Google ends Chrome search rank penalty period

Google this month released Chrome from the penalty box and reinstated the browser's Page Rank after a 60-day self-imposed sentence over a rule-breaking marketing campaign.

At some point during March, Google lifted the penalty it had imposed on Chrome the first week of January, when it demoted the search ranking of the browser's download page, www.google.com/chrome. It's unclear when Google restored the browser's search rank; Search Engine Land first reported the punishment's expiration on March 16. The decision to reduce Chrome's Page Rank -- the rating Google assigns to sites based on how many other sites link to them -- came after SEO Book and Search Engine Land revealed a marketing campaign that paid bloggers to create generic posts that linked to a video touting Chrome to small businesses.

Google forbids sponsored links, and the company has aggressively punished violators in the past. On Jan. 4, Matt Cutts, who heads the Google team responsible for monitoring linking rules, announced that the Chrome download site's Page Rank would be downgraded and kept there for at least 60 days. Google demoted the download page's search ranking to 0, the lowest-possible score in Page Rank's 0-10 range. On March 24, several Page Rank tools put the Chrome download page at 7. Computerworld confirmed the improved Page Rank by running searches using words such as "browser." That term now pulls a results page with Chrome in the third spot on the first page. During the penalty period, Chrome's download site was pushed all the way down to the sixth result on the fifth page. Mozilla's Firefox remains the top result of a search using "browser." Although Web metrics company Net Applications blamed the punishment for the largest-ever decline in Chrome's usage share during January, numbers from Irish measurement firm Stat Counter told a different story. According to Stat Counter, Chrome's share continued to climb during the penalty period, increasing by 1.1 percentage points in January, 1.4 points in February and 1 point so far this month. The gains were very much in line with Stat Counter's tracking of Chrome increases during 2011, which averaged just over 1 percentage point each month. Stat Counter current has Chrome at a 30.8% share, second only to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Meanwhile, Net Applications put Chrome's global share at 18.9%.