...on the internal memo, because Google Japan took a major PR hit for doing just that.

Google Blogoscoped covers the background on exactly how Google Japan was paying for links:

Akky Akimoto at the Asiajin blog recently reported that Google Japan was paying bloggers to review a new Google widget. Using pay-per-post service CyberBuzz, blog posts like the following popped up, strangely resembling each other, as Asiajin reports

Naturally, this news is a bit of a shock to people in the US after the similar stateside PayPerPost service received some pretty harsh treatment from Google (see Matt Cuttss take from Dec 2007).

Okay, so that looks pretty bad for Google and Google Japan. So whats a search overlord to do when a regionalized site violates its guidelines? Make GJ apologize and sit in the corner?

Score one for the rule of law today, folks"Google did the same thing to its own site that it did to other sites. As Search Engine Land confirms from Matt Cuttss Twitter stream, Google Japan dropped from the 9 range in PageRank to the 5 range. (They actually did apologize (translation), too, but anyway.)

Naturally, its possible that another 9-range PR site would be penalized more heavily for violating Googles guidelines, but Im glad to see Google taking some action against GJ here.

What do you think? (But lets not have this devolve into a paid links debate, mmkay?)

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