In the wake of a controversy over sponsored Chrome ads, Google said last night that it will lower the page rank of google.com/chrome for at least two months.
"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days," a Google spokesman said via email.
The move comes after a blogger with SEO Book suggested that Google was possibly in violation of its own search-ranking policies with an effort that rewarded bloggers who wrote about the benefits of the Chrome browser.
The news made headlines because Google's rules specifically ban the inclusion of paid links to influence search rankings. The search giant penalized companies like JC Penney for similar behavior.
Google was working with Unruly Media on the Chrome ads. Both companies denied any wrongdoing. Unruly said its video does link back to Chrome, but it is "wrapped in Javascript" so as not to influence search engine rankings. Bloggers are asked to use a "nofollow" tag in their code to prevent search engine manipulation, Unruly said.
That apparently did not go as planned, prompting Google's change.
"We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users," the spokesman said. "While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."
The controversy apparently did not hurt Unruly too much. The company announced this morning that it has secured $25 million in funding, which it said was the largest ever for a private company in the social video sector.