With about two-thirds of the search engine market globally, the change to Google’s search algorithm to such an extent is a rare admission by the company that the much sought after “user experience” was being manipulated too much through spamy and often irrelevant methods, including search engine optimisation (SEO) and questionable links. A highly publicised recent example was US retailing giant J.C. Penney, who the New York Times claimed had been manipulating Google search results to maintain the number one place for a range of keyword searches, including bedding, and dresses. In The Dirty Little Secrets of Search the New York Times said: “Someone paid to have thousands of links placed on hundreds of sites scattered around the web, all of which lead directly to JCPenney.com. The article claimed there were links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page, from sites about aluminum sheet, cameras, cars, diseases, dogs, online games, fishing, dentists and many more with no relationship to dresses or the fashion industry – the ordinary source such links would be expected to originate from. Manipulating Google PR through purchasing links is … Continue reading
