It appears that even Google is getting sick of SEO gamers. Enough so to even penalize a major company like Overstock.com. An excerpt from an article in the The Wall St Journal today states that,
Google Inc. is penalizing Overstock.com Inc. in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.
The article goes on to explain that,
Overstock’s pages had recently ranked near the top of results for dozens of common searches, including “vacuum cleaners” and “laptop computers.” But links to Overstock on Tuesday dropped to the fifth or sixth pages of Google results for many of those categories, greatly reducing the chances that a user would click on its links.
Actually, I’m a fan of Overstock and was a prolific consumer back in 2004 to supply one of my businesses, so no animosity on the company. The greater point is it’s marketing methods. It wasn’t specifically mentioned in the article, but I’m willing to bet that the buck stops on an SEO contractor’s desk. Black hat, white hat…Google’s getting sick of it.