Updated: Google takes strong action on Money.co.uk fake linkbait article

Most of you probably heard about a certain article published on Money.co.uk recently. Matt Cutts from Google promised to take action and it seems like this action has now been taken.

The article remains in the Google index but no longer ranks for it’s own name. In fact the site doesn’t even rank for it’s title tag anymore!

My guess is that Google has applied a filter to ignore all the links pointing to the fake story and has added a penalty to the site.

My opinion is that if you want to make up some fake linkbait you need to make sure that Google (or anybody else) doesn’t find out it’s fake.

Matts comments:

Matt says they don’t want to be the “truth” police. Matt says it was different than a prank like April Fools. It was more deceptive than that as it had no disclosure that it was fake. Matt looks at it then as more intentional than accidental.

Matt says to not take any action on a story that is fake like that one was would be irresponsible. He sees it as an attempt to get links even if you have to “lie” about it and feels that is just wrong. In reality, it was a move to protect Google users from lies and deception.

BY Patrick Altoft AT 9:52am ON Wednesday, 4 June 2008

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+