PR Stunt? Google Penalizes Google

For those of you who don’t know, Google slapped Google Japan in the penalty box. Why you ask? Because Google Japan dared to venture into the dark world of paid posting.

The big wigs at Google High Command frown on bloggers making money by doing paid posting. Probably because they haven’t yet figured out how to get a piece of the paid posting pie.

This all started when Google Japan signed an agreement with a marketing company that allowed for paid posting. Well this would make Google a hypocrite wouldn’t it? Getting money for paid posting while publicly denouncing it.

Needless to say the users of Google Japan were pretty upset with the hypocrisy. So what does Google do? It publicly announces that they are penalizing Google Japan.

How you ask? They dropped their PageRank from 9 down to a measly PageRank of 5, and it dropped its value as a trusted source.

What! Is that it?

You have to be kidding me. For starters PageRank is not a very meaningful metric. The PageRank that is displayed in toolbars across the web is not… I repeat… is not the same as the complex internal ranking Google uses internally.

Does this mean that when you search Google on Google Japan that they fell in rankings? I doubt it. Besides the user is already using Google so who cares.

The penalty is no real penalty. I’m concerned that this is nothing more than a PR stunt to put fear in the heart of bloggers about writing paid postings.

What about a real penalty? Maybe the head of Google Japan should step down. Maybe they should fire the lawyers that let it slip through. Maybe they should disallow doing business with the marketing company.

There is a lot Google can do, but simply dropping their PageRank by 4 points isn’t anything more than a PR stunt.

Tell me what you think about this.