by Tina Wilson

On February 12, 2011 the New York Times released a scathing report on how Google had failed to identify a paid link building scheme that saw retailer JC Penny owning highly specific, and presumably valuable, search terms during the lucrative holiday season. In the article, the NYT suggests that by design JC Penny gamed the Google algorithm to place in the first position for a multitude of keyword phrases, in some cases outranking well known brands for their own name. It further blasts Google for not catching on to what JC Penny was doing, insinuating that Google somehow did not filter these bad links out because JC Penny is a major Google advertiser.