JC Spammer

A post on TechDirt about JC Penny caught my attention, apparently they've been spamming Google to get their site to appear near the top of search results for lots of keywords, and been caught. Well, they say it's a SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) company they have since fired, so everything is fine then right? Not exactly.

Google have been busy manually adjusting those results back downwards but that's nowhere near enough. When large companies can break the laws and put the cost down to just another cost of doing business, they prove that crime pays. When they can aggregate the cost and still profit, if they're caught and any fall out; there is something wrong.

SEO firms often follow the same immoral practice of doing whatever the hell they like until the shit hits the fan and becomes too much of a hit, at which point they close up shop and reform under a new brand, new fresh Google history, and return to do exactly what they did before. This way any lawsuits they've triggered by their actions are targeted at a now defunct company.

What's to stop JC Penny rehiring this same firm of criminals under a new name when the dust settles? Or another firm hired to do the exact same thing, with the single alteration; don't get caught. Even if there's fines levied against JC Penny and this SEO firm, it'll still be profitable to do it.

What they need is a deterrent, such as being de-listed from Google altogether for a while, say the length of time they employed this company. Hired for 2 yrs = de-listed from Google for 2 yrs. Karma in effect. They should also be forced to publicly admit and apologise as part of their repentance, like a splash page on their main site that all visitors have to click through with their apology and admission. That could also match the de-listing from Google, ie 2yrs as mentioned earlier.

When there are proper deterrents for stuff like this, they won't be so keen to do it in future, even by the back door knowing that if they're caught they still profit. It also avoids them being able to dismiss the story as "gossip" rather than true, and letting it fade out of their customers minds. Capitalism is all about the power of the consumer to choose where his or her money goes, if they feel JC Penny deserves to be boycotted, so be it.

I quite often get spam from SEO companies who want to help me get my site higher up the search engine rankings. Spammers rule themselves out of ever being hired by the act of spamming.