Well what an interesting turnout this has become. Google of the “Do No Evil” fame, shoot you down in flames for dofollow links on paid posts, text links etc, have been caught with their proverbial pants down.

It all started when the good folk of the blogosphere cottoned on to what had happened with a campaign run by Unruly, a video promotions company, who had their suppliers create paid blog posts with the title, “This Post Was Sponsored by Google Chrome” and the text was a short blurb on how wonderful the world of business is because of Google Chrome.

I will not go over the banter that many have covered to this point and you can read more of it at the following links:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/19505/do_evil_this_post_is_sponsored_by_google_chrome_seo_spam

What point I wish to raise is exactly about the content Google chose to put into that video. Apart from the long bow drawn in reference to Chrome, some how that browser has made this company a national success eludes me, but the real interest is in why they chose this company at all.

After doing some fairly basic seo research on the company featured, KingArthurFlour.com, I discovered this interesting post from Rand Fishkin on the SEOMOZ.org website:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/making-reference-content-rank-well-in-the-serps-whiteboard-friday

This original post was dated, October 7 2010 and it appears that Google may have picked this company up to be featured by simply what Rand had to say about their extremely successful presence in the social media sphere.

Google knowing very well what they were doing here with the “red flag to a bull” approach to the whole episode, would know very well that if they chose a company that had built links in the artificial way that most successful seo is carried out, then this would be a bad bad thing in their fight against seo in general.

Not being stupid, they probably did their homework well (lets face it if they couldn’t find one unique story to use as an example of the shinning way to web success, then every black hat seo would be fueled up to gills with a double barreled reason for doing it with stealth) and made sure they were squeaky clean. Or did they?

From the scan of the top links they have that are from PR5 pages, I couldn’t find a one that was nofollow.

PageRank 5

ANCHOR TEXT: www.kingarthurflour.com

• http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/lifestyle/fork_lift
• http://www.foodhistorynews.com/yellow.html
• http://arikaokrent.com/bagels.html
• http://foodhistorynews.com/yellow.html

ANCHOR TEXT: king arthur flour

• http://www.ciaoitalia.com
• http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com
• http://www.digital-librarian.com/food.html
• http://cachot.canalblog.com
• http://www.lazymanandmoney.com
• http://www.uvtrails.org

ANCHOR TEXT: king arthur flour’s

• http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/ethical-businesses-with-a-better-bottom-line/?ref=opinion
• http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/ethical-businesses-with-a-better-bottom-line

ANCHOR TEXT: allison@kaf

• http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/no-bake-chocolate-cake-recipe.html
• http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/no-bake-chocolate-cake-recipe.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: 101Cookbooks (101 Cookbooks)

ANCHOR TEXT: king authur flour

• http://www.martindalecenter.com/Nutrition_5_Recipe.html

ANCHOR TEXT: visit website »

• http://www.hanoverchamber.org/view.members.php?c=cat_shop
• http://hanoverchamber.org/view.members.php?c=cat_shop
• http://hanoverchamber.org/view.members.php?c=cat_eat

ANCHOR TEXT: king arthur flour – baking store

• http://www.happygomarni.com

ANCHOR TEXT: the baker’s catalogue

• http://www.columbia.edu/~klg19

ANCHOR TEXT: kingarthurflour.com

• http://www.inspired2cook.com

Still to be fair they do have a large presence in the social circles and this is helping them with links. Oh they don’t do this by themselves as they have an Oracle backed company Endeca.com doing their driving. A tonne of work creating all the necessary elements for good social content. In this case it is rich media content, videos, pdfs and complete recipes for their product.

Getting it right online is not achieved by accident. It takes careful planning, understanding what your target customers are interested in and rolling out a successful fulfillment plan to meet that need. The whole picture is one of incredible demand it places upon even a humble flour company that dates back to the 18th century, that one wonders just how is the little guy expected to come up with the required ingredients to cook up a similar level of success on the Internet.

So Google chose to promote a company that on hear say have been playing by the rules but when you dig a little deeper, find the truth, they are doing what Google shuns and now we discover what Google does.

I guess there is a whole new level of definition to what “Evil” is by the G-standard. Or is that a case of “do as I say but not as I do”.

Besides all of this, can someone please explain to me how Google Chrome was responsible for this amazing success? If there are SEO benefits I want to know (tongue firmly planted in cheek!).

To leave a comment please feel free or if you wish to contact Greg Gillespie, he can be contacted on greg@heliumseo.com.au