It would appear that Google Japan is ready to stoop to new lows in order to beat out their rival Yahoo! In fact, so low that they’re willing to pay internet marketing company Cyberbuzz to post good reviews of their new keyword widget. Seems fitting that this news is coming out just one day after I posted the Dilbert comic about buying reviews.
This news appears to have come out of Techcrunch first (at least that’s where I first read it), but has slowly been filtering through the rest of the internet.
Normally I wouldn’t pick on Google. They are a great company and I use them each and every day. The issue here lies with hypocrisy. Serkan Toto sums it up quite nicely:
It’s interesting to see that Google, a company that not too long ago radically took action against PayPerPost bloggers in the US, today thinks the concept is suitable as long as it helps them advance in Japan
Akky Akimoto from on Asiajin has gone and translated part of a random post, sponsored by Cyberbuzz, in support of the new keyword feature on Google Japan:
The Google Hot Keywords blog widget [link to Google's page] can show you what is in fashion now, and what other people are interested in.
It’s appealing that you can view buzzwords from the previous day or the previous week. I am sometimes surprised to see that such words are so popular! Personally, I like the “fortune-teller” feature from the previous week’s ranking. When I click on a keyword, I am quickly taken to Google’s result page and so I enjoy the feature.
I might not have noticed them by myself, but now I understand that these things are what people care about.
I am participating in CyberBuzz’s campaign.
Great. So they admit to participating in a pay-per-post campaign, does that mean that SponsoredReviews.com is now acceptable because all of their paid reviews require full disclosure?
These posts are showing up all over the Google Blog Search Japan. According to Akky, at the time of his post, their were “a number of blog entries [...] reviewing this ‘Hot Keywords’ feature, all of them strangely resembling each other”. Sad, really. Seems to be a “do as I say, not as I do” type of mentality at work here.
I can’t wait to read more on this (once more is available). How will Google get out of this one?
You’re right, this is absolute hypocrisy if it’s true, and only adds fuel to the fire of those that accuse Google of going against their own “do no evil” philosophy.
I’ve started to wonder if maybe this was a Google Japan acting out on their own, and not adhering to the standards set out by the HQ. I have heard rumors that there was an apology released by them, though I haven’t seen it in writing yet.