Also, reading that JC Penney didn’t know what was going on is like believing Wall St and banks didn’t anticipate the mortgage crisis.

Finally, I like John B’s comment: “Lets sit back and observe how those brands will rank at the next holiday season. Then we can tell for sure if Google can deal with such cases algorithmically or not.” I don’t think we have to wait 9 mos for that.
NB – Stop Link Dropping
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Getting an in house SEO to oversee would save them a lot of issues. In a recent example, I helped one brand get rid of 100’s of paid widget links – which were placed by their SEO agency – the brand didnt realise the risk, and I dont believe that the agency explained it – and even if they did, I doubt that the brand understood it.

Like you, I think it would be sensible but my cynical side wonders if Google has made it too easy to pass the buck onto the agency. How many times have we seen this same cycle – get caught – fire the agency – return the rankings after a couple of weeks? It could be argued that Google has given brands a get-out-of-jail card there, which they would loose with qualified inhouse SEOs.

I understand that there are a lot of bottom-feeders in this industry and it’s fair to apply this exception to companies lower on the scale. However for large brands, Google should play harder and push them to hire these people. Lets see how long Google keeps JC Penney in the dog house shall we?

My personal learning from the J.C. Penney scandal:

- The algo is still hella stupid.
- The media is still hella stupid but also dangerous (we had a similar thing in germany lately)
- If you don’t have a big brand you could damage and know how to keep a low profile: Go for it!
- Buying links from the right sources is still king since it minimizes potential exposure to the public (The german scandal was triggered by a blogger who leaked a keyword list)
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A good linkbuilder shouldn’t generalize (black hat, white hat, organic, bought bla, bla, bla)… he tests, thinks and calculates risks to run the best campaign he can. Anyone who doesn’t think out of the white hat box is not looking at the big picture..

The question for me is are we entering an online world of anarchy where open season prevails with a mass world wide torching of sites.