Overstock.com Caught Gaming Google and Gets Punished

Overstock.com broke some Google rules and they must pay with search rankings. “Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics” by Amir Efrati reports that Overstock.com has dropped in rank for most “common searches”. About two weeks ago, I read a New York Times article “Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets” by David Segal about JCPenney also having broken policies concerning natural search rankings. According to that article and this one, Google has a strict policy concerning search rankings. Part of the science of search rankings is the amount of links to a website which exist. Specifically, links using certain phrases such as “dresses”, “sunglasses”, etc. The more links back to your website, the higher the site ranks for those phrases.

The offense arises when links are unnaturally created. In JCPenney’s case, they were accused to overloading links on “empty” or irrelevant sites. Thus, when certain shopping terms/ phrases were searched, JCPenney was #1. When Google found out, they reconfigured their algorithm and also “manually” punished the company. According to the article, “On Feb.1, the average Penny position for 59 search terms was 1.3. On Feb.8 when the algorithm was changing, it was 4. By Feb. 10, it was 52.”

Overstock.com’s offense is “the retailer offered discounts of 10% on some merchandise to students and faculty. In exchange, it asked college and university websites to embed links for certain keywords like ‘bunk beds’ or ‘gift baskets’ to Overstock product pages”. The consequence was they went from amongst the top 3 to ranking between 40 and 70. Overstock’s response is that they will work hard to stay within guidelines and Google hasn’t given too much information or insulted the website.

I find the gaming Google gig to be hilarious and sad but a reality of the power of Google in traffic and sales. I applaud Google for their response. I think that ever since the world found out about Vitaly Borker (an eyewear seller who purposefully gave bad service so as to increase internet references and thus maintain a high rank, I wrote about him in a previous post), Google has been working hard on creating a positive algorithm image amongst consumers. Google doesn’t want users to think rankings are manipulated and thus, they are working even harder to find and punish offenders.  I’m sure many will continue to use unnatural or manipulated methods to increase search rankings. Although, I hope major retailers, who tend to have good reputations learn from both JCPenney and Overstock.com. A few moments of good ranking is not worth a bad reputation with Google (unless you don't care to be found on Google).