Expedia Can't Expect Google's Immediate Forgiveness in Paid Links Escapade
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
