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Google has lifted an alleged penalty on an internet advertising company which caused a plunge in traffic to its websites.
Shares in Media Corporation leapt by a quarter today after it said the search engine's restrictions on Gambling.com, which saw the site drop from the top spot on Google's rankings when surfers typed in “gambling” to around 100th place, had gone.
“Google is all powerful: they can control whether you succeed or fail. We were doing high fives in the office when we found out the penalty was gone,” chief executive Justin Drummond said. Drummond added the move will add £1 million to Media Corp's profits each year. Gambling.com is now listed eighth in “natural” — non-paid-for —searches when surfers search for “gambling”.
In recent years, BMW and price comparison website moneysupermarket.com have also been hit by changes to Google's search rankings. The German carmaker was “blacklisted” in 2006 after breaching Google's guidelines. The following year, moneysupermarket.com suffered after Google suddenly made searches turn to other sites. Another of Media Corp's websites, creditcardexpert.co.uk, was also affected by the penalty.
Drummond said the company had tried to discuss the problem with Google, but it had never explained the cause of the slip down the rankings. He said it was believed to have been the result either of a rival tying its sites to malicious websites or of a bug in the technology.
The company appointed a consultancy firm a few weeks ago to iron out the problem.
Media Corp's shares jumped ½p to 3p, meaning the stock has almost tripled in value during the past week.
After buying the Gambling.com site four years ago for £11 million, Media Corp reported profits after tax of £2.7 million.
