Google cuts short Interflora’s paid-for web dominance

Interflora, the well-known worldwide flower delivery service, has been virtually wiped off the face of the internet when it comes to search engine marketing. The company, which was the first result for practically every common flower delivery related search query, has been severely penalized by Google for violating its online advertising rules.

Until February 20, the Interflora.co.uk domain was the first place result whenever anybody typed in [flower delivery], [florist] or similar terms in the Google search engine. Come the next day, however, no such thing. For some extremely popular (read: financially fruitful) key words, like ‘flowers’, Interflora could in fact barely be found among the first pages of results at all.

Search engine giant Google has been known to remove companies from its search results when they employ unscrupulous methods to score high rankings. The company maintains strict rules when it comes to what is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the influencing of its ranking by clever technical means and tricks.

What Interflora (or, more likely, the agency in charge of their online advertisement strategy) appears to have done wrong is the mass use of paid advertorials, optimization experts point out. The company has been putting out a lot of ‘branded’ news stories over the last weeks, for example. Using those to artificially inflate your search engine ranking is against Google’s rules.

Source: TheFlorist .co.uk