Gaming the System

• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Author: Tim Chartier
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22300

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© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22300

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Gaming the System

Tim Chartier

It’s December 2010 and you

decide to buy a new table-

cloth for a coming holiday

party. As many do, you turn to

a search engine by typing the

word tablecloth into Google.

Moving to holiday gift buy-

ing, you search on dresses in

Google. In both cases, the top

result is JC Penney, seeming to

indicate the ease of one-stop

shopping. So you continue

your surfing by searching on

“Samsonite carry-on luggage.”

Again, JC Penney is the top

result. Think of the significance

of this result—JC Penney out-

performed Samonsite.com on a

search for Samsonite luggage.

Unknown to you at the

time, you could have searched

on a large number of items

such as area rugs, skinny jeans,

home decor, comforter sets,

furniture, tablecloths, or even

grommet top curtains. In every

case, JC Penney would top

the list of results returned by

Google. Other retailers like

Belk, Macy’s, Amazon, Nor-

dstrom, or Wal-Mart would

appear lower in the list.

Is the incidence of JC

Penney coming before Sam-

sonite in a Google search all

that significant? First, think

about your own behavior with

searches. How often do you

click on pages down the list

of results returned by a search

engine like Google? Many

people don’t. The Wall Street

Journal reported that 39% of

web users look at only the first

search result returned from a

search engine and 29% view

only a few results. Appearing

at the top of Google search

results can have a direct impact

on sales.

JC Penney’s place in

Google search results caught

the eye of the New York Times.

The newspaper contacted Doug

Pierce of Blue Fountain Media

to take a closer look. Pierce’s

research suggested that Pen-

ney had used knowledge of

Google’s underlying algorithm

to raise the profile of their web

site on all such queries.

There are literally billions

of web pages that are indexed

as part of Google’s search

results. How can a system of

this size possibly be gamed?

The key is knowing how

Google analyzes the web to

form its search results.

Quickly, Google’s search

engine quantifies the quality of

a web page. Simplifying things,

if two web pages are equally

relevant to a query, then the

page with higher quality is

listed first. Internet links are

considered a recommendation.

If your web page has a link

from a high-quality web page,

then your page is measured as

having higher quality. Therein

is the key—if you can get links

from high-quality web pages,

you move up in Google rankings.

Gaming the system to raise

your place in the rankings is

possible, and legal, but does

have risk. If Google finds that

you manipulated the system,

they can punish you, which

ultimately results in a drop

in the rankings, with possible

major impact on business. Is

this fair?

That’s exactly what created

a legal stir in 2002 and 2003.

SearchKing.com appeared high

in Google’s rankings. They

would share their high rank

(by linking) to their clients’

web pages. Suddenly, in August

2002, SearchKing.com’s quality

measure dropped from 8 to 4

and then from 2 to 0, resulting

in SearchKing.com’s clients

leaving as their web pages dis-

appeared in the rankings.

As a result, SearchKing

sued Google for $75,000. The

court ruled against Search-

King, deciding that Google’s

results are basically a matter

of judgment. Essentially, we

choose whether or not to listen