John on 16 February 2024

“We have no record of ever having received a violation notification from Google before last week when the unauthorized links came to our attention. If we had, we would have worked quickly to remedy the situation, as we are doing now. Obviously, we are disappointed that Google has reduced our rankings.”

So writes vice-president of corporate communications at JC Penney, Darcie Brossart. The above is in response to an article written by the New York Times called ‘The Dirty Little Secrets of Search’. David Segal, the article’s author, uncovered evidence of black-hat SEO in JC Penney’s online campaign. According to his research, he found evidence of artificial sites created to link back to JC Penney. They refute the New York Times’ story: “The characterization of JC Penney in the New York Times article is misleading and unwarranted.

 

“JC Penney was in no way involved in the posting of the links discussed in the article. We did not authorize them and we were not aware that they had been posted. To be clear, we do not tolerate violations of our policies regarding natural search, which reflect Google’s guidelines.”

JC Penney as a result has parted company the SEO agency they were using, called SearchDex. They’re trying to distance themselves as much as they possibly can from SearchDex and its practices, and if JC Penney are telling the truth and genuinely didn’t have a clue how SearchDex were operating, then they’ve undoubtedly been victims of a poorly-sold professional SEO services.

 

We’re not sure though if we can swallow the idea of an SEO firm relaying what they’re proposing to do to the client without coming across as a bunch of cowboys in the process. Transparency is important in SEO, would a company the size of JC Penney really not question every little detail before it was actioned?

Whichever version of events you choose to believe, the cold hard facts are that JC Penney has dropped down search rankings, as Google have found them to be in breach of its Webmaster Guidelines.

A Google spokesperson underlined their stance, which should always be a marker for ethical service for today and beyond: “When someone is looking for information on Google, we want them to find the most relevant answers possible. Our search algorithm relies on more than 200 signals to help people find the answers they’re looking for, and when websites violate our published webmaster guidelines to try and game the system, that’s bad for users and we are willing to take manual corrective action.”

This blog was written over 6 months ago and Internet Marketing and SEO is an always changing industry which means the information within this blog may be out of date. Use caution when using any methods or suggestions within it.