SOT: BMW banned from Google...

[DanH]

If you search for www.bmw.de website on google you won't get any results:

Click here to do the search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=www.bmw.de&btnG=Search

Here is more info (http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2QDOF1L5RRIFYQSNDBESK HA?articleID=179100512).

[632 Regal]

maybe a few complimentary new cars would help to get them re-included...lol

[SRR2]

Good for Google and shame on BMW. Any frequent Google user knows how annoying and time-wasting it is to get results high up on the list that don't actually contain what you've searched for. The phantom page trick is used by lots of unscrupulous site owners (like porn sites) to build traffic. If Google didn't police this, their tool would be much less useful.

[Zeuk in Oz]

If you search for www.bmw.de website on google you won't get any results:

Click here to do the search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=www.bmw.de&btnG=Search

Here is more info (http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=2QDOF1L5RRIFYQSNDBESK HA?articleID=179100512).

I've heard of "government by google" but this gives the phrase new meaning.

Good on them if what they are claiming is true !

I blame it on Bangle's designs ! :D

[Anton CH.]

Looks like someone didn't get paid enough.

[genphreak]

Looks like someone didn't get paid enough.It's been simmering for thge last few weeks. Google were doing the right thing-- as Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped points out, in BMW's Doorway Pages (http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-02-01-n31.html)BMW's web-masters were employing hidden content on its web site in Germany. Search engines see one thing; humans another. It's cloaking (which is against most search engine's rules), but not IP based, more of the "poor man's" variety that uses JavaScript.

Look at this page (http://www.bmw.de/de/produkte/gebrauchtwagen/index.html). You'll see nice, pretty pictures of BMWs. Philipp then illustrates how when you turn off JavaScript, you get a page of completely different content, including the use of the word "used car" 42 times in what appears to be a gibberish doorway page. That's a page where the sentences may look like they are saying something to a search algorithm but make no sense to a human reader.

When you disable JavaScript, you actually don't see what Philipp got. Instead, you get a page telling you you need to have JavaScript to view the site. Part of this seems to be due to some redirection going on. But here's an easy way to see what Google's actually being shown -- this page (http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:http://www.bmw.de/gebrauchtwagen-bmw.html&hl=en&lr=&strip=1) from the Google cache.

Article details courtesy of Danny Sullivan (http://searchenginewatch.com/about/article.php/2155651)