To say it has been an interesting couple of weeks in the search engine games is a mild understatement. Two large companies, JC Penny and Forbes, were nailed for sketchy linking practices. The question is whether these linking efforts were illegal or not? 

First, let's take a look at what the companies were doing. Both were playing one side or another of the paid linking game. Somebody [a competitor no doubt] noticed that JC Penney was ranking above all its competitors for just about any product on the JC Penny site starting this past October. This seemed rather odd and a subsequent investigation revealed the rankings were the result of thousands of purchased links. 

In the case of Forbes, the site was nailed by Google for the opposite practice. Forbes was not buying links, it was selling them. It was also passing through page rank on those links, a practice Google is none to happy about.

In response to both of these practices, Google downgraded the rankings of the sites in question. Neither site now has any of the top 10 rankings they used to. The best they can hope for at this point is to get rid of the offending links and seek reconsideration from Google. Given their brand and the amount they will spend on Adwords, I'm sure Google will let them off the hook relatively quickly.

This scenario raises an interesting question, however. Is buying or selling a link on the web illegal? No, it is not. Then why is Google barking at these sites and penalizing them in the rankings? The answer is the practice violates Google's terms of use in relation to its search engine. While not crime is being committed, Google has the right to control who and what is on its engine so long as it doesn't violate any constitutional mandates such as barring gun sites.

This process raises an interesting issue if you think about it. From a search engine perspective, Google has such a large share of the search traffic that it effectively becomes its own legal system on the web. A site that cannot rank on Google is typically a site that is going to have some major marketing problems and may well go out of business. The web has caused the business world to evolve in many different ways. Few would have imagined that an ad hoc legal system would be created in this way, but it has been. 

If you have questions related to running a business online, don't hesitate to contact me at 619-637-6043.