Google Gets Caught With Their Pants Down!
Business May 31st, 2007
What do Darren Rowse and Google have in common? Anyone that has heard of Darren knows that he runs the ultra popular problogger.net. Darren’s site gets a ton of traffic and has an RSS readership of over 25,000 according to Feedburner. Anyone that knows much about Google knows that they own Blogger.com.
What does this have to do with anything? Because Blogger.com has a high authority level they can easily rank for the term “blogger” and they also easily rank for the term “pro blogger.” For no apparent reason other than the small amount of traffic that the term pro blogger generates, Google has chosen to use the sub domain “pro” making their domain “pro.blogger.com.” Google takes this traffic and directs it through to the Google search page.
Here is the pro.blogger.com page:
Why would Google need the domain “pro.blogger.com”? Not to mention what does the term “pro blogger” have to do with the google search page? Google is manipulating their search rankings for the term “pro blogger.” Even after all their talk about search engine manipulation Google gets caught with their hands in the search manipulation cookie jar. I thought content needed to be relevant, Google.
If you were to search for Pro Blogger on Yahoo.com the first link it gives you is the Google search page pro.blogger.com while problogger.net is number two:
If you were to search for Pro Blogger on Yahoo.com the third link it gives you is the Google search page pro.blogger.com while problogger.net is actually number one:
While Google has recently been on the hunt for people that manipulate their search engine rankings by buying up links, they forgot to look out for their own search manipulation tactics. Should Google send themselves a blacklist warning? What happens if they don’t comply?
*BUSINESS BLOGGER UPDATE: I added another post relating to this one here.
May 31st, 2007 at 5:35 am
That absurd… and clearly google are just trying to take traffic away from Darren. Fair enough if it were redirecting it to blogger or blog spot, but that’s just strange redirecting to the homepage.
I’ll keep my eye on this story, but interesting to see how it develops.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:02 pm
[…] pinged me with a post he’d written - Google Gets Caught With Their Pants Down! - a title that made me […]
June 1st, 2007 at 11:40 pm
as of 6/1/07 10:30PM PT, searching pro blogger will give you 7 entries before you get googles pro.blogger search page - and this Darren guy can now sleep better knowing he is ranked #1 for that term. Way to fight the MAN!
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 am
thats sick!
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 am
That’s a really bad news…I thought Only Microsoft & Google Fight…not with any other lower ranked website…
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 am
Thats really sick! Fighting each other ;)
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:19 am
Is not that sick if you read the update that Darren did.
“Update: I worked it out.
After a little of digging around in Internet Archive I now see that pro.blogger used to be used by blogger.com for actual pages which are now no longer active (they started using this sub-domain back in 2001).
It was some sort of a ‘pro’ upgrade package - before Google bought them. You can see some different versions of it here. It still doesn’t answer why they’d put a Google search page up here instead of point it to something relevant - but it does explain it’s Page Rank and why Yahoo and MSN gave it authority (although it’s definitely lacking some relevancy these days for terms of ‘pro blogging’).”
It totally makes sense now, don’t try to seek evil where is not evil… yet.
Sabo
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:58 am
they should have forward it to google blog search rather than the normal search engine - at least it makes sense. lol
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:03 am
Just a minor mistake but you said yahoo.com twice, think you meant live.com ;)
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:31 am
[…] I saw a post in BusinessBlogger about Google getting caught pants down. It is a pretty interesting post on how Google ranks pro.blogger.com higher than the popular […]
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:50 am
Update: I worked it out.
After a little of digging around in Internet Archive I now see that pro.blogger used to be used by blogger.com for actual pages which are now no longer active (they started using this sub-domain back in 2001).
It was some sort of a ‘pro’ upgrade package - before Google bought them. You can see some different versions of it here. It still doesn’t answer why they’d put a Google search page up here instead of point it to something relevant - but it does explain it’s Page Rank and why Yahoo and MSN gave it authority (although it’s definitely lacking some relevancy these days for terms of ‘pro blogging’).
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I think it is fair enough to write to Google and seek for some explanation. May be some one should start a petition website, and collect signatures from bloggers,and send it to google if they do not comply!
Sounds good for generating some traffic - ~evil~ :)
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:28 pm
OMG, read the comments before posting, There´s an answer already why Google is using it that way.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
A classic example of double standard. Funny isn’t that the big guys tend, repeat tend, to flaut the rules. There are exceptions but they certainly prove the rule.
All I can say, Darren keep up the good work and don’t be afraid of a good stoush. You can get a lot of people behind you. There’s always “people power”.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
[…] was surprised to see the post Google Gets Caught With Their Pants Down!. Though Google has one thing at their credit that the domain pro.blogger.com did exist for a long […]
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:10 am
but hey, should not google be pointing it to something more meaniningful than to the search homepage….
June 3rd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
I agree, Anand!
June 7th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Great observation!
June 11th, 2007 at 6:05 am
[…] are you doing Google? After a recent post attracted some attention I figured the readers of Business Blogger might enjoy something else along […]
June 17th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Why doesn’t Problogger petition Google to stop trading on their mark? Afraid Google might reverse it and say it was *their* mark first?
It would be more confusing if Google redirected pro.blogger to a blog-related page. Let sleeping dogs lie.
June 17th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Yea, I don’t think Google cares either way until someone serves them papers.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:39 am
Wierd, they have a powerful search engine, they risk losing it all if they continue to have plans like this