Google punishes retail website Overstock depress its search rankings

Sina Science and technology news Beijing time of February 24 morning, Google said in Wednesday, the retail website Overstock.com violated the rules of no human intervention search results rankings, so decided to lower the ranking of the site in search results.

The pages of the Overstock Web site recently rose to the top of multiple keyword search results, including "vacuum cleaners" and "laptops." Since Tuesday, however, links to the Overstock Web site have dropped to page 5th or 6th of Google's search results, which has greatly reduced the likelihood of users clicking on these links.

Overstock said the incident initially resulted from the website encouraging students and teachers to post links to overstock discounts on the university's website. Overstock said the site had stopped the event on February 10 after receiving a warning from Google, but some university network administrators did not delete the links in time.

Internet search experts say websites linked to educational institutions are more valued in Google's search algorithms than commercial websites. If you have multiple Web sites that end with ". edu" linked to a page, the page's ranking in Google's search results is up.

"Google has made it clear that they don't think these links should affect the search algorithm," said Patrick Byrne, Overstock CEO Patrick Bain. We understand Google's stance and make appropriate adjustments to Google's code. ”

Google did not disclose the details of the incident, saying the company's policy does not allow discussion of a particular website. A Google spokeswoman said Google's goal was to "provide the most relevant information possible". He also said: "24 hours a day will appear to try to deceive the Google search results ranking events." ”

The overstock-related event is the second time Google has imposed punitive measures on large retailers within two weeks. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Google had lowered its j.c. The ranking of Penny's website links says the retailer hires outside companies to do SEO work. J.C Penny said it was unclear about the incident and did not authorize other companies to do so. (D-Gold)