Shopzilla on the block? And PageRank PayPerPost penalties

We've heard rumors from well-placed sources that Shopzilla may be on the block and is being shopped around to private equity firms and companies for a possible sale or leveraged buyout.

If true, a sale wouldn't exactly come as a surprise as the CSE has been struggling financially, was recently spun out as part of the new Scripps Interactive and since at least Q2 has been publicly acknowledged by the company to be underperforming.

And in other news, a blogger was recently contacted by Shopzilla to remove a PayPerPost review about the CSE where he was initially paid $10 for the review, only to be offered $100 to remove the post.  Other bloggers reported similar situations.

This is probably a combination of 1) at attempt to take all measures possible to improve PageRank (Google is penalizing PayPerPost links) and 2) improve public relations by eliminating paid reviews.

I'd love some more information on these topics -- write me at scott.hurff at channeladvisor if you have anything else I can add here.

Comments

[eCopt]

Guess Shopzilla is staying put... for now.

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2859044020071128?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews

[Josh]

Wow, the offer of payment to remove paid links is interesting... I hadn't heard much about that... I thought Google was mainly penalizing bloggers who ran paid articles...