SEOUK Flower Site Banned from Google for Advertorial Links Sees Rankings Restored

UK Flower Site Banned from Google for Advertorial Links Sees Rankings Restored

UK flower delivery site Interflora, banished from Google’s UK searches after it placed about 150 advertorials on regional news sites, is out of the penalty box after only 11 days – a timely return to the search results ahead of Mothering Sunday.

UK flower delivery site Interflora, banished from Google’s UK searches after it placed about 150 advertorials on regional news sites, is out of the penalty box after only 11 days – a timely return to the search results ahead of Mothering Sunday.

It wasn’t initially clear at first why Inteflora was no longer ranking for its own name or terms such as [flowers] or [flower delivery]. But an analysis on David Naylor’s blog revealed the aggressive advertorial campaign Interflora embarked on ahead of Valentine’s Day:

interflora-advertorial

After Interflora and several UK newspapers were punished, it became clear in a Google Webmaster Central blog post by Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts that at issue were “advertorial” pages. Google advised anyone who receives a warning for selling links to remove paid links or advertorial pages or use rel=nofollow on paid links, and then submit a reconsideration request.

As Dan Barker noted on Google+, Interflora has done a lot of cleaning up, ranking for their name and highly for [flower delivery], though it hasn’t quite regained its rankings for [flowers].

The Interflora penalty is much shorter than what JCPenney and Overstock had to endure a couple years back. And it’s quite good news for them ahead of what is one of the biggest flower holidays.

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

whitepaper | Analytics The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

8m
Data Analytics in Marketing

whitepaper | Analytics Data Analytics in Marketing

10m
The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

whitepaper | Digital Marketing The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

1y
Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

whitepaper | Digital Marketing Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

1y