Expedia Can’t Expect Google’s Immediate Forgiveness in Paid Links Escapade
Photo Credit: A Google search for "cheap flights" found plenty of Cheapflights.com, Cheaptickets.com, Kayak, BookingBuddy, Orbitz and Travelocity on the first page of organic search results -- but no Expedia. Google has penalized Expedia for getting caught up in a paid links scheme. PlaceIt by Breezi
Skift Take
Expedia has long argued that Google wields inordinate power, and now it is feeling Google's wrath. There will be a financial impact, and perhaps a bit of a brand hit, but this injury is far from fatal.
You'll notice that the search engine gods, meaning the minders of Google's algorithms and search results, aren't rushing to deny that Google has extracted a penalty against Expedia for being involved -- directly or indirectly -- in a paid links scheme.
Google's algorithms routinely and automatically weed out sites that offer spammy or low-value content, or do things such as mount pay-for-links schemes, designating questionable links as "follow" links so page rank gets inflated and a company's keywords inappropriately ascend in organic search results.
But, at times -- and there have been many well-documented cases -- Go
