http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1
JCPenny saw explosive online sales over this holiday season and there might be a pretty good explanation as to why.
The NY Times just released an article showing some suspicious search results where JCPenny was consistently being ranked at the top for general terms like "little black dress" "skinny jeans".
After an investigation using site explorers (Have the ability to track where link-backs come from), NY Times discovered a number of phantom websites about any and all types of products linking back to JCPenny. These fake listings were tricking Google in a Blackhat SEO fashion and having JCPenny show up at the top of search results for very general items "blenders" and brand specific items "Samsung Appliance".
Blackhat SEO tactics such as link building with phantom websites or fake articles violates the terms of agreement with Google (and most search engines). In most cases this will result in decreased search standings when caught or even expulsion from search results until everything gets cleared up.
The fact that this wasnt brought up sooner by JCPennys competitors (Macys, Amazon, OldNavy, etc.) shows an extreme lack of search quality control on a corporate level. Webmasters should be conducting site and search audits once a month to ensure that their search/SEO money is being well spent. JCPennys deceitful online practices (wither this was knowingly done with managements permission or just bad practices from their SEO consultants) have possibly cost these companies millions of dollars in lost online sales and resulted in strict search punishment with regards to JCPenny from Google.
This whole debacle just troubles me in that millions of dollars are spent on search and SEO with what seems to be no proper due diligence or over site of online campaigns.
Best Regards,
-The Marketing Ninja
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