Looking for recent bad SEO / black hat example such as JC Penney example from 2011

[jfeitlinger]

I am giving a presentation in a few weeks and looking for a "what not to do" larger brand example that made poor SEO choices to try and game Google with black hat tactics. Any examples you can point me to?

[LesleyPaone]

It is not one company, but there is always the payday loan update where google targeted a whole industries. http://searchengineland.com/google-pay-day-loan-algorithm-google-search-algorithm-update-to-target-spammy-queries-162941

[McTaggart]

You might like to take a look at this: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/27/interflora-disappears-from-google / http://searchengineland.com/interflora-gets-google-rankings-back-150366

[KevinBudzynski]

Overstock offering discounts for edu links: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067445/The-Difference-Between-Black-Hat-SEO-and-Bad-SEO.

**From Article: "**Just this week, Overstock was penalized for extending discounts of up to 10 percent to universities/students/faculty who wrote posts that "happen to contain keywords in the anchor text of links." Not only is this against Google's guidelines, but it's also against the Federal Trade Commission's Guidelines; this link will take you to an article regarding a company which is helping with FTC disclosure issues."

[Anti-Alex]

An article we wrote a while ago with a few examples. It's my site but answers your question:

http://buildforsearch.com/googles-worst-penalties-and-what-happened/