That lasted, what was it, 48 hours? I have no interest in picking a fight, but for the benefit of other HNers because this really matters for their businesses: there is definitely a point in brand value where the rules change. A one-man operation who pulled a BMW would get terminated without a second thought and would find it very, very difficult to get their old rankings back. Google can't do that to BMW because if BMW can't rank for auto-related queries in Germany then Google looks stupid.
(Public sanction like the BMW thing is more a messaging tactic than anything else. I mean, case in point, we're talking about a single identifiable incident prominent enough to be mentioned in the mass media in a foreign country multiple years ago. Ditto the incident where Google Japan got wrist-slapped for buying reviews. What's the French phrase "to encourage the others"?)
I believe the policy for things like hidden text is to revert as soon as the problem is fixed. (Google attempts to email the webmaster about the problem with whatever email address is available, and also puts a notification in the webmaster console.)
Two addendums on this topic by Jeremy Schoemaker, popular affiliate marketing mastermind, regarding what you discuss - I think he articulates the points well.
Well, since you work at Google, I'll keep walking on egg shells... Please don't kill me all powerful Google! :-P
In all seriousness, I liked the Google of 5 years ago that temporarily banned BMW better than the Google of today. I wish that the rules were applied for big and small brands in exactly the same way -- but it doesn't seem they are. When BMW was blacklisted I was impressed -- but this stiff punishment hasn't seemed to happen for JCPenny or Demand Media in the same way it has been applied to smaller businesses.
Another example: these are clearly paid links: http://techcrunch.com/2008/10/17/thank-you-techcrunch-sponso... - if small time bloggers try shit like this they get shut down, but this is TechCrunch, so it slides. I think this shows how there seem to be two sets of rules, one for the established and one for the startup.
Google cares about "paid links" in the sense that they don't want people to use their pagerank for monetary gain. This is clearly not TechCrunch's intent. Similarly, tiny conferences like http://www.alohaonrails.com/ do the same thing, and don't get shut down. I don't see the double standard in that case.
Intent shouldn't factor into Google's algorithm as that's a thin line even Google can't accurately toe without getting it very wrong. Just because these links are a by-product of advertising with a website doesn't make them anything but paid links. I didn't look but those links should be no-followed, and if they aren't you'd be crazy to assume those advertisers are gaining nothing (rank) from them.
Google would sooner shut down all of Adsense than compromise its search quality. The former would decrease revenue, the latter would be an existential threat to the company. (Look at Google's quarterly reports if you don't believe me.) Even if you don't believe that Google is trying to do more than make money, it should be sufficient to look at the numbers.
"Revenue" is not a metric used to decide whether ranking changes launch. Period.
Sorry but I don't believe this isn't brought up when considering algorithm changes or improvements. If it's not your department it's someones elses (maybe they are ignored or higher up then you?). You mean nobody stands up and says "Hey this will drop our AdSense revenue by X millions if we do this"? It seems a bit reckless to not consider other impacts of algorithm changes when your company is in fact doing all of this to generate a profit.
It's true. It's never brought up as a matter of principle. In fact, a ranking change that could theoretically reward a site for using Google products would not launch.
Didn't AdWords advertisers get a quality score discount (through higher ad clickthrough rates + free checkout processing) for using Google Checkout?
The official page for Google Checkout to this day states "Google Checkout users click on ads 10% more when the ad displays the Checkout badge, meaning more traffic to your site."
That is a pretty clear-cut example of Google tilting their "algorithm" toward promoting another Google product. And in an area where one of our small clients didn't use Google Checkout, that change simply priced him out of the ad auction. His profit margins after ad costs were roughly 10% & with that 10% cut in relative clickthrough rate he no longer had a place in Google's ad auction. He was forced to use another Google product if he wanted to be profitable with AdWords.
Of course one could say that the organic results are different than the paid results, but the Google editions ebooks ranked quickly in the US after the ebook store was launched, Google only rolled out universal search after they bought YouTube, maps & local results now come with tags that earn incremental revenues from the "organic" search results, etc.
Lets see two quotes:
"GAAP net income in the fourth quarter of 2010 was $2.54 billion"
"Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.50 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2010."
If Google 'shut down all of Adsense' because they realized it compromised their search quality, they would have had only $40M in net revenue for the quarter last year. (Doing the simple math of removing AdSense revenue from the picture.)
So you think Sergey and Larry would put up with a 30% drop in revenue to take the high road? We're talking 2.5 billion dollars here, not mouse nuts even to Google.
Shutting down Adsense would be a death blow for Google, compromising search quality is a coin toss. I find it very hard to believe that effects to revenue are not thought about or discussed before making changes, it seems irresponsible and suicidal.
Google was willing to ban BMW for hidden text. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=8252259&page=1 Also, the author does not substantiate the claim that ehow benefitted from this tactic.
"Self-promotion" means getting customers to like your site, not tricking search engines into thinking they already do.