It’s going to cost Penney’s Pennies?

This should be a lesson to all businesses that the people you hire could end up costing you more than their fees.

It’s a great read, especially if you are in the process of hiring a search agency.

The article basically talks about how JCPenney’s search agency used “black hat” techniques to gain rankings in the search engines.  In particular, paying for links on sites that were irrelevant to their destination pages.  That’s a big Google NO NO.

In case you missed it, an article came out a couple of days ago from the NY Times called “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search.”

Here’s part of what Matt Cutt’s (the head of the Webspam team at Google) had to say;

“Am I happy this happened?” he later asked. “Absolutely not. Is Google going to take strong corrective action? We absolutely will.”

And the company did. 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.

PENNEY reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Executives there did not return e-mail or phone calls.

To read the entire article,  click here.

This is why I believe you should always have a consultant between you and the agencies you hire.  (I’m not just saying this because I’m a consultant) You need someone who will look out for the best interest of your business.  Most agencies just look out for what’s in the best interest of their business.

It’s totally believable that the team at SearchDex said to themselves “if we can make this Penney’s account kick ass, we will be their agency of record for years to come. So do whatever it takes!”

Did they do it?  They sure did, but at a hefty price.  They got fired and now JCPenney’s rankings are suffering and so is their bottom line.  You can’t go from number 1 to almost non existent and not have that hurt your bottom line.  In the article it states that 34% of Google’s traffic went to the number 1 listing.  About twice the percentage that went to the number 2 listing.  Now that’s all gone for JCPenney’s

Another lesson learned here is that there are no short cuts.  Not even for a brand like JCPenney’s.  You have to follow the rules even if you don’t like them.

So do yourself a favor, pay attention to who you are hiring and what your agencies are doing for you.  Don’t just send them off to the races and think they are always going to do what’s in the best interest of your business.  If you do, you may be the next business wearing “virtual concrete boots” provided by Google.