Consider the nature of the two previous, most prominent times Google took a hand in changing its search results manually. During last year’s holiday shopping season, JC Penney’s SEO company engaged in black hat link manipulation practices. The New York Times picked up the story in mid-February of this year; we covered it here as well. JC Penney’s site ranked at the top of Google for literally millions of terms, but once news of the retailer’s machinations broke, Google delivered a manual penalty that buried the company’s website until it mended its ways. Then there was the Decor My Eyes story…
