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Monday, February 13, 2006

BMW Germany Pulled From Google For Cloaking --- NOT SEO

The SEO grapevine is spinning out of control once again, over last week's announcement by Matt Cutts at Google that they pulled BMW Germany for cloaking their search engine. Cutts posted a story (and the evidence) with details on how BMW Germany was serving pages based upon IP address or cloaking Google.

BMW programmed the known googlebot spider IP addresses into their servers and fed highly optimized pages to googlebot spider IPs, and their "true" graphics-heavy, un-optimized homepage, to all other IP addresses. The Google Cloak worked great for about three weeks, until Google sent some spiders out to double check this new high-ranking BMW Germany site on anonymized IPs.

Google randomly checks top ranking sites using anonymized IPs to make sure top ranking websites are on the up and up.

When the anonymous spiders from Google received the "true" unoptimized homepage and not the optimized page, BMW Germany was pulled from Google for cloaking.

Cloaking is cause for Google to Pull a website (typically 45 days or less) and is far too risky a method, however some larger companies still feel tempted to try and fool or trick the search engines rather than optimize their sites. Google has been temporarily pulling sites for Cloaking for years. This BMW Germnay case is simply the latest Google cloaking case of several hundred in the past few years.

That's why the SEO grapevine spin being put on this BMW Germany episode has gotten absolutely out of control.

This past weekend one blogger posted on his blog that SEO got BMW pulled from Google.

First we need to clarify a couple of points:

SEO is not Cloaking.

SEO is not "tricking" or "fooling" the search engines.

SEO = search engine optimization.

Quality Organic Optimization or organic seo is a proven process that equates to the organization of HTML elements throughout a site, cover to cover, that assists the search engine spiders in crawling, indexing, and ranking a site in top organic keyword search positions.

Search engine optimization is not showing one page to spiders and another page to website users. This is too easy, short-sighted, not ethical and websites involved in cloaking are most deserving of being pulled from Google's database.

SEO Grapevine Blog posts like the one that follows are wrong, insulting and only further clouds the truth surrounding quality organic SEO which is highly specialized work, that requires substantial time and effort, and is not a simple flip of the switch, or employment of manipulative techniques that avoid the real issue: poor website design, too many dynamic-database indicators, slop code, sub-par linking architectures, and poor content.

Here's the error filled hype from a "self professed seo" blog post this past weekend. (again this blog post is 100% wrong!)

Google Blacklists BMW for Boosting Ranking, Blogger Says

Frankfurt -- According to a blog by Matt Cutts, a software engineer for Google,
the U.S.-based Internet search-engine giant has blacklisted the German website
of BMW after the car-maker allegedly tried to boost its popularity ranking
artificially. Cutts claims BMW employed a practice called search-engine
optimisation to ensure that searches for "BMW" and "used cars" returned to
BMW's website first -- a practice that apparently runs counter to Google
guidelines. Cutts said Google placed a "Google Death Penalty" on BMW's
German website that lowers its Internet profile.

(read original blog past from matt cutts here:http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/

Can this blogger read, understand or write english?

Here is what Matt Cutts really had to say about why Google pulled the BMW Germany site and we quote...


"Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users.”


i.e.: Do Not Cloak Google!

As for the Google death penalty this poorly informed Blogger references that BMW Germany received a "Google Death Penalty".

The truth is that the BMW Germany site was "temporarily pulled" from Google for only 30 days.

Submitting too often using automated submission software programs has more negative consequences with Google than cloaking. As submitting redundant urls and just badgering Google with redundant submissions can get a site/url pulled for several months.

Hopefully the truth about Cloaking, Links, PageRank, & Google's Mythical New Site Sandbox, will all someday come to the front again as the SEO grapevine has primarily been cluttered with inaccurate hype on these topics in recent months.

Especially from the Search Engine Marketing -- SES crowd. So much SEM/SES hype and conjecture with immediate top ranking offers that include:

1) Why optimize just buy keyword exposure.

2) Don't take the time to open up your site to the search engine spiders long-term, that takes too long...get out your credit card and sponsor any keyword you want today!

3) Outsource Pay Per Click Management and Your Dreams will come True!

4) Pay Per Click and SEM the quickest ways to SEO sucess.

5) Forget that organic search results are preferred 7 to 1 vs. paid links.

Or is quality organic search engine optimization that is above board, compliant and favored by the Google spiders worth the investment and effort?


You decide...






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