Google blacklists the BMW Germany website

Google has blacklisted BMW in Germany for so-called search engine optimization, i.e. using underhand practices such as repeated mention of the search words on its doorway page to ensure that any search containing “BMW� and “Gebrauchtwagen� (used car) would be directed to its website first. Google has moved to lower BMW’s internet profile drastically and put its PageRank on zero. (source Timesonline.co.uk)

yep, just did a google search on "BMW Gebrauchtwagen" - and the results were nowhere near www.bmw.de or http://ecom.bmwgroup.com/ecom32gahp/DE-GAH...sp?process=uvse

seems like a nice side effect is that BMW will now have to purchase ad space from Google... how does that fit with Google's (supposed) motto of "don't be evil"?

So if you do a search for BMW you shouldn't end up with a listing of the BMW website?

Further, BMW is repeatedly using the words BMW on their home page?

The bastards!

It is bmw.de that has been blacklisted, not any of the other sites.

Google have been changing their algorithms recently to try and cut out these kind of tricks to improve the ranking of a website. I suspect that Google are trying to make an example of BMW in order to scare other webmasters.

What tricks?

If I do a search for Develey I not only expect the word "Develey" to appear more often on the Develey home page than any other, I expect to find a listing for Develey.

If I do a search for German mustard, I'd expect it to come up as well.

You would not believe what an industry this is!

I am a tiny tiny player but still spend upwards of €10,000 a month on google adword campaigns. In the past I had websites with #1 "organic" listings - these are true results and so I never needed to spend a penny.

So getting onto the 1st page of google for some search terms is literally worth millions of pounds in revenue for some businesses.

So it is agreed that BMW should always be #1 for "BMW" but I don't see why they should be for "Gebrauchtwagen".

However where things really start to suck is that google have what is called a "sandbox" - all new websites and penalised websites are placed here. These sites will hardly ever appear in natural searches. They do this to stop people building spammy new sites with loads of links...in the past people would buy domains and run 1,000 websites - if one got penalised they always had another.

But by definition this restricts the newer websites. Google like this because it forces them to spend on Google Adwords, but also means the content you now see for a term is often really old. You do not get the fresher newer content at the top. Dumb huh!

Perhaps they're making the point that if you are looking for a BMW Gebrauchtwagen (second hand car), you shouldn't be sent to the BMW page, but rather the page of a dealership or independant garage.

I have noticed that google is getting progressivly worse for finding anything commercial. You can still find academic stuff very easily, but search for stuff like motorbike rental or holiday info, and you usually get a list of useless portal sites and other search engines.

So I think google does need to keep on their toes, make improvements to their search algorithms and perhaps even blacklist sites. But the current action of downgrading BMW for "BMW Gebrauchtwagen" does not appear very neutral to me.

Yeah - they would have no issue with the word "BMW" - it is "Gebrauchtwagen" that is the problem.

Imagine for instance I sold "Dessous" and owned the brand name "Androv Dessous" - no reason I should not be #1 for "Androv" or perhaps #1 even for "Androv Dessous"...but there is no reason I should be #1 for "Dessous".

It is a HUGE difference.

Note the combination of "BMW" and "Gebrauchtwagen"

By spamming the word "Gebrauchtwagen" they have lowered the ranking for the whole site - so now even rank low for the word "BMW" on google.de

It's a messy old game. Personally I would prefer google were not so dominant. It would be a fairer situation if they had say 30% of the market rather than effectively about 90%.

Being #1 on msn.com for instance is not worth squat basically.

Just tried a search for "BMW" on google.de with the option "Seiten aus Deutschland" The first page on the list is Max Blue, which gives the share price for BMW. The second page on the list is for BMW motorbikes, i.e. bmw-motorrad.de. This is followed by BMW world, BMW financial services , BMW Welt, and some forumla 1 stuff. bmw.de is not on the list at all. Searching with "das Web" option selected gives more or less the same results.

On yahoo.de when searching for "BMW" with "Seiten auf Deutsch" selected, www.bmw.de is the first page on the list, followed by www.bmw-motorrad.de.

Looks like the google blacklisting may not just refer to "BMW Gebrauchtwagen". Pretty heavy...

I agreed with JE that BMW.de should not come up first if you search for Gebrauchtwagen but now that you've clarified that it was the combination of BMW and Gebraucthwagen I'm back to my original opinion.

BMW sells used cars too so why wouldn't you expect BMW.de to come up at the top of the list?

Thats how it works! You cheat and you get penalised.

Problem is there are no official rules - only google decides if you are "cheating". Google will not state what the rules are (or that would let people know their algorithm).

Its all bonkers really.

ditto that...oh the stories I could tell...but then I'd get sued by my employer

Google Removes BMW's German Web Site From Search Index


From Deutsche Welle

It is not just that, but click fraud. This is where advertisers are clicked on repeatedly in order to make them pay more ad dollars. This is where a lot of money for Google's bottom line comes from.

Eurovol has highlighted the biggest pitfall of the Adwords system: fraudulent clicking. Technically, you do not have to pay for suspicious clicking activity (i.e. lots of clicks from the same IP address), but you try spotting "suspicious" activity when you're getting hundreds or thousands of clicks a day.

I did not look into this story fully, but when I was reading /. about it yesterday I got the impression that the reason Google did not like BMW's doings was because they had a separate page that would be given to the google search engine. This means that the data being indexed by google is different to the data that users get going to the site itself.

I thought it was this underhand tactic that contravened googles usage terms. I think BMW said in response something about the main page would not index correctly with Google so they had to create the separate page for Google to index.

I would read up and confirm what I said above, but I cba

It is a fun old sport - like a game of chess. Wish I had time to play but tend to be too busy with punters to play the SEO game on my sites.

I have a love/hate relationship with Google but overall cannot complain - they have certainly put more cash in my pocket than they have taken out.

Here is the initial blog from Matt Cutts, a Google employee, mentioning the de-ranking.
It shows you the difference between what the search engine sees and what the user sees.

Its explained here a bit nicer...


What I am getting at is that its not the words used that pissed google off, but the difference in the data that the user sees and the search engine sees.

Thanks for the links Tom17


A bit ironic I think as humans are relying on a machine (i.e. google) to do the searching for them.
Also as pointed out in the article, the home page may contain nothing, just redirects depending on how the user is accessing the site.

not correct. It appears that the BMW.de website has been blackilisted. If you wish to access the German BMW website and google "BMW.de" you would expect that http://www.bmw.de would be the first hit. It is not. It doesn't actually regnosise the terrm. It also doesn't give any listing of BMW.de if you search BMW and Deutschland. So it is not just the "Gebrauchtwagen" they have problems with but BMW's German website generally.