Black hat SEO has always been around. I’m sure there were cavemen businessmen who secretly carved over a competing companies stone engraving or added a mustache to a companies advertisement on the public restroom wall. It’s pretty much the same difference.
You may have seen the article over the weekend, or maybe you didn’t. JC Penny was caught in an elaborate black hat SEO link scheme.
The SEO company they were working with used a method called “link scheming” or “link farming” to tweak the results in the search engines in order to gain top rankings. Basically, you collect thousands of domain names and then begin to drop a link in their content to a specific URL. As the number of links grow so does your standing with Google.
My question is not if these tactics are right or wrong but whether or not Google failed on this one. How could they miss such an huge scheme? The company had already been busted three other times for using black hat tactics. The most recent was back in November, 2010.
I submit to you that Google didn’t fail in this situation but just got a whole lot better. There are now thousands of SEO companies scrambling to research the competing websites of their clients to see if there is any sign of black hat SEO tactics.
If they find even the slightest hint of scheming they will report the domain to Google. Google will then research the claim and mark the sites accordingly. It’s a process that will strengthen Google’s ability to catch abusers and promote the best organic results.
I understand SEO companies have reported their client’s competition to Google many times before but this article by the NYTimes has promoted the topic up to the attention of many business owners who are on the phone with their SEO guy making sure he is doing this.
I believe this is a good thing. The heart of a good search on Google is the human aspect of it’s guidelines not the algorithm in it’s computers. I think Google just got a lot better.
How about you? Do you think Google missed the elephant in the room and failed? Will it hurt their standing and promote another search alternative for searchers? Or, do you think this just helped them get better?
