Search engine marketing is back in the mainstream news this week as word spreads that German auto maker BMW has been penalized by Google for using tactics that violate Google's Webmaster guidelines. BMW.de had been using doorway pages that were designed to rank well for one phrase and then redirected users to different content. Google, upon discovering this, removed the entire site from their search results, thus sending BMW.de into a virtual black hole.

BBC News ran a story on the incident today that included the following comments from a BMW spokesperson.

News of BMW's techniques first leaked out onto the web when Matt Cutts (who the UK Times Online says "claims" to be a Google engineer...LOL) pointed out the BMW techniques on his blog last week. Danny Sullivan and Dave Naylor have picked it up and run with it, pointing out that nearly all European automaker sites are using some type of "spam" to gain better rankings.

The interesting thing to me is that the removal of BMW from Google shows that there are penalties for breaking these rules and that even large firms are going to run into problems. It also shows that Google sometimes considers intent when deciding how to handle these situations. While many popular sites (the BBC for example) have been criticized for using things like cloaking, the reality is that the cloaking is still showing relevant results. In the case of the BMW removal, BMW was targeting one phrase (used cars) and then delivering visitors to something totally different (new BMW's.) Intent...being considered. Interesting.