Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome | Hacker News Reader

Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome

searchengineland.com

235 pointskruipen65 comments

Here's a hypothesis that is more generous to Google (I don't know the real reason): some Google campaign that pays per download of Chrome is prompting site owners to generate this low-quality content. It seems more plausible to me than Google paying directly for this, because it's a terrible marketing campaign.

There's an onclick handler on the link to the Chrome download site on the blog that is in the screenshot on that page. I can't figure out what it does, though I did see when I clicked on it that my browser hit some URLs containing the substring "googleadservices", "conversion", and the Chrome download URL.

Yeah, I bet that's what is happening. I went to this site: http://www.humphriesnation.com/ and clicked on the Google Chrome link, and got sent here: https://www.google.com/chrome/?brand=ECSB&installdataind...

Looks like an affiliate link to me.

That seems plausible. However, whatever the true reason is, the end result is that Google is paying people to generate junk content. That's not good for anyone.

So Google is not allowed to offer incentive for anything? Any sort of affiliate program brings it's share of junk content.

The problem is if google treats the chrome affiliate junk content differently from other junk content. If it is all treated the same, then it should be ok.

I imagine that Google's search algo team is in a separate silo from their chrome marketing team (much like the search algo team is separated from the Adsense team) to try isolate them from the corrupting influence of their marketing team.

That said, Google would be risking their search cash cow by the mere existence of this sort of campaign as it undermines the perception of the independence of their search results, so perhaps they should steer clear of offering incentives of this sort.

Google is paying people to generate junk content

It seems silly to me to get mad at Google for paying, what, ten thousand dollars in affiliate payouts, incentivizing cruddy posts, when they simultaneously collect (and pay out) billions for the ubiquitous AdSense ads which you find on sites which, charitably, span a wide range in terms of content quality.

I think the problem isn't that they're doing both of those things at the same time. The problem, instead, is that the third thing they're doing at the same time is issuing guidelines, (hopefully?) backed by their ranking algorithm, written specifically to combat this type of behavior.

If it were a free-for-all, sure, no problem. But Google doesn't want other parties doing this. Doing it themselves puts them in a position that's a little difficult to explain.

Google had a similar, but more widespread paid referral program for Firefox with Google Toolbar for a few years.

http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ct...

Regardless of the theory, Google is not filtering low quality content from which it has the appearance of benefiting...and the apparent double standard being applied, I believe was the point of the original article.

Are you suggesting the search algorithm is tailored to detect pro-google content and promote it, or that someone manually altered the rankings for these pages? Both are wildly unlikely. I think the double standard suggested is that these pages shouldn't exist at all, not that anything is biased in their favour.

What I am saying, not suggesting, is that there is the appearance of a double standard irrespective of Google's intent or actions.

If in fact (and I am not saying that it is actually the case), Google has a double standard, there is little likelihood that these pages were manually promoted since the search phrase is rather obscure.

Bingo -- and the "sponsored by Google Chrome" text was pulled out of the ass of the blogspam originator based on their interpretation of the FTC regulations governing this kind of stuff.

All of the instances are likely the work of a single organization, or possibly the result of cargo-culting by a group of independents in a webmaster forum thread somewhere.

Linus Upson responded on a public G+ with "News to me. Looking in to it..." https://plus.google.com/113217924531763968801/posts/3XUWkLVN...

This seems very un-Googley to me.

This doesn't mean the article is not correct, but I just can't believe Google would do this kind of grey-hat SEO... mostly, companies do this to outsmart Google. Why would Google be trying to outsmart its own search engine?

Note: I care little about SEO, and I can't tell you if Google is trying to outsmart their own search engine, or, if they are, whether I should care about it.

There is potential legal trouble for them if they were to tweak search results to favour their own properties - that's a pretty solid reason for using SEO tactics to outsmart their own search engine.

Are you a lawyer? would you explain how is it exactly that "tweaking search results" is illegal? because I've noticed that meme going around and I don't think it makes much sense, I'm not saying that they any "tweaking", but if they were to rank whatever they like however they like on their own free website how is that illegal?

No I don't have a complete understanding of the law in this area, but in simple terms it is because Google's search engine is designed to give users the most relevant results, and by giving their own brands preferential ranking (without an advertisement notification) they are misleading users and giving their brands an unfair advantage over their competitors.

I'm sure someone else here can go into a more detailed answer.

Side note: the only "meme" I've noticed is the idea that anyone would be presumed a lawyer unless they say "IANAL".

But who's to say what is "relevant"? and if the user doesn't think this is relevant to her, she can search elsewhere.

I'm not even talking about links, there was this thing about the Google Flights result appearing for flight queries and some flight search sites (kayak and such) are up in arms about it, so here comes the question of how do they figure that they are entitled to any placement or traffic, and as for relevancy and usefulness surly showing flight details for flight searches is much more useful than nested links.

They are the dominant player in a large market (online advertising). If they exploit the dominance of their product specifically to stifle competition, we have a Microsoft-esque situation where the question might have been "how exactly is integrating an additional piece of freely available software with our market-dominant operating system illegal?" Well, it was, and this might very well be as well.

I'm not talking about ads I'm talking about ranking, and not even that, as ranking links doesn't really strike me as the way of the future, I'm referring to when Google shows a map for a location query and flight prices and schedules for a flight query as these are also search results and they are more useful (and prettier) so not only do I find nothing wrong with it but I find it to be the right way to go.

Also regarding that antitrust meme the Microsoft comparison keep getting mention, I'm not really familiar with that case but as I see it, Windows you buy and you are stuck with, Google on the other hand is free to use or not as you please.

> flight prices and schedules for a flight query as these are also search results and they are more useful (and prettier) so not only do I find nothing wrong with it but I find it to be the right way to go.

Certainly you might not find anything wrong with it; but if Google were to show ITA flight information in search results, with a link to Google Travel (hypothetical) to purchase the ticket, Expedia, Kayak, and Travelocity might be a little unhappy.

> Windows you buy and you are stuck with, Google on the other hand is free to use or not as you please.

The consumer being "stuck" with Windows was never an issue in the Microsoft case, but rather that they used their dominance in one field (the OS) to gain a significant advantage over a competitor in another field (the browser). If Facebook were to ban the sharing of Google+ links on their network, they might be in similar trouble.

The "stickiness" of Microsoft's products had nothing to do with the anti-trust case, They were leveraging their dominance in one market to exploit another; the permanence of the product has nothing to do with the illegality of their actions.

Isn't that what Google exactly did whilst promoting Google Chrome? Any search for the string "browser" turns up a Chrome ad. Some would argue that this is relatively an anti-competitive stance.

I don't think it's illegal because there are a lot of people pushing "search neutrality" right now who want to create such a law.

Doesn't Google already do this? I thought the Google homepage was the only page with a rank of 10 or something.

There are more websites with a PR of 10: - http://www.usa.gov/ - http://get.adobe.com/reader/ - http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php - http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ - http://www.hhs.gov/ - http://www.miibeian.gov.cn - http://www.eua.be/Home.aspx - http://www.universitas21.com/

How'd you find those? Do you have a citation?

Just Google it :-) "Pagerank 10 websites" should do the trick

It's not that Google is trying to outsmart its own search engine, but verifying something that SEOs already know. Paid links still work. Google has not mastered sniffing them out yet. That all assumes that Google is paying for these links in hopes for SEO benefit.

> This seems very un-Googley to me.

And the bundling deals Chrome had with Skype and has with Adobe seem "Googley" to you?

I really doubt Google would be doing the grey-hat SEO thing myself, but mostly because they have more effective (if more expensive) ways to push Chrome that they've been using already, not because I think Google is incapable of behaving in a completely scummy way. The fact that installing Skype for a while (until Microsoft bought it) defaulted to installing Chrome and making it your default browser pretty much sums up what you can expect out of "Googley" nowadays.

Update: The search team's response to this shows that thinking of "Google" as a monolithic entity with a monolithic "Googley" attitude or a monolithic "evil" attitude is just wrong, unsurprisingly. Kudos to the search folks; I remain of the opinion that the Chrome marketing folks are fully capable of scummy behavior as desired.

All right, that's true. Google Toolbar for IE was also "bundled" similarilly to some software as long as I remember, and the behaviour of Google Updater on Windows is also almost like crapware. You are probably right.

When I read: These days, it’s hard to know who to trust, but with the name Google, you know you are in good hands. I get a stomach-ache. I wonder whether something like this might backfire to some extent, not counting the possible hypocrisy. When you have people writing phrases like that, it almost sounds condescending, like an awkward author's attempt to portray a simple, good-old-fashioned person. Except real, good-old-fashioned people don't actually talk and make decisions like that, and even if they're not familiar with Chrome, they're not going to be persuaded by that. If this is the quality of content from such an SEO campaign, I wonder if such endorsements only work against Chrome in the long run.

OTOH, if the SEO works, then maybe enough people switch to Chrome to justify the crappy endorsements.

Wow, marketing people in this industry can be sooooo lame sometimes. What a terrible campaign.

Google Chrome is a very good product, and doesn't need to be associated with this type of approach. The product speaks for itself.

To be honest, I fail to understand why Google needs to do this. Chrome is gaining market-share at a very high pace already. Are they targeting a specific group of people in this case, or is this some misdirected effort by a third party advertiser?

To answer the specific question about Chrome's growth being "high pace already":

Doing a lot more damage to IE would be good for everyone. Microsoft moves way to slowly and they keep dropping support for older OS's, and they refuse to support WebGL, for example.

IE10, while actually looking impressive, won't run on Vista. XP will have significant market share for at least another 5 years and it's limited to IE8.

In short, I'd like to see Firefox, Chrome, and Opera take another 30% away from Microsoft.

[Updated]

Clearly my comments aren't appreciated. Look at this chart.

http://gs.statcounter.com/

To put it bluntly, Microsoft isn't getting the sh*t kicked out of them fast enough. Post PC, the death spiral of IE, no one buying WinMo7. Sorry guys, some of us have waited a long time for this. :-)

Microsoft moves way to slowly and they keep dropping support for older OS's

Gee, I wonder why they move so slowly. Do you think it could have something to do with trying to support so many old OS's?

I mean, really. Your cake. You can't have it and eat it.

That argument would work unless the competitors were supporting the same old OS-versions too, plus (in most cases) at least two other platforms.

Firefox and Chrome get updated every 6 weeks. Microsoft pretty much ignored the browser until Chrome and Firefox started gaining market share.

IE6 - 2001

IE7 - 2006

IE8 - 2009

IE9 - 2011

IE10 - 2012

They are picking up the pace because there's so much competition. Unfortunately, it's not quick enough.

Clearly my comments aren't appreciated.

No, because they were jingoistic and myopic. IE9 is a decent browser (by all measures superior to Firefox) and IE10 looks to be better. Your blind platform hatred is showing.

"IE9 is a decent browser (by all measures superior to Firefox)"

That's an opinion, not fact. I'd appreciate if you explain why you think so.

IE9 lags way behind in HTML5 compatibility. IE10 will get over 300, but as you can see Firefox and Google are racing ahead.

http://html5test.com/results.html

Google Chrome 16.0 => 373

Mozilla Firefox 9.0 => 330

Opera 11.60 329 => 9

Apple Safari 5.1 => 302

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 => 141

Opera is at 329, not 9.

It may be that they're gaining market share so quickly in part because of this advertising.

Do you honestly believe that Chrome is gaining significant market share because there is a single, rather uninformative blog post on sites like Telecommuting Mommies and The Debt Princess?

You would be surprised how much people these mom-bloggers actually reach. I've been presenting on Mom-bloggers conferences, where the women are very eager to learn and large brands are lining up to get their attention and be featured on their blogs.

For every mom-blogger, there are a couple of hundred readers. Just think about it and do the economics: For $40 you get a sponsored post, which gets read by a couple of hundred women. Higher ROI than TV campaigns..!!

This Google Chrome advertising campaign, or the sponsored post campaign, is executed fairly poor. You can expect Google to defend their actions by blaming the marketing company, firing them, and apologizing.

Yep. While we think featuring our startup in TC will get us overnight success, having a ton of mommy bloggers know about it and talk it amongst themselves in their little communities(CafeMom, iVillage, SparkPeople, Pinterest) will give you mainstream popularity. They truly have incredible reach.

I don't doubt the power of mom blogs, but his point remains. The article found 400 of these blog posts, most of which don't look like mom blogs, but moreover like blogs no one anywhere actually reads (on purpose, at least). Even if you assume a decent ROI, in absolute numbers the user increase would be well below the noise.

If these were sponsored results for JCPenny, for instance, it is very unlikely anyone would think they were seriously trying to gain market share directly -- it would be fairly obvious they were trying to game search results. However, since it's google themselves, I don't know what on earth someone was thinking.

I just think the paid post campaign was outsourced and the consultant company did a really bad job in describing the way they would have liked to have posts written up. I doubt their objective was to game search results, but rather had an objective to get Chrome in front of influential mom-bloggers.

According to the guidelines Google advocates, any form of endorsements should be notified in the post and have a no-follow attribute on the link when there is money involved.

The majority of mom-bloggers are familiar with the rules around give aways, paid endorsements and advertising. They know how to run a business. It's a pity that the bloggers who have been featured in this campaign will take the flak, as Google brings down the hammer. Some of the bloggers don't know any better, and take an easy opportunity to monetize their websites.

And who can blame them, It's Google! If a campaign is from Google, with a mantra: Don't be evil, it can only be a good thing to do this, right..?

Google has a responsibility here, not only to choose the right advertising consultant, but also to educate the bloggers on how their websites will be treated given their war on paid links and endorsements.

I'll be interested to see an explanation for this, but the title is a little on the sensational side. I would say that Google's sponsored post campaign is closer to mildly intriguing than "jaw-dropping."

Looking at the most recent (at the moment, http://searchengineland.com/googles-jaw-dropping-sponsored-p...) comment it looks like this is part of a video advertising campaign by Unruly. Apparently (according to Unruly) the video is theirs, but the surrounding text is supplied by the blogger and should use nofollow links.

This was bound to happen in some fashion eventually--it would happen to any company. The question is what will Google do about it. If it's a mea culpa I feel just fine about it. If it's a "no comment" one can hardly ignore the fact that they've gone down the road of filtering your access to information for the worse by making it less open and therefore less informative.

Your move Google.

Comments are jumping all over Google without a word from the company yet.

I believe Google deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Google was banning blogs doing paid reviews from PayPerPost and others. Now they do it themselves...

Conspiracy theory - perhaps someone other than Google is running this campaign in order to trigger Google's automatic censoring of the Chrome download page... Pretty stupid attempt if so as Google is not likely to censor its own pages (certainly not for 400 "bad" links), but spammers can be stupid.

So the concern is that this impacts the ranking of Google Chrome in Google Search, and that the FTC is investigating Google for favoring its own content unfairly?

It makes sense in the context of travel websites (Expedia complaining about Google, for example), but I'm not sure about Google Chrome. It's been promoted on the front page of Google many times--so does Google really need the extra boost in its search results?

IMO they want to possibly avoid anti-trust issues in future when Chrome becomes the dominant player.

"Look we are teh small guys using plain old paid link marketing"

Obligatory Steve Jobs reference:

Google's don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.”

<snark> Your winnings, sir. </snark>

What an absolutely bullshit article, by a site that only exists to advise people in the fruitless zero sum game that is search engine marketing.

So theres a bunch of idiots out there that are gaming Google's paid campaigns, and Google is indirectly benefiting from it. Outrageous!!

Search Engine land should shut down and find another line of work, something that actually benefits society in the tiniest of ways.

I switched to Chrome about a year ago for its performance, and now I'm about to go back to Safari for exactly the same reason. What happened to Chrome performance on OSX Lion? Why does it scroll like molasses?

What does this have to do with the article?

That comment was in the spirit of the original article I guess.

Every discussion about web browsers degenerates into a "which browser is better" flamewar.

i dont have the scrolling issue you describe on os x lion.

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