Overstock.com Gets Google Penalty Lifted
John Borkowski, April 25, 2011
In February, we reported on Overstock.com who was caught by Google for using questionable search engine optimization (seo) tactics in improving their PageRank. In a report announced by the company today, Google officially lifted their ban on Overstock, a ban that had sent them to no man’s land on their search engine results.
In case people forgot, Overstock was asking academic institutions with “.org” and “.edu” domains to link to them for student and teacher discounts. They did this because typically these domains hold higher credibility than “.com” commercial websites. Google noticed this not long after and threw the yellow flag.
Overstocks said that they would make the necessary corrections and restore their website to original, quality content and get rid of the links that held no integrity. After doing so, the site announced that “the search engine penalty enforced by Google has been fully lifted”.
As our blogs discuss, the importance of SEO Ethics are vital. Google has been cracking down on dishonest “black hat” SEO and has released their “Panda” update to help get rid of these kinds of sites. We’re in an era where corporate ethics need to play a larger role.
WebiMax is proud to state that none of our clients have ever been penalized or banned by Google or any other search engine.
