BMW's German Site Delisted for "Poor Man" Cloaking

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February 6, 2006

BMW's German Site Delisted for "Poor Man" Cloaking

Honestly, I felt this whole story was not a big deal. But I was wrong. Philipp Lenssen is always digging up interesting things on Google, including BMW's Doorway Pages but even when I first saw it at a forum post in our forum named Google, Spam and Big Companies I thought to myself, big deal!

But then Danny wrote it up and then Matt Cutts ripped the site right out of the index, and showed the whole world what he has done.

Then it got slashdotted and Digged, so now every Webmaster in the world should know what cloaking is and why they shouldn't do it.

Forum discussions at Search Engine Roundtable Forums, WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

Update: David Naylor reports this also at www.bmw.fr.

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posted rustybrick in Spam at February 6, 2006 8:30 AM Comments (5)

Comments

Google is getting amazingly arrogant. Just my 2c. Just keep in mind that Google's making political power plays with no shame, and total arrogance.

Posted by J at February 6, 2006 10:35

//Matt Cutts ripped the site right out of the index, and showed the whole world what he has done.
_____________________

For the first time in his Blog - there was "Comments Disabled" - for that particular thread...

Perhaps there WERE valid reasons, but without explaining WHY or WHAT they are,
it comes accross....well....ya' know....hmmm....

Posted by Search Engines Web at February 6, 2006 19:50

This doesn't strike me as necessarily being "arrogant". I think Google is trying to send a PR message to the SEO community, to the effect that Google isn't just targeting little guys, and that anyone caught violating their guidelines runs the risk of being penalized or disappearing from the SERPs, no matter how big and famous they are.

Posted by Econman at February 7, 2006 11:14

BMW.de has been Added back on Google, Matt Explains what transpired...

Also, Ricoh.de has just been re Added a few minutes ago...

Forum topic started here...
http://forums.seroundtable.com/showthread.php?t=386

Posted by Search Engines Web at February 8, 2006 00:36

BMW is experiencing decline in their sales this year. I guess their marketing department isn't working well enough.

Posted by Casandra, german translator at August 14, 2006 15:14