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Google demotes BeatThatQuote one day after buying it

Pushed out of top search spot for 30 days

Google has penalised its own newly acquired UK price comparison site BeatThatQuote.com, after the firm was found to be violating Mountain View's guidelines about linking.

Earlier today, Aaron Wall noted on his SEO Book blog that Google had recently penalised Overstock.com for offering discounts in exchange for links.

"BeatThatQuote partnered with Oxfam to create CompareForGood.com. The homepage consists of a bunch of links into BeatThatQuote.com," said Wall.

"If you look at those links using our server header checker, you will see some 301 redirects. Of course doorway pages are considered spam & we know that Google has torched some other affiliate programs for using 301 redirects."

Wall added that Google execs have been publicly shaming link-buying and that the web kingpin had come down heavily on the entire process.

Just last month, Google made a major change to its search algorithms in order to try to scrub more link farm results from appearing near the top of search results.

Then cut to 24 hours after the Chocolate Factory bought BeatThatQuote.com for £37.7m, and a Google search for the term "beatthatquote" returns no results for the website on the first page. It had previously ranked at the top.

However, Google will allow the BeatThatQuote term to rank on its search results in 30 days' time, by which point its ranking will likely have shot up following the acquisition. ®

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