News

BMW’s German Site Axed from Google’s Database

February 8, 2006

The German website of the famed car manufacturer is cut off from Google search results due to malpractices of the company. Matt Cutts, an employer of Google posted in his blog that BMW.de has been removed from the database for violating Google's guidelines by manipulating search results.

Matt says that the German website comes up with certain pages when visited by the search engine, but whenever users visit the website, they are taken by a redirect mechanism to altogether different pages. This is a serious breach of Google's ethics, which says, ‘websites shouldn't deceive the users by presenting different pages to the search engines and the internet users'. Matt writes in his blog that this is a forewarning to the non-English sites that Google will be extremely strict in adhering to its guidelines.

A Google's spokesperson confirms that BMW.de has been removed but refuses to divulge the detailed information. He says that the site would require a re-inclusion request, giving all the details on who started the redirect mechanism with the misleading pages, for BMW.de to be included in the search engine's results again.

Hellen Omwando, a principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. comments that Google should employ advanced algorithm to counter such menace. She adds the company should also utilize human editors to prevent manipulations in the future.

At present, a search for BMW Germany would result in the international BMW site first and a link to the story of BMW.de's removal from the database. But search engines like Yahoo still show the BMW.de web page.