According to a fascinating New York Times article, retailer JCPenney (JCP) — via a third-party SEO consultant — managed to game Google’s top-secret search algorithm so that JCP’s site appeared as the top result in many diverse product categories for much of the past holiday season. The result? High traffic for jcpenney.com and increased online sales, but also outrage in the pundit and technology peanut gallery that JCP used black hat tactics (through its paid consultant) to improve organic search rankings.
The real world fallout for JCP? As the article notes, Google, has “manually” reduced JCP’s search rankings as punishment. So, the question is: Is JCP a black hatted villain or a smart marketer? Does Google get to set the rules, or do marketers get to do what they need to do (within the law) to gain a competitive advantage?
Nick and Tom of innerbridge debate the topic.
Tom: Sure, must marketers avoid so-called black hat SEO tactics, but who made Google the arbitrator of what is “right? What JCP’s consultant did was not illegal — it is simply not allowed by Google. Since when does one company, with no legal basis, get to decide what marketing activities are OK?
Nick: As long as consumers use Google to search for products and services and advertisers market their services with the company, we are all in the Google sandbox and must play by its rules. In this case, JCP engaged with an SEO vendor that operated outside of the rules. A crime, then punishment. Case closed.
Tom: But Google is more than just a company — it has a unique position in eCommerce that is not currently regulated. We have already seen others claim that Google may be pushing its services with higher organic results. In the EU, they are investigating Google for fairness. Perhaps the anger over this incident is not justified. Maybe JCP was simply good at marketing. After all, we wouldn’t want to tell companies they couldn’t claim their products weren’t magical because it isn’t true — assuming magic is not real. 
Nick: Outside of any formal regulation, every company is responsible for maintaining its own brand. In this case, JCP has tarnished its brand. It takes an incredible amount of bravery or stupidity to suggest to a major brand that they engage in what is roundly viewed as a subversive, underhanded, or sneaky (or any combination of the above) method of juicing search results. The lesson for marketers, not just Fortune 500 brand keepers, is that black hat techniques may work well for a short period of time, but ultimately they will backfire.
Tom: Tarnished the JCP brand? How? By having a great holiday quarter? By satisfying customers? We haven’t heard consumers complain about what they bought. The brand is only tarnished if you hold the Google view and you follow the Google rules — rules set up by a for-profit company that is so far beholden to no one for how it behaves. You could argue its market clout gives it a right, but that does not make its actions right or good. “Don’t be evil” is Google’s unofficial motto. Yet they get to define “evil.” Remember, the scandal with the scraping of personal wireless data from the Google vehicles? How about former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s comments about privacy? Google often appears to have a slippery definition of what is right and wrong.
Nick: Let’s focus on how JCP may have tarnished their brand. Instead of investing in deciding what market to sell into during the holiday season, JCP bet on all of them. It was an unfocused strategy that resulted in one strong holiday season. The article suggests that all of JCPs sales — including the fabled catalog — are on the decline. Selling a million dollars worth of dresses during the holidays will not save the company. This black mark on the brand — in a story picked up by countless mainstream and industry media sites — is not a good thing. It was a desperate attempt, and now consumers are even more confused about what JCP stands for. “We sell everything to everyone but mess with search results to make you think we are No. 1 …”
Tom: It’s only a failed strategy if it doesn’t stick. Perhaps many of those “duped” buyers will now choose to shop at JCP’s site in the future. In that case, the strategy might be validated. What I think this really illustrates is a severe lack of competition in the search market. This would not be an issue if Microsoft’s Bing or another search engine was as powerful as Google. In a balanced search environment, competition would settle this issue. Consumers would choose an engine based off the personal results –the complete shopping experience, from search to product delivery. If consumers didn’t like the gaming of a retailer or that Google wasn’t smart enough to catch SEO tricks until it was too late, then shoppers could avoid both in the future.
Nick: I agree with the idea that it would be good to have a competitive search market, but at this point the idea of another search engine with enough power to challenege Google or a dedicated shopping search engine is a stretch. Consider Google’s recent accusation that Bing copies its search results. Also, remember the article about the obnoxious online eyeglass merchant who thrived on bad reviews that actually improved his company’s search rank? The search engine game is hard. Google has learned more than anyone about white, black, blue, or any color hat techniques. What this story clearly identifies is the complexity of the Google search algorithm and the continuous struggle to refine it.
Tom: All good points. There may be no clear cut answer — certainly not a legal answer. However, I think it’s safe to say in the current Google-dominated environment we all operate in that going against the search giant’s explicit guidance is not a smart move. I would certainly not advise clients to take this approach unless they needed short-term gain and could weather the Google backlash … and they felt comfortable being ostracized by much of the tech and marketing industry. In short, I would not recommend it, and we certainly wouldn’t ever do the work. For now, like it or not, we have to play by Google’s rules and accept its punishment.
Nick: Agreed. Wrestling with Google is like beating IBM’s Watson at Jeopardy. You might beat it on a few questions, but you will assuredly lose in the end.
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Note: This post is in response to the February 13th, 2011 New York Times article, “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search.” For a related story, see the November 26, 2010 New York Times article, “A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web.”