Google says it has penalised a major UK national newspaper publisher, after it was found to be offering online ‘SEO editorials’ at prices of GB£1,000 upwards.

A memo from Express Newspapers, which owns the Daily Express newspaper, offering the service to its advertising clients on its main website, was leaked in April, and Google investigated the offer.

The following month, Google issued an announcement that it had “taken action” and no longer trusted links from a major UK newspaper group. That group was not named in the announcement, but it was widely taken as referring to the Daily Express.

Offering to post paid content on a website with the aim of boosting a third party’s rankings in the search engine results is against Google’s terms of service.

Google initially imposed a blanket page rank penalty on Express Newspapers content, but an interview with members of Google’s search quality experts on the Digital Inspiration website was later reinforced by a comment from the company’s head of Webspam, Matt Cutts.

He admitted that Google had been made aware of the Daily Express’s move, and added: “Google’s quality guidelines are clear on this point: paid links shouldn’t pass PageRank.”

Cutts added: Whether the paid links are in an “advertorial” or somewhere else on the page, that would violate our quality guidelines and Google would take action on those violations, both so that the link buyers wouldn’t benefit and so that the link sellers wouldn’t be trusted in the future by Google.”

Google itself does sell such links, but they are clearly differentiated in the listings, by being displayed under a ‘Sponsored link’ heading against a shaded background, and do not appear in the main rankings lists.