Mother’s Day Flowers: Top Sites Battle to Game Google

Hundreds of Americans have searched for “Mother’s Day Flowers” this weekend, but they may not realize a vicious battle of algorithm-gaming is behind what comes up. And some flower websites, the New York Times reports, aren’t playing fair. All of the major flower sites—1800Flowers.com, Teleflora, FTD, and ProFLowers.com—have “paid links” on others sites that link text of popular searches like “mother’s day flowers” back to their own sites. This is a popular way to game Google’s search rankings, but it violates Google policy and sometimes results in online merchants being banned or demoted by the search giant. Being penalized by Google can send plunge a site’s ranking, sometimes for months. The New York Times sent Google 600 examples of paid links that violate its policies, but Google said they had little impact on search rankings, and that the company was therefore unlikely to take action.