Feb 14, 2011

J.C. Penney cheats on Google!

Posted by Wendy Weber

A stunning piece on the front of Sunday’s NYT Business Section reveals that J.C. Penney engaged in “black hat” search optimization to raise the profile of their website: click here.

It was discovered that for a variety of search terms, from “bedding” to “skinny jeans” to “grommet top curtains” to “Samsonite carry on luggage”, J.C. held the No. 1 spot. Apparently J.C. Penney linked to countless websites – many of which seem all but abandoned, except for the links. Exploiting those sites just for links, while not illegal, is a Google no-no. The company’s guidelines warn against using tricks to improve search engine rankings, including what it refers to as “link schemes”. If caught, the penalty is that Google will take steps to see to it that you sink in organic search results.

Last week, The Times sent Google the evidence it had collected about the links to JCPenney.com. The drop in organic search status was almost immediate.

At 7pm Eastern time on Wednesday, J.C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.” Two hours later, it was at No. 71.

At 7pm on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.” By 9pm, it had sunk to No. 68.

Penney reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Penney also issued a statement: “We are disappointed that Google has reduced our rankings due to this matter.”

Are they kidding?

Why did Google fail to catch this sooner? Furthermore, Google had detected search guidelines on 3 prior occasions, most recently in November. Each time, steps were taken that reduced Penney’s search results.

Google’s spam copy Matt Cutts responded, “Do I wish our system had detected things sooner? I do”. But “given the one billion queries that Google handles each day, I think we do an amazing job.”

Yes, they do an amazing job, but given the size of this retailer, and the fact that they had been reprimanded several times in the past…not amazing enough.

In