Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week. This week, the whole Interflora thing (major UK flowers site) was one of the most talked about topic by people who in one way or another has interest about rankings on search engines. More specifically, major sites reported that Interflora has been slammed by Google due to apparently a blogger outreach program they have conducted earlier this month. While there was no direct comment by Google about this issue, Matt Cutts, posted a reminder about “selling links that pass PageRank”, later that same day. Coincidental? I don’t think so, but in any event, the post is actually a big “wake-up-call” and reiterates the use of the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Cutts mentions:
Please be wary if someone approaches you and wants to pay you for links or “advertorial” pages on your site that pass PageRank. Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations. The consequences for a linkselling site start with losing trust in Google’s search results, as well as reduction of the site’s visible PageRank in the Google Toolbar. The consequences can also include lower rankings for that site in Google’s search results.
What do you guys think?
Anyway, while all that buzz was happening, you may have missed the part where Bing has rolled out some changes on the design of Friends Photos search and the autosuggest algorithm. They also unveiled a plugin to help webmasters generate XML sitemaps, easier. In addition, and as I have mentioned before, Bing has been conducting webinars that are very useful for webmasters of any level. One of the latest I recommend going through is “How to build Authority online“.
And speaking of Buzz, here’s a cool slideshow from MarketingProfs about the 15 Marketing Buzzwords to stop using.
As usual, in no particular order:
SEO/Marketing
- The Google+ Effect on Breaking News
- On-Page SEO for 2013 – Optimize Pages to Rank and Perform
- Don’t Accept Guest Posts Unless You Follow These 7 Rules
- Why Google Rewards the Fearless?
Social/Blogging/Small Business Bites
- 30 Terrible Pieces of Social Media Advice You Should Ignore
- How Google’s PageRank Algorithm Screwed the Online Writer (and What They Did to Fix It)
- 7 Fiverr Gigs for In-house SEOs
- 26+ Pinterest Tools and Tips to Enhance Your Pinning Experience
- Twitter Now Reducing Some Tweets To 117 Characters
More Cool Stuff and Other Roundups
- Google Glass – The “Rear-View Mirror For Your Eyes” – To Sell For Under $1,500 Later This Year
- SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 22, 2013
That’s it! Enjoy, have a great weekend!
And perhaps a coincidence that Interflora have taken Google AdWords advertisers to court to stop advertisers bidding on the brand name Interflora (not using the trademark, simply bidding on it) – I think Google will have enjoyed getting their own back….Haha!
i think used the link building increment the earning the money. so make the link and also advertisement the company product.
Jaimie
Excellent post . If Interflora wins this battle, it would set a precedent, with a number of advertisers likely to follow suit. Online marketers meanwhile will be waiting with bated breath. A ruling in favour of Interflora could see them frantically having to review their AdWords accounts.
I agree, it is and will be an interesting case to follow. We’ll see how this unfolds. IF suing M&S for buying their KW but not suing Google for letting them bid on them?? How weird is that 🙂 Thanks for stopping by
Lee hubs
Hi DiTesco,
Great article thank you for sharing. Very interesting story on interflora it’s the first time I have heard about this site but they seem to be doing ok despite penalty they are PR5 alex looks ok.
Great round up also, just finish reading don’t Don’t Accept Guest Posts Unless You Follow These 7 Rules by Neil awesome read.