Likely told in many articles, but this came from a NYT article : “How valuable was that? A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on average, 34 percent of Google’s traffic went to the No. 1 result, about twice the percentage that went to No. 2.
The Keyword Estimator at Google puts the number of searches for “dresses” in the United States at 11.1 million a month, an average based on 12 months of data. So for “dresses” alone, Penney may have been attracting roughly 3.8 million visits every month it showed up as No. 1. Exactly how many of those visits translate into sales, and the size of each sale, only Penney would know.”
The article talked about the amount of traffic JC Penney garnered from gaming the system by using a link building scheme. That scheme artificially gave JC Penney a number one rank on the first page in searches conducted during the recent holidays. 3.8 million visits per month for 3 months is a lot of visits.
Google reaction, according to the article:
“On Wednesday evening, Google began what it calls a “manual action” against Penney, essentially demotions specifically aimed at the company.
At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.”
Two hours later, it was at No. 71.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.”
By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68.
In other words, one moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country.
The next it was essentially buried.”
Google would do best to preserve the integrity of their search algorithm since it appears they may have been looking the other way during the holidays due to the enormous sums spent by JC Penney on paid search ads. I see that the EU is looking into possible anti-trusts issues with Google.
Any decent Internet Marketer doesn’t need to resort to such tactics like the one Penney used. A good market strategy that includes honestly working the system should be able to put you on page one. You just need to work it.
