Internet giant Google has penalised a site that it acquired just last week for violating the company’s webmaster guidelines.
Google bought British site BeatMyQuote last week for £37.7 million, but it was found shortly after that the site was engaging in some banned tactics including paid links and comment spamming, according to various reports.
SEO blogger Aaron Wall points out on his website SEOBook that while the site is not banned, it has been lowered several rankings in search results.
“BeatThatQuote partnered with Oxfam to create CompareForGood.com. The homepage consists of a bunch of links into BeatThatQuote.com,” Wall said.
“If you look at those links using our server header checker, you will see some 301 redirects. Of course doorway pages are considered spam and we know that Google has torched some other affiliate programs for using 301 redirects.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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