Skip to main content

How JC Penney gamed Google

JC_penney_googleWe’ve all been had by JC Penney. That ubiquitous retailer has, The New York Times says, successfully gamed Google to deliver its website as the No. 1 search result for everything from “bedding” to “grommet top curtains.” The finding is part of an extensive Times Magazine piece about the “dirty little secrets of search,” as they so salaciously call it.

An excerpt:

Does the collective wisdom of the Web really say that Penney has the most essential site when it comes to dresses? And bedding? And area rugs? And dozens of other words and phrases?

The New York Times asked an expert in online search, Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media in New York, to study this question, as well as Penney’s astoundingly strong search-term performance in recent months. What he found suggests that the digital age’s most mundane act, the Google search, often represents layer upon layer of intrigue. And the intrigue starts in the sprawling, subterranean world of “black hat” optimization, the dark art of raising the profile of a Web site with methods that Google considers tantamount to cheating.

As writer David Segal explains, JC Penney used a massive link-back scheme to bolster their search results artificially. This involved leaving links on exactly 2,015 websites, many of which had nothing to do with JC Penney or its products. Often, the sites were abandoned, save the Penney’s links, of course.

JC Penney has denied any knowledge of the paid link ploy. But Google’s gatekeeper, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, says this is the third infraction they have cited against JC Penney. Needless to say, he was not particularly please when the Times contacted him about their findings.

“Am I happy this happened?” he later asked. “Absolutely not. Is Google going to take strong corrective action? We absolutely will.”

And “take strong corrective action” they did. Segal notes that JC Penney dropped from No. 1 to No. 71 for “Samsonite carry on luggage.” As our own quick test found, even a search for “bedding” — another former Penney’s No. 1 term — JC Penney didn’t show up until page seven. The drop immediately caused the retailer to fire their search engine consulting firm, SearchDex, who is presumably behind the link-spam campaign.

A more “conspiracy-minded” person, says Segal, might believe that Google was intentionally ignoring Penney’s search abuses because the company was one of Google’s top advertisers — JC Penney has paid Google more than $2.46 million per month on “paid” results (i.e. ads). Google is, after all, being investigated by the European Union because of the same alleged infractions.

Cutts vehemently denies that Google gave JC Penney any favor. But either way, the lesson here is simple: Google has the power. Abide.

Read the entire Times piece here.

Edit 2/12/2011 – We originally wrote that JC Penny paid Google monthly  for organic results. This has been corrected and changed to “paid” results. Thank you to Jesse Wilson for pointing out the error.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
How ChatGPT could help Microsoft dethrone Google Search
A person on the Google home page while using a MacBook Pro laptop on a desk.

Microsoft is attempting to dethrone Google as the search champion by integrating ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. That’s according to a new report from The Information -- but will the gamble pay off?

ChatGPT only launched in November 2022, but it’s already been making waves among artificial intelligence researchers and the general public alike due to the unerring realism of its output. Chuck in any prompt you can think of and you’ll get back something that keenly resembles human-generated text, and people have been using it to write articles, generate code, and compose musical scores.

Read more
Steam Replay 2022: what it is and how to see it
steam replay 2022 how to see featured 2

Value introduced the Steam Replay recaps for the first time in 2022, following in the footsteps of year-end roundups like Spotify Wrapped and Reddit Recap. Steam Replay shows your hours played, your most played games, the achievements you've unlocked, and much more.

We're going to walk you through how to see your first Steam Replay in 2022. The recap is tied with Steam's Winter Sale, so you browse some of the games on sale after taking a look back at the year.
How to see your Steam Replay 2022

Read more
Google may have just fixed Chrome’s most annoying problem
A Macbook with Google Chrome opened to a Gmail inbox.

While Google Chrome is one of the best web browsers, over the years it has gained a reputation for being something of a resource hog, gobbling up your PC’s memory like it’s going out of style. That can be a problem if you’re running other resource-heavy tasks and don’t want things to slow down. Now, Chrome has been updated with two new features that cut down on memory usage and extend your laptop’s battery life, according to Google. The changes are set to roll out today with the latest release of Chrome on desktop (version m108).The first new feature, dubbed Memory Saver, is designed to reduce the amount of memory Chrome’s tabs use. It does this by freeing up memory from inactive tabs, and putting them to sleep so they can’t monopolize your system’s resources. When you need to access the tabs again, they will be reloaded and become active. The goal of Energy Saver, meanwhile, is fairly self-explanatory -- helping your laptop battery last longer -- but it does so in a somewhat interesting way. When your battery drops to 20%, Chrome will try to prolong your battery life by “limiting background activity and visual effects for websites with animations and videos.”Presumably, this means Chrome will limit the kind of flashy effects that have made a comeback in web design in recent years. Google says that when these new features launch, users will still be able to customize them to their liking. You can disable either Memory Saver or Energy Saver (or both), and mark certain websites as exempt in Chrome’s settings. The changes could turn out to be important. While Chrome has managed to become the dominant Windows web browser and one of the best browsers for Mac, it has been plagued by poor memory management for years. If Memory Saver and Energy Saver are able to help ameliorate that -- and make your battery last longer too -- then Google might have gone some way to fixing Chrome’s biggest problem. Both Memory Saver and Energy Saver will be launched globally over the next few weeks. The features are coming to Chrome on Windows, macOS, and ChromeOS.

Read more