Google punishes itself over Chrome blogger campaign

Google has demoted Chrome in its own search results after an effort to have bloggers promote the Google browser backfired.

Chrome no longer appears on the first page of Google's results for the word 'browser', after a blogging campaign to promote the browser backfired. Image credit: CNET News

Now, when someone types the word 'browser' into Google, the results display no advert for Chrome at the top and no link to the Chrome page anywhere on the first page. Chrome has been demoted to position 50, according to Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, which first reported this news on Tuesday.

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Google's statement, according to SearchEngineLand, is: "We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days... While Google did not authorise this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."

The demotion is a response to a campaign in which bloggers were found posting low-quality content related to Google Chrome in an effort to promote a Google video about how the browser has helped a small business in Vermont.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Google demotes Chrome in search results over pay-for-post promo on CNET News.