- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
US retail giant J. C. Penney was punished by Google for using black hat SEO tactics to artificially inflate its search ranking for common keywords.
The revelation came as a result of an investigation by New York Times jounalists, who noticed during the holiday shopping season that J. C. Penney's website appeared as the top search result for generic terms such as dresses, bedding, furniture, area rugs and many others.
Not only that, but the website was also Google's first stop for more exact searches, even ones that contained brand names. For example, jcpenney.com appeared before samsonite.com in search results for "Samsonite carry on luggage."
The newspaper asked a search engine optimization (SEO) expert to look into the matter and he uncovered thousands of spam pages filled with hundreds of keywords and all linking back to the retailer.
"[...] It’s the most ambitious attempt I’ve ever heard of. This whole thing just blew me away. Especially for such a major brand. You’d think they would have people around them that would know better," said Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media, who analyzed J. C. Penney's black hat SEO.
The New York Times shared their findings with Google, which admitted demoting the retailer's search rankings on three separate occasions in the past for violating the rules.
More details - link
The revelation came as a result of an investigation by New York Times jounalists, who noticed during the holiday shopping season that J. C. Penney's website appeared as the top search result for generic terms such as dresses, bedding, furniture, area rugs and many others.
Not only that, but the website was also Google's first stop for more exact searches, even ones that contained brand names. For example, jcpenney.com appeared before samsonite.com in search results for "Samsonite carry on luggage."
The newspaper asked a search engine optimization (SEO) expert to look into the matter and he uncovered thousands of spam pages filled with hundreds of keywords and all linking back to the retailer.
"[...] It’s the most ambitious attempt I’ve ever heard of. This whole thing just blew me away. Especially for such a major brand. You’d think they would have people around them that would know better," said Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media, who analyzed J. C. Penney's black hat SEO.
The New York Times shared their findings with Google, which admitted demoting the retailer's search rankings on three separate occasions in the past for violating the rules.
More details - link
