According to Search Engine Land, Google has demoted the Chrome web browser homepage on search result pages following an advertising campaign that backfired against the web giant.

The report says that bloggers were caught posting "low-quality content" that is related to Google's Chrome web browser in an attempt to promote a video made by Google. However, one post included a direct link to Chrome's download page, which in turn would raise the website's PageRank value and allow it to appear higher on search results. Due to the fact that Google payed for the campaign, this is against its own PageRank policy.

Now, typing in "browser" in Google will show Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer all before Chrome, which is currently in the fiftieth (50) spot. In fact, typing in "Chrome" into Google will not even display the web browser's download page first (this page is first in the search results). 

Google's statement is below:

"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days.We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."