Google Boots BMW.de Website

Google has given BMW’s German language site the boot for allegedly violating its Web search guidelines by using a practice that could potentially give an artificial boost to its search engine ranking, CNET News.com reports.

Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer, wrote on his blog that BMW.de had been blacklisted for using “doorway pages” that automatically redirect Web surfers to another URL, CNET reports.

Cutts said that when users attempted to visit various BMW Web pages found through Google, they’d be redirected to pages with lower rankings than the ones they wanted to access.

“This is a violation of our Webmaster quality guidelines, specifically the principle of ’Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users’,” Cutts’ blog read.

Cutts says BMW.de will need to remove the JavaScript that is incorrectly directing users around the site, in order to attain Google listing status once again, CNET reports.

Google has been in the media spotlight as of late, due to its controversial decision to censor content from its Chinese language search site.  For more background, read Google Will Censor Chinese Web Searches, Google Defends Chinese Search Censorship, U.S. Lawmaker Battles Chinese Internet Censorship and Firms Ask Gov’t to Stand Against Censorship.

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