Tuesday 7th February 2006

Google removes BMW from the Web

German Web site no longer exists

---

De-Googled

Top German carmaker BMW doesn't exist any more -- that is, if you search for it using Google as almost everyone does.

Google has stripped BMW from its listings because the company was manipulating the search engine's results. A Google spokeswoman told the FT: "We cannot tolerate Web sites trying to manipulate search results as we aim to provide users with the relevant and objective search results."

BMW's crime was to use so-called "doorway pages" to redirect users to different pages from that seen by the search engine's automated Web crawlers. BMW said it was surprised because Google hadn't spoken to the carmaker about it, but remained confident that BMW would soon be reinstated.

According to the FT, BMW spokesman Marc Hassinger said that just 0.4 per cent of BMW.de’s traffic came via search engines such as Google, because most people wanting to visit the site either knew or could guess the correct address.

What's worse than being de-googled?

[cobra289]

I tried BMW on google.co.uk; .de & .it. I'm glad they removed it because I only got 39 MILLION hits each time; that's effective then.

[dick dastardly]

Whoops, soon there'll be some tasty marketing jobs opening up in the BMW offices.

[paulie-mafia]

I really don't see the issue here - everybody does stuff like this to try and raise their profile, it's called Search Engine Optimisation!

[havoc]

paulie-mafia said:

I really don't see the issue here - everybody does stuff like this to try and raise their profile, it's called Search Engine Optimisation!

The issue is that for the average Joe trying to find a specific topic, it's really frustrating to get all these sites which are set up with keywords but offer you absolutely no help whatsoever.

[chouca]

bmw.com is only No. 1 in goolge´s search list:

www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bmw

that ban didn´t last long...

[hugoagogo]

cobra289 said:

I tried BMW on google.co.uk; .de & .it. I'm glad they removed it because I only got 39 MILLION hits each time; that's effective then.

but you didn't get 'www.bmw.de' cos it doesn't exist now according to google

[dick dastardly]

paulie-mafia said:

I really don't see the issue here - everybody does stuff like this to try and raise their profile, it's called Search Engine Optimisation!

SEO is the fairly harmless stuff such as link building and including the right contect - something which Google actually encourages. BMW was artificially changing search results by using many gateway pages which added no benefit to the user and is something which has long been frowned upon by Google. Everyone in the marketing trade worth their salt knows it's not worth doing so I'm suprised a company as large as BMW did for so long.

[paulie-mafia]

dick dastardly said:

paulie-mafia said: I really don't see the issue here - everybody does stuff like this to try and raise their profile, it's called Search Engine Optimisation! SEO is the fairly harmless stuff such as link building and including the right contect - something which Google actually encourages. BMW was artificially changing search results by using many gateway pages which added no benefit to the user and is something which has long been frowned upon by Google. Everyone in the marketing trade worth their salt knows it's not worth doing so I'm suprised a company as large as BMW did for so long.

Fair point, though I bet Google wouldn't have an issue if BMW were paying to be top of the pile in their 'sponsored links'. It's all a bit poacher / gamekeeper!

[Dodgey_Rog]

its probably some hoax, everyone searches for it to see if it works, job done.

[r988]

Dodgey_Rog said:

its probably some hoax, everyone searches for it to see if it works, job done.

No its only the BMW german site, bmw.de, type bmw.de into google and see what you get.

BMWs international sites are fine, like bmw.com, so it's frankly worked brilliantly in BMWs favour by free advertising, maybe they did it deliberately as part of some elaborate marketing scheme, but more likely is they are just idiots who lucked out.

I believe BMW did it because their site is/was in flash which makes it difficult to get onto a search engine so they tried to 'cheat' and got caught (eventually). If they had a proper site in the first place they wouldn't have this problem.

[cobra289]

if you type in bmw.de you get:

Sorry, no information is available for the URL bmw.de

Find web pages from the site bmw.de
Find web pages that contain the term "bmw.de"

Click on either of the above links & you get 39m hits again.

Why am I writing this; I dont even like BMWs

[SJobson]

Google said:

"We cannot tolerate Web sites trying to manipulate search results as we aim to provide users with the relevant and objective search results."

So why manipulate your own search results in China, eh? Hypocritical bastards.

[martaay]

SJobson said:

Google said: "We cannot tolerate Web sites trying to manipulate search results as we aim to provide users with the relevant and objective search results." So why manipulate your own search results in China, eh? Hypocritical bastards.

cos theres a (rather) large market there and by jumping through a few hoops, they can make more money!

In relation to the bmw issue its simply making a scapegoat out of BMW to highlight to other less high-profile websites that use this technique to boost their ratings, the same fate will happen to them eventually.

[godders75]

either way this is fab news for BMW. The "Busty Mad Women" Site has been a quite fave on mine for many a year.

No publicity is bad publicity I say......

>> Edited by godders75 on Tuesday 7th February 13:16

>> Edited by godders75 on Wednesday 8th February 19:58

[b10brw]

I wish someone would remove BMW's intrusive advert on Autoscout24's website, every time on this site the advert appears and you can not get rid of the dam thing.

[dan2471]

I have searched bmw on google.co.uk and it did come up with the bmw site?

[SJobson]

martaay said:

SJobson said: Google said: "We cannot tolerate Web sites trying to manipulate search results as we aim to provide users with the relevant and objective search results." So why manipulate your own search results in China, eh? Hypocritical bastards. cos theres a (rather) large market there and by jumping through a few hoops, they can make more money! In relation to the bmw issue its simply making a scapegoat out of BMW to highlight to other less high-profile websites that use this technique to boost their ratings, the same fate will happen to them eventually.

Ah, so BMW.de hasn't paid for one of the sponsored adverts which are another manipulation of the results? I see...

[police state]

Stuff google. Just another bunch of Digital Imperialists

When was the last time it actually managed to throw up a page of releveant results?, that weren't paid for by sponsors, or links ot other search directories. Their results are becoming more arcane by the day...

I use exalead.com

Crikey!, I've just realised I've posted on the BMW forum,

a 1st for me...

>> Edited by police state on Tuesday 7th February 18:34

[the dodger]

police state said:

Crikey!, I've just realised I've posted on the BMW forum, a 1st for me...

Had I realised that I wouldn't be replying either.........

All I was going to say is that maybe BMW paid them to do this? - like someone said before here about "no publicity..."

TED! - please warn people they are entering a BMW site on the link please.

[uldis]

Don't understand, I just typed "BMW" in google and got: Results 1 - 10 of about 35,900,000 for bmw. (0.06 seconds), including www.bmw.com

Hmmm, maybe I'm missing something...