Updated: Google takes strong action on Money.co.uk fake linkbait article
Most of you probably heard about a certain article published on Money.co.uk recently. Matt Cutts from Google promised to take action and it seems like this action has now been taken.
The article remains in the Google index but no longer ranks for it’s own name. In fact the site doesn’t even rank for it’s title tag anymore!
My guess is that Google has applied a filter to ignore all the links pointing to the fake story and has added a penalty to the site.
My opinion is that if you want to make up some fake linkbait you need to make sure that Google (or anybody else) doesn’t find out it’s fake.
Matt says they don’t want to be the “truth” police. Matt says it was different than a prank like April Fools. It was more deceptive than that as it had no disclosure that it was fake. Matt looks at it then as more intentional than accidental.
Matt says to not take any action on a story that is fake like that one was would be irresponsible. He sees it as an attempt to get links even if you have to “lie” about it and feels that is just wrong. In reality, it was a move to protect Google users from lies and deception.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
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Also money.co.uk home page is down to #18 from #5 last week for “money” (without quotes) in Google.co.uk
Interesting. I hadn’t looked at any previous rankings so couldn’t do a comparison.
I checked to make sure I can see a potential penalty
“In fact the site doesn’t even rank for it’s title tag anymore!”
It’s number 6.
Number 6 when you add quotes, nowhere without them. It still smacks of a penalty to me.
Interesting find Patrick – and certainly it was a @ -50 when I checked, and I’m tracking some sites with what would appear to be the same ‘penalty’ / shady zone if that is the case.
Glitch or Algo or hand tweak – could be any number of reasons
Also when I checked a few weeks ago for money.co.uk in Google, the 13 year old article was the indented listing after the home page.
Not there now.
I don’t like the shady practices that money.co.uk has been up to lately. There is a lot more than just this article.
It’s all fair! Inlinks shouldn’t be misused.
All the best,
Magnus Lundin – Sweden
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