J.C. Penny BUSTED By NY Times For Using "Black Hat" SEO

[Derek S]

Just read this article

The NY Times has a great investigative report on how J.C. Penney became the number one search result for countless search terms on Google. Dresses, bedding, area rugs, skinny jeans, tablecloths and even grommet top curtains and more words popped J.C. Penney up as number one. Not Amazon, not Macy's, not any of the other bigger stores but J.C. Penney. How did this happen?

Apparently, J.C. Penney might have been participating in "black hat" optimization and goosing their rankings. According to Doug Pierce, an expert in online search:

[Google] draws a pretty thick line between techniques it considers deceptive and "white hat" approaches, which are offered by hundreds of consulting firms and are legitimate ways to increase a site's visibility. Penney's results were derived from methods on the wrong side of that line, says Mr. Pierce. He described the optimization as the most ambitious attempt to game Google's search results that he has ever seen.
"Actually, it's the most ambitious attempt I've ever heard of," he said. "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."
J.C. Penney denies these actions but it's pretty clear that "someone paid to have thousands of links placed on hundreds of sites scattered around the Web, all of which lead directly to JCPenney.com." And as most of us know, more links to your site almost always mean a higher Google ranking for you.

After the NY Times notified Google, J.C. Penney has dropped from being the first result for nearly every search to 70th. J.C. Penney has fired its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex, and has said they will continue to work to "retain our high natural search position". Read the full account at the NY Times.

Pretty crazy stuff and interesting to see how google reacted to a personal spam report from The New York Times.

Source: How J.C. Penney Became the Number One Search Result For Nearly Every Google Search Via http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/bu...er=rss&emc=rss

[Fernando Veloso]

I really don't know what's worse, someone bombing them into oblivion or Google falling for it...

[Derek S]

LOL in the NY Times article J.C. Penny said they had nothing to do with it HAHAHA

I wish a stranger would spend thousands of dollars on quality links, all pointing to my site for no reason

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Derek S

LOL in the NY Times article J.C. Penny said they had nothing to do with it HAHAHA

I wish a stranger would spend thousands of dollars on quality links, all pointing to my site for no reason

I'm sure they meant SearchDex. Probably hadn't much of an idea as to what they were doing, just knew that it worked.

[Derek S]

well the best part is now J.C. Penny has a SWEET text link pointing to their site from a popular NYTimes.com article LOL

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by Derek S

LOL in the NY Times article J.C. Penny said they had nothing to do with it HAHAHA

I wish a stranger would spend thousands of dollars on quality links, all pointing to my site for no reason

Right now, hundreds of companies are reading that piece of **** called "news article" and making plans on how to demolish THEIR competition..

Let's see:

Step 1 - Go on for a year making them BIG, sending them thousands of links
Step 2 - Make a genius move with a friend reporter and...
Step 3- Take them out of business for a couple years.

This is the most stupid thing I ever seen since started IM in 2003.

Seriously.

But since this is so easy and I am a ex radio dj, guess I can use my friends in media to take down my competition, huh?

I tell ya, the world is getting stupid by the day.

And congrats to Mr Matt for making very clear what and how we need to do to demolish a competitor...

Let me start my list of BIG sites in Portugal buying (high PR) links everyday...

[thebitbotdotcom]

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Right now, hundreds of companies are reading that piece of **** called "news article" and making plans on how to demolish THEIR competition..

Let's see:

Step 1 - Go on for a year making them BIG, sending them thousands of links
Step 2 - Make a genius move with a friend reporter and...
Step 3- Take them out of business for a couple years.

This is the most stupid thing I ever seen since started IM in 2003.

Seriously.

But since this is so easy and I am a ex radio dj, guess I can use my friends in media to take down my competition, huh?

I tell ya, the world is getting stupid by the day.

And congrats to Mr Matt for making very clear what and how we need to do to demolish a competitor...

Let me start my list of BIG sites in Portugal buying (high PR) links everyday...

LOL! So true. However, I don't care what anybody says, this report makes me think that bombing can work if the conditions are right.

[MikeFriedman]

The biggest thing I got out of this article is that Google is less efficient at catching spammy links then they would have us believe. Their algorithm never caught on to what was happening. It was not until someone (The New York Times) personally notified Google about this that any action was taken.

For every JCPenney site out there, there a thousands doing the same thing not getting caught.

Somehow the white-hatters are going to say that this justifies their link building strategies. In reality, it just shows that black hat techniques work just fine.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Derek S

LOL in the NY Times article J.C. Penny said they had nothing to do with it HAHAHA

I wish a stranger would spend thousands of dollars on quality links, all pointing to my site for no reason

Lol, quality links?

You might want to read the NYT article, they specifically said they was't quality links, which btw doesn't cost thousands of dollars to produce.

[lexilexi]

Hehe love it... this is going to raise some stink!

I've been shouting for ages that Google's spam detection algorithms are non existent and that the major takedown for a spammer is whistleblowing by their competition.

Google is caught in their own hubris.... amazed it took so long... namely that they prefer to use "algorithms". Remember Matt Cutts "minimize hand to hand spam fighting and use scalable solutions"? In other words worship the holy algorithm, check out actual spam complaints and "hand edit" as little as possible. Who cares, right?

As mentioned above, if all it took to get a site taken out of the 'dex was a bunch of links being dropped, it would be easy as pie to "nuke" your competition.

In other words, your site dropped out because your competitors didn't like being overtaken, saw your spammy link profile and thought "bye bye punk".

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

LOL! So true. However, I don't care what anybody says, this report makes me think that bombing can work if the conditions are right.

Yep the old argument around here that backlinks can't possibly hurt you or you could do it to your competitor is officially dead. Under the right circumstances it can get you slapped

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Yep the old argument around here that backlinks can't possibly hurt you or you could do it to your competitor is officially dead. Under the right circumstances it can get you slapped

I think the key is to get the media to create an article blowing the whistle, & that really only matters for a single competion If they are well known.

Nobody cares about the thousands of 3 page MFA sites ranking in the top 10 SERP positions, & If you go directly to Google reporting the little guy spamming the SERPs, well, it's just not that big a deal to anyone except the competition.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by yukon

Nobody cares about the thousands of 3 page MFA sites ranking in the top 10 SERP positions, & If you go directly to Google reporting the little guy spamming the SERPs, well, it's just not that big a deal to anyone except the competition.

Generally yes to a degree (they have acted on other spam reports and MFA is a bad example because they tend to slap some of those out of adsense as well) that has been the case but this is just the latest in a series of articles that have been really knocking Google's search results. No big corp can ignore bad press and BIng/Yahoo though still far behind is out there doing relatively well.

[paulgl]

Publicity matters. I never mentioned DecorMyEyes.com, which made
the news in the past few months. The site was scamming people, but
it was getting links all over the place due the scams. It rose to #1,
all on the basis of the massive amount of links. Once google was up
to the problems people were having with DecorMyEyes.com, they
quickly pulled it. If one person had not found a sympathetic NYT
news reporter, well.

So, IMHO, it worked quite well, until google decided to pull the plug
on JCP.

I would not read anything further than that.

Paul

[Mike Anthony]

Thing is the bad publicity hasn't been limited to these high profile cases. there have been high profile articles that talk about search results in a wider context and its mud in Google's eyes.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Generally yes to a degree (they have acted on other spam reports and MFA is a bad example because they tend to slap some of those out of adsense as well) that has been the case but this is just the latest in a series of articles that have been really knocking Google's search results. No big corp can ignore bad press and BIng/Yahoo though still far behind is out there doing relatively well.

Also, by blowing the whistle on your own competition you stand a good chance of putting your own sites in the spotlight, which isn't always a good thing.

Example, If you blow the whistle on your competition & your both on page #1 for your keyword, what happens If Google does a manual review of the first 10 sites on page #1, your own sites better be the best of the best? Might not end very well.

[Chris Kent]

It's not black hat though. Black hat tactics are not allowed here. But mass backlinking is allowed here. So surely it can't be black hat

[smartfinds]

Hello,

You know what I didn't understand about the article from the NY Time is why they had active links to these link farms and websites that caused the problem. You would think the author would have learned something about linking and at least not actively linked to them through a reputable domain like nytimes.com.

I did write the NY Times about this to find out what their ethical policies were when it comes to linking to these types of sites from their own powerful domain. Of course I have not heard anything yet from them or the writer of the article....in the meantime the SEO company that got fired has great links to them, so do the link farms and then some.

We decided to write our own question and answer to this on our blog. If you're interested in reading please check out the JC Penney article.

Of course uncovering this about JC Penney was right on point and we are certainly glad to see that link farms, paid links and other black hat seo tactics are uncovered further.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by smartfinds

Hello,

You know what I didn't understand about the article from the NY Time is why they had active links to these link farms and websites that caused the problem. You would think the author would have learned something about linking and at least not actively linked to them through a reputable domain like nytimes.com.

I did write the NY Times about this to find out what their ethical policies were when it comes to linking to these types of sites from their own powerful domain. Of course I have not heard anything yet from them or the writer of the article....in the meantime the SEO company that got fired has great links to them, so do the link farms and then some.

We decided to write our own question and answer to this on our blog. If you're interested in reading please check out the JC Penney article.

Of course uncovering this about JC Penney was right on point and we are certainly glad to see that link farms, paid links and other black hat seo tactics are uncovered further.

What makes the link in your comment & all the backlinks in your sig. any different than JCPs backlinks?

Your promoting your own site with intentions of earning a profit, & jacking up the PR in your own blogs sidebar backlinks by planting the JCP anchor-text on this forum thread/page!

Don't bash another site when your doing the same thing!

[Randall_Christian]

J.C. Penney should sue NY Times over this. Does the TImes have the evidence that it was BH links that put Pennys on top? Anyway there is always Bing!

[dakota5369]

surprising such a big company would do that. it might be easy for a little site like mine to get away with it, but being a chain department store would make it a lot harder

[bigcat1967]

I looked at a few sites that JPC was linking from. These had to be paid links - and JCP said they didn't know anything about this??? What a joke.

[gameutopia]

They obviously have the money to buy links, or pay some company to get backlinks for them. Makes you wonder how many other companies do it. Seems to me a while back google found some hidden keywords on some big company site and asked them what the deal was. I forget what ended up happening, but the big guys and gals can be sneaky too.

[Giannii01]

I dont think they were quality links because if they were then there wouldnt be a problem would there??

[thebitbotdotcom]

Originally Posted by dakota5369

surprising such a big company would do that. it might be easy for a little site like mine to get away with it, but being a chain department store would make it a lot harder

Originally Posted by gameutopia

They obviously have the money to buy links, or pay some company to get backlinks for them. Makes you wonder how many other companies do it. Seems to me a while back google found some hidden keywords on some big company site and asked them what the deal was. I forget what ended up happening, but the big guys and gals can be sneaky too.

Honestly. Who do we think we are kidding? Tons of the big companies are doing this.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by yukon

Also, by blowing the whistle on your own competition you stand a good chance of putting your own sites in the spotlight, which isn't always a good thing.

Example, If you blow the whistle on your competition & your both on page #1 for your keyword, what happens If Google does a manual review of the first 10 sites on page #1, your own sites better be the best of the best? Might not end very well.

Thats not true. Your site just doesn't have to be involved in overt spam is all. I doubt very seriously your site will be looked at . Google employees are not motivated to take on extra work and the que on reports is too long to add the reporting site to it. Do you even have to have a site listed ? Don't know. Never reported anyone.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

Honestly. Who do we think we are kidding? Tons of the big companies are doing this.

Define big. No. Major corporations get major links through their marketing and advertising dollars and don't need scuzzy links. My bet is JC Penney had no idea. They outsourced it to a company that tried to take a short cut

[kasimarie]

Who knows if this is true or not, but apparently JCP has been caught by Google a couple times in the past for the same thing. Perhaps the $2 million+ JCP spends per month on AdWords gave them a pass - until the NY Times outed them publicly and Google had no choice but to take action.

How JC Penney gamed Google

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Thats not true. Your site just doesn't have to be involved in overt spam is all. I doubt very seriously your site will be looked at . Google employees are not motivated to take on extra work and the que on reports is too long to add the reporting site to it. Do you even have to have a site listed ? Don't know. Never reported anyone.

If someone complained to me about another site, the first thing I would consider is the source of the complaint (is the complaint from competition?).

I'm sure they get a lot of complaints from competition trying to bury other sites just so they get a bump in the SERPs.

[DynoMutt]

I thought I knew the difference between White Hat and Black Hat SEO, but apparently I don't.

What makes this strategy Black Hat, but not a link wheel strategy? Aren't those sites in the link wheel created for the sole purpose of propping up the niche site?

[aygabtu]

Originally Posted by Derek S

well the best part is now J.C. Penny has a SWEET text link pointing to their site from a popular NYTimes.com article LOL

Sometimes bad publicity is good publicity.

[Derek S]

Originally Posted by aygabtu

Sometimes bad publicity is good publicity.

Lol well aside from the fact the publicity from ranking first in google got them a manual inspection LOL

What I would really have loved to know is how long they would have remained number one for if not snitched on. I'm guessing a long time... Until competitors started using the same tactics as jc penny used themselves

[BacklinkExcellence]

Originally Posted by Derek S

Lol well aside from the fact the publicity from ranking first in google got them a manual inspection LOL

What I would really have loved to know is how long they would have remained number one for if not snitched on. I'm guessing a long time... Until competitors started using the same tactics as jc penny used themselves

I bet they would have stayed for quite a while. After all, they were dropping millions every month on google adwords. Wouldn't be smart from google to devalue rankings from someone paying them like that every month.

Oh yeah, it's all conspiracy, Google is not evil and wouldn't ever do such a thing.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by lexilexi

As mentioned above, if all it took to get a site taken out of the 'dex was a bunch of links being dropped, it would be easy as pie to "nuke" your competition.

In other words, your site dropped out because your competitors didn't like being overtaken, saw your spammy link profile and thought "bye bye punk".

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Yep the old argument around here that backlinks can't possibly hurt you or you could do it to your competitor is officially dead. Under the right circumstances it can get you slapped

Hi guys,

I think it's important to note that the JC Penny website was not penalized at all. The pages where spam was placed and detected were devalued, that's all. No harm at all to the rankings that were earned through legitimate promotion. The J C Penny website continues to hold #1 rankings for many many keywords.

This situation is an excellent example of how web spam backlinks did no harm to the targeted website. The web spam did help rankings temporarily, but once detected tat benefit was zeroed out and the targeted website continues to retain all meritoriously earned rankings, in other words, no penalty.

Any harm that they may have experienced is through the negative publicity, but as far as Google SERP rankings earned, no damage.

[Derek S]

Originally Posted by dburk

I think it's important to note that the JC Penny website was not penalized at all.

Good point! Because anyone can link to you google can not really penalize you for off page factors like they can on page.

What really sucks is that any other clients that SEO company was building links for probably lost their ranking too as the pages with the links where devalued LOL... Exactly why I will never use a link broker for my paid links.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Derek S

What really sucks is that any other clients that SEO company was building links for probably lost their ranking too as the pages with the links where devalued LOL... Exactly why I will never use a link broker for my paid links.

Hi Derek,

Yes, and that was likely to happen sooner or later anyway. Everyone who builds their rankings based on web spam is probably going to see them wiped out.

On a cautionary note, those who build links on any page, where other web spam is permitted, is likely to see those links, no matter how meritorious, become devalued. Google uses a Trust factor to weight the value of outbound links and links on pages that contain web spam will suffer the same fate as the spammers' links.

[scott g]

Originally Posted by yukon

Lol, quality links?

You might want to read the NYT article, they specifically said they was't quality links, which btw doesn't cost thousands of dollars to produce.

I could give you 20k approved links tonight... For, well, we'll just say $100 I'm sure there are plenty of other Warriors that have big autoapprove lists too!! LOL!

Be careful out there kids, you never know what you'll catch! LOL!

CHEERS!

[scott g]

Originally Posted by BacklinkExcellence

I bet they would have stayed for quite a while. After all, they were dropping millions every month on google adwords. Wouldn't be smart from google to devalue rankings from someone paying them like that every month.

Oh yeah, it's all conspiracy, Google is not evil and wouldn't ever do such a thing.

That just means that a million other advertiser's ads will be displayed now... for a penny less.

[Fernando Veloso]

What I can see from this wonderful experience is:

a) Google caught JCP before - doing exact same thing
b) JCP used to spent X Million on Adwords
c) Google gave them a freebie and didn't de-index them
d) JPC got expose by the NYT article
e) Google "devalued" some pages from JCP

Is this the Chicago mob or what?

[hossainsrj]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

LOL! So true. However, I don't care what anybody says, this report makes me think that bombing can work if the conditions are right.

Honestly I also think so. But this news is really freaky for a SEO Firm. I think all SEO firms are really applying a mixture of White Hat and Black hat techniques.