Tech Shout!

Google has detached BMW’s German Web site from its directory for breaching Google’s guidelines against trying to manipulate search results.

Matt Cutts, a Google employee was the first one to throw light on this issue through a posting on his blog on Saturday. He said that BMW de had been removed because certain pages on the site would show up one way when the search engine visited the page but when a Web user opened the page; a redirect mechanism would display a completely different page.

Cutts wrote that the practice breaks Google’s guidelines, particularly the principle that states: “Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.” Google’s guidelines also specifically include an item that recommends that Web site creators don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Cutts’ blog posting also said that Ricoh.de would be removed from Google’s index soon for similar reasons. In mid-January, Cutts wrote in his blog that he was offering a courtesy notice to designers of non-English language sites that starting in 2006 Google would be paying closer attention to tricks that go against Google’s guidelines.

A Google spokesperson confirmed via e-mail that the BMW.de site has been removed but declined to comment further on the specific case, adding that Google cannot stand sites that try to manipulate search results.

Before BMW de is included in the database once again, Google’s Web spam team will require a re-inclusion request including details on who created the misleading pagesm, wrote Cutts. He said that some of the offending pages had already been removed.

While the BMW.de situation points to the control Google has on the type of information that users can access on the web, Hellen Omwando, a principal analyst at Forrester Research says that if Google takes that too far it will only hurt itself. “Google is saying, ‘we’re the gatekeepers, if you will, of the information on the Web and if you’d like to be a part of that database you need to step in line,’” she said. However, if Google prevents users from accessing information they seek, they’ll look elsewhere for that information, she notes.

BMW is considered to be one of the highest profile companies to have a website blacklisted by Google. At present, a Google search for “BMW Germany” turns up BMW’s international Web page first and a link to a story about BMW.de being removed from Google’s index second. A Yahoo search turns up BMW.com first and BMW.de second.