Digital Marketing Crimes - Who will be Judge, Jury and Executioner?

In the digital justice system there is only one side: The Google, who investigates the crime, and The Google who prosecutes, judges and delivers punishment. These are its stories...

Chung-Chung!

Following the discovery and unraveling of JC Penney's latest SEO strategy/debacle , while everyone seems to be unfazed about it, in my mind, I think it has open a Pandora's Box of legal issues in the digital age, that no one seems particularly concerned with. This has been followed by the recent 'adjustment' that has also affected other content sites, most properly, content farms.

So, for those who didn't follow, it was discovered that JC Penney's SEO agency had done some quote-unquote - Dirty SEO tricks, to boost their presence to the number one spot in organic search during the holiday across several keywords. Having been discovered, not by Google, but by another Search agency, Google then took the presented evidence and 'somehow' then punish JC Penney by taking its spot away and apparently placing their SEO way below the first and 2nd pages.

So.... exactly what happened here? Was a crime actually committed? Because certainly the punishment given inflicted severe economic damage... so why doesn't anyone care? If indeed a crime was committed, because one can argue JCP took sales away from other sites that 'followed the rules' then why aren't any charges being brought?

First things first. Google uses an algorithm to rank its search. By its nature, an algorithm its amoral and does not take into account any legal or ethical issues. It is a mathematical model made to organize and score based on a formula that weights certain elements more than others. Since the algorithm is secret, all people can do to try to learn it and use it to their advantage. If the algorithm has been cracked, you build a better one, and the chase starts again. Like counting cards, SEO dirty tricks are not technically illegal, but a Casino can 86'd you if you count cards, is Google then doing something similar? Or worse?

Instead, the punishment given was not as a result of a change in the search ranking formula, as it should've been done, but a manual punishment was inflicted unto JCP. Google didn't suddenly change the formula and as a result, JCP was relegated to the bottom. This was instead just a move in rankings targeting JCP. No math behind it.

There was no 'crime committed' right? and that is exactly the point. Either we codify the rules so that we all understand where the lines are drawn and what the exact price is of going beyond them. Our laws indicate we are innocent until proven guilty. So we have to follow our own principles as we enforce digital 'crimes', no?

Instead we have Google as Victim, Police, Judge, Jury and Executioner. Our own constitution is clear that there cannot be secret laws that, when broken, one can be carried away to prison or worse. So if one company broke the secret algorithm, then the answer in response to that has to be either publicly known and declared as a crime or it simply becomes the wild wild west of digital justice. The punishment has to fit the crime. I don't know if Google's response to JCP will create more economic damage than whatever ill gotten gain they had this holiday. But we will never know.

Sure, the most common answer is: JCP doesnt have to use Google, but with a dominant presence in many places, how is a company supposed to have an alternative similar to it?

Google's response to content farms is more appropriate - a change in the formula to deal with the issue of inaccurate search. And then we start all over again, the mice vs. the designers of the better mouse trap. This should be the most neutral way to deal with these issues. so why does Google solve one problem one way, and something similar a different way?

In the digital world, we need just as much public guidance in terms of what constitutes anti-digital-social behavior (including economic crimes) as our offline behavior is already codified. Instead, we are letting Google be the one managing justice in the digital area, and we are ignoring the consequences in the near future. What will happen when Google objects to an individual? or a country? or another company? Do they get to punish as they see fit? Will our digital future be bereft of laws and become a feudal system?

Then they came to take the porn away, and by then, there was no one left to protest...