The Dirty Little Secrets of Search

Hugh Pickens writes writes "The NY Times has an interesting story (reg. may be required) about how JCPenney used link farms to become the number one google search result for such terms as 'dresses,' 'bedding,' and 'samsonite carry on luggage' and what Google did to them when they found out. 'Actually, it's the most ambitious attempt I've ever heard of,' says Doug Pierce, an expert in online search. '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.'"

Comments

What do you mean by "know better?"

[Gopal.V]

The whole idea of an SEO budget is to push your name out to the top line of google, bing or anything else people use to search.

The intent was to game the system. And by doing so, make a ton of money. There are no laws for internet search ... unless you can use trademark laws to push a competitor who's doing that to your brand name.

Unscrupulous yes, ruthless yes, but that is the true face of capitalism anyway. Google can try regulating, but only enough to make the same people put in pennies into their sidebar offering of less-worth, but clearly marked advertising.

Re:What do you mean by "know better?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, clearly Google needs to come up with an algorithm that both responds to outside input (in order to give relevant results) while simultaneously ignoring outside input (so that no one can mess with it).

You can't have both.

Company cheats Google, gets punished

[geschild]

News at 11.

Reasonably written article.

If you already know the ins and outs of search or have no interest in it's specifics you can spare yourself the read, though. Ymmv.

Laws are so hard to follow

[dschmit1]

It seems these companies, J.C.Penney, BMW, on and on, are as interested in keeping up with Google's "Laws", how to adhere to them, how to avoid them, how to get around them, than they are with actual civil laws of employee treatment, customer safety, and societal taxes.

Re:Laws are so hard to follow

[mikael_j]

I suspect this is a case of a company trying to play the same games they play in meatspace. Basically is boils down to "follow the letter of the law, not the spirit" with a pinch of of bending the letter of the law every now and then under the assumption that their size and influence will make those upholding the law ignore their transgressions. Unfortunately for them that's not how the "laws" of the internet work...

Shame on you, thespec.com!

[goodmanj]

"The NY Times has an interesting story (reg. may be required) ... what google did to them when they found out.

Copying a New York Times article wholesale, and then using a Slashdot post to bait-and-switch readers into visiting your website rather than the Times?
Ballsy.

Doing so when the article's content is about using malicious links to artificially inflate your site's visibility?
Just. Not. Cool.

The original NY TImes article is here. Whether you approve of the Times' registration policy or not, you shouldn't support people who steal their content and use it to make money.

Re:Google penalty box

[bonch]

Google cites its supposedly unbiased search results page as an argument against it being a monopoly. If Google is deciding what should go where, it's contradicting itself.