexed), but thankfully VW obviously has some connections, since Google simply recommended to move their sly SEO keywords out of their invisible div and in to a META tag, which will greater accommodate Google’s Terms of Service.
I’d like to see exactly what text this scuffle was about. It brings up some great points– if the keywords or phrases were legitimate reproduction of the Flash presentation, shouldn’t they be allowed by Google? It’s tough to design a Flash website that ranks or places well in search results. I have a feeling this was a little more black hat, though.
MySpace Buys Photobucket
MySpace shocks the world with its decision to purchase Photobucket for around $300m. 
Yes, you read right– 300 million dollars for a photo album website. Photobucket reports show the site receiving 17m uniques per month, but regardless of what Photobucket wants to believe; most of those were leached from MySpace. This is a big development considering MySpace only just recently lifted the ban on the embedding of Photobucket videos.
What good is Photobucket to MySpace? Honestly. Was it worth 300 million dollars? I don’t see the worth. Maybe if Photobucket was receiving those 17m uniques without the aid of MySpace. Is this an effort by MySpace to infiltrate other social sites with embedded images and video? Are they finally deciding to try to monetize the widget ecosystem of their service? Lots of questions to be answered. Read what Mashable has to say about it.
That’s some crazy shite. I wonder exactly what else VW was doing to get the flag from Google…
[...] Charity at Design Adaptations J David Macor Zep at The In-Sect webee design blog Scot at Meridiancrest [...]
Nate,
Not sure they got a flag from Google at all until it was brought up by a few folks from the community.
– Scot
I remember when BMW got banned by Google for shady stuff. I’m sure Google has learned a little since then and try to hand out a warning first, just in the name of economics.
It’s big business. Affects a lot of people’s jobs
You’re right Shane. Then again, some might argue there are many people playing by the book losing revenues to places like VW who are cheating the system and getting away with it.
Maybe there should be monetary fines set up? What is a good resolution for this, anyway?
– Scot
If Google tried to institute fines it would be a PR nightmare (and I don’t mean pagerank).
The bottom line is, if you’re big and you’re well known, you’re gonna get a warning rather than just get cut right off.
Shoemoney does a lot of gray area stuff. But he’s big. He has an AdWords account rep that he can go to and keep the communication lines open with. So if he steps into the black, they tell him and he backs off.
It’s just about relationships. It’s what makes business go ’round and ’round