“I love the name of honor, more than I fear death” – Julius Caesar. Google does too, apparently. The company has lowered the PageRank of its Chrome download page after violating its own paid link policy during a sponsored blog post campaign for the browser by Google’s ad agency Unruly Media. Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts responded to criticism of the campaign last night, saying his team “has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days”. Some accuse Google of lying about not knowing it was buying sponsored blog posts through Unruly. I argue it might have thought it was buying StumbleUpon Paid Discovery or other legitimate ads.

For background, earlier this week Google hired Unruly Media to drive views of a promo video for Chrome. Unruly Media paid bloggers to post the video. One blogger linked directly the the Chrome download page without using a nofollow attribute or intermediary to prevent giving link juice to the page. This violates Google’s paid link policy, for which penalties can range from a month to a year of penalized search rank.

Myself and other bloggers incorrectly assumed Google would not penalize itself. Honestly, I’m impressed with the severity of the penalty. Chrome used to rank #2 for a search for “browser”, now it’s #50. Google’s sponsored result ad for Chrome still appears atop the “browser” search, though.

It still seems questionable that Google says it didn’t expect Unruly to do a pay-per-post (PPP) sponsored blog campaign considering that’s the primary type of advertising Unruly does. Cutts says “Google was trying to buy video ads about Chrome, and these sponsored posts were an inadvertent result of that”. Google told Search Engine Land, “Google did not authorize this campaign”.

I actually don’t think Google is lying. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d imagine Google would have made sure Unruly passed along its policies if it planned the campaign. Unruly does distribute videos through StumbleUpon Paid Discovery, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Maybe that’s where Google thought it its ad dollars were going. If Google wants to put the issue to rest, it should provide a specific explanation of exactly what it thought it was buying through Unruly.

Hopefully the flack Google took for the garbage content PPP campaign will disuade reputable companies from using this kind of advertising in the future. At first I blamed bloggers for accepting PPP campaigns selling out their audiences. But really, cash flush companies bribing starving bloggers seems almost coercive. I’d love to see Unruly Media crumble right after taking a $25 million funding round today.

[Image Credit: Search Engine Land]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A blogger paid to publish a Chrome video is responsible for violating Google policy, not Google or its ad agency Unruly Media that sponsored the post. However, Google says it never authorized Unruly to run a sponsored blog post campaign in the first place. Yesterday we covered that Google was sponsoring bloggers to post a Chrome video, but that at least one post linked directly to the Chrome download page in violation of Google’s paid link policy. The author chose to include the link, and her post has now been deleted.

Unruly Media‘s founder and CEO Scott Button tells me “Unruly never requires bloggers to link to back to an advertiser’s site. Occasionally, bloggers will unfortunately pen a post that deviates from our guidelines, as here. Where that happens, we’re very happy to have it pointed out, and will work with the blogger to fix it as fast as possible.”

However, Google has told The Verge ”Google never agreed to anything more than online ads. We have consistently avoided paid sponsorships, including paying bloggers to promote our products.” The company is ”now looking at what changes we need to make to ensure that this never happens again.” Unruly could lose Google’s business over the snafu.

This morning, the offending post briefly had its link to the Chrome download page deactivated before the entire post was deleted. I’ve reached out to the author Mariah Humphries as to why exactly she deleted the post.

It appears Google wasn’t trying to be evil, and instead there was a miscommunication between it, Unruly, and the sponsored bloggers. Still, I’ll reiterate what I said yesterday : “Google should have predicted scrutiny and been more careful with the instructions the bloggers received.” Yes, Button says “Unruly always asks [sponsored bloggers] to mark the post (or any related tweet) as sponsored, too, and to mark any additional links as nofollow so that they don’t influence search engine rankings.” It seems that this should be mandatory, though, not simply a request.

This all brings up the bigger question of the legitimacy of payola in the blogging world. If brands and their ad agencies think they can get more referral traffic or views of a video by paying bloggers to write about them or their client, fine. That’s their business. I’m not a big fan of overly aggressive marketing campaigns, and I don’t think Google should stoop to this to promote Chrome. But my real issue is with the bloggers.

I think authors have a duty to their audience to share what they truly find interesting. Publishing about a topic because you were paid seems like a violation of your readers’ trust, even if you write “Sponsored by…” somewhere in the post. Take sponsorships from companies with overlapping target demographics, not the company you’re currently writing about. For bigger blogs, make sure the writer doesn’t know who is sponsoring what. Otherwise, completely divide editorial from sponsored content by posting ad text or video verbatim.

If my only way to tell if you’re selling rather than discussing something is a one line disclaimer, I’m going to have trouble trusting you. Sure, this is easy to say since I’m a blogger on salary, and it’s harder to live by if you’re scraping by as a freelancer. Either way, though, keeping your editorial content fiercely independent is how you build respect, word-of-mouth, readership, and legitimate monetization potential.

In any case, here’s Scott Button’s well written statement to me defending his company. I believe it shows Unruly Media wasn’t trying to violate Google policy, but that it may need to be more explicit in spelling out linking policies to bloggers it pays, especially when working for high profile clients:

“To be totally clear, Google paid us to get the Chrome video watched. It did not pay us to get bloggers to write about Chrome. It certainly didn’t pay us to get *positive* reviews about Chrome nor to get links back to Google’s site. As other people have pointed out, since Google controls Google, that would have been crazy!

Unruly never requires bloggers to link to back to an advertiser’s site. That’s because we’re in the business of video advertising not search engine marketing, so we couldn’t care less about link juice. We don’t ask for it, we don’t pay for it, and we don’t track it. What we do pay for is views of video content: our business is to distribute branded video content on behalf of blue-chip brands and their agencies.

Unruly is committed to an ethical, legal, and totally transparent approach to online marketing. It’s crucial that branded video content is clearly marked as sponsored and that links don’t distort search engine rankings. It’s also crucial that opinions belong to the author – the internet is a free place and consumers control it, not brands – which is why we never push an angle or opinion, and also why, occasionally, bloggers will unfortunately pen a post that deviates from our guidelines, as here. Where that happens, we’re very happy to have it pointed out, and will work with the blogger to fix it as fast as possible.

Some nitty-gritty for the interested. Unruly’s video player has a very clear ‘Sponsored by Google’ disclosure underneath it. The disclosure itself and the video player do link back to the advertiser’s site, but are wrapped in Javascript so do not influence search engine rankings. Unruly does not require that bloggers write about the video content nor do we require that bloggers provide any additional links to the advertiser’s site. However, if they do, Unruly always asks them to mark the post (or any related tweet) as sponsored, too, and to mark any additional links as nofollow so that they don’t influence search engine rankings. This is just good practice and is one of the things that separates Unruly from other practitioners.

We do sometimes give bloggers a small bonus for going to the trouble of writing a blog post. It’s a thank you and is our way of giving something back to small, independent authors. All bloggers get paid for delivering video views regardless of whether they write about the content. 

Some related articles

• There’s a good piece by a well-respected search and social marketer, Andrew Girdwood, who knows Unuly, here: http://blog.arhg.net/2012/01/is-google-really-breaking-their-own.html
• There’s a very elegant and cogent argument for content-marketing here: http://www.skiddmark.com/2011/10/05/adwatch-to-infiniti-and-beyond-wvideos/

Best Regards,

Scott
Founder & Group CEO
Unruly Media 

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It ducking sucks when you’re texting really fast, all excited about the Giants winning World Series game 6, and your iPhone’s spelling auto correct turns homerun hitter Juan Uribe’s last name into “urine.” We’ve all been there.

Because iPhone spellcheck failure is such a widespread phenomenon, some genius has created an entire site devoted to compiling ridiculous auto correct suggestions, called appropriately “Damn You Auto Correct.”

Hilarity aside, for those of you sick of typing in your girlfriend’s name (Christine) only to get another more inappropriate c-word, here’s instructions for using Safari to make your unruly iPhone to type what you want, damn it.


Thanks: @ieure

Article courtesy of TechCrunch