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02/11/2006: "Google Drops BMW Web Pages because of "Doorway Pages"."

All mighty google recently dropped BMW Germany from its index and took its pagerank from a great big 7 to zero.

The action was disclosed in a Web posting by the group at Google, of Mountain View, Calif., that is responsible for monitoring which Web pages will show up in the search engine's list of results. BMW's home page used several well-known Web-programming techniques to describe itself one way to the Google software probes that constantly monitor the Internet but another way to visitors who actually went to the site.

Matt Cutts, a member of the Google group, said the BMW action amounted to a kind of Internet "spam." Google's action didn't affect BMW's English-language Web pages.

What gets me is that BMW Germany got back in the index within 24-48 hours and got their pagerank back. Small sites owned by the average Joe would probably suffer the ultimate google death penalty and never get back in.

Ricoh, the Japanese photocopier and office equipment manufacturer, is the latest business to suffer the wrath of Google, as its German subsidiary's website has suffered the internet search engine's "death penalty".

Ricoh was blacklisted the 7th. Today, the 11th, they're back and have a 7 PR. So it looks like the big boys have a get out of jail card with google but the little guys pay the ultimate price for the same sins.

At any rate, something isn't right. Google's motto is "Do no evil." I think they mean that for everyone else and not for them. Just my personal opinion. But I'm an expert on my personal opinion.