“The Found Agency”, an Australian firm specializing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seems to have been penalized by Google for using black hat or at lest slightly-dark ‘grey hat‘ optimization techniques.
Wikipedia doesn’t seem to mention how those terms apply to the SEO world (which is odd, considering the relevance of that topic today). If your not familiar with “white hat” or “black hat” SEO you basically just need to understand that it’s tantamount to cheating in order to increase your natural search position. Each search engine defines it’s own terms of acceptable use but by and large they are the same - and by same I mean there is much room for interpretation.
According to an Australian news site…
Google Australia would not comment on the case — talk of which had spread like wildfire through the search marketing industry — but a spokesman pointed to its webmaster quality guidelines, which covered the most common forms of deceptive behaviour. Found Agency co-founder Tim Macdonald said Google had downgraded the site’s search ranking but refused to comment on whether the company used black hat techniques. He said some strategies the company used were “in the grey area”.
The company of course is going to great lengths to emphasize the fact that they were penalized by Google and not blacklisted. I find if very interesting that Yahoo doesn’t appear to have done anything to The Found Agency’s rankings…
So what’s the bottom line? Well it appears that The Found Agency has dropped in natural search position for “search engine optimisation” from a #1 or #2 ranking to somewhere near #40. What impact will this have on their business? Well the long term affect can be mitigated of course and in the short term heavy Australian media coverage is only going to increase sales.
Interesting Note:
Similar action does not appear to have been taken on Yahoo, which had about 14,000 links pointing to foundagency.com.au on Wednesday.
Read the original article here: Google penalises ‘black hat’ tactics
2 Comments
Very similar case occurred recently:
“Following complaints in a chat window cited that Google is ignoring him, AllToTheGood.com was blacklisted. CEO Jason of i.ndustrio.us declined comment, in fear that Google would treat him equally unfairly.”
lol… this comment came up in a google search for “AllToTheGood”. It sounds like its for real. I should write some more nonsense like this, but make it positive.