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Overstock is One of the Latest Companies Penalized by Google

If you picked up the Wall Street Journal last week, you may have already heard the news – Overstock.com Inc. is being penalized by Google. This report comes on the heels of the J.C. Penney debacle.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the issue Google had with Overstock had to do with links. Apparently, Overstock violated one of Google’s policies, which keeps companies from artificially increasing their rankings. Overstock admitted that it had been encouraging college websites to post links to the company’s pages. According to Overstock, these links were supposed to help students and faculty obtain discounts on its website.

It is a common belief among those in the SEO industry that Google views educational institutions as having more authority than other types of sites. So, when a college or university website links to a commercial site, it often holds a lot of weight.

Google wouldn’t divulge any information to the Wall Street Journal about the incident with Overstock, but a company spokesman did provide a general comment. He said that Google’s goal “is to deliver the most relevant information possible...attempts to game Google’s ranking go on 24 hours a day, every single day.”

How has this penalty affected Overstock? Links to the website were generally in the top three results for many of the company's keywords. However, once Google took action against Overstock, some of these links dropped anywhere from number 40 to 70 in the search engine’s rankings.

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