The longest serving flower delivery service in the UK recently suffered a major setback after it was penalised by Google for bad SEO practice.

Interflora’s presence on the search giant’s results pages was significantly damaged after the brand was adjudged to have breached Google’s strict SEO policies by placing more than 150 links in news pages from a number of regions across the UK. The links were placed to help improve Interflora’s search page rankings in the build-up to Valentine’s Day.

Story-based advertorials have become increasingly common over the last few years but this has led to Google clamping down. A statement was recently made by Matt Cutt, the search engine’s head of webspam, warning brands to avoid such behaviour as it conflicted with previously-issued guidelines. In it, he said:

“Please be wary if someone approaches you and wants to pay you for links or ‘advertorial’ pages on your site that pass PageRank. Selling links (or entire advertorial pages with embedded links) that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines, and Google does take action on such violations.”

Interflora’s behaviour saw it removed from Google’s search results for a total of 11 days; a significant period of time with Mother’s Day fast approaching. While the flower brand’s presence has been restored after serving its time, the damaged reputation and reduction in business should act as a stark warning to other brands looking for a quick boost.

Search engines, and Google in particular, have long-maintained that brands should seek to better the results of their websites with genuine, high quality content. With the help of good material, whether it comes in the form of topical videos, eye-catching imagery or informative text, site owners should aim to satisfy their users as opposed to directly trying to please search engines.

Graeme Parton

Graeme has experience creating content for online sources and for the radio, and at university he studied Multimedia Journalism.