Today I came across a story in the New York Times about a rogue internet trader who runs a website selling designer sunglasses called DecorMyEyes. The article covers the story of Clarabelle Rodriguez who found the afore mentioned site when searching Google for Lafont glasses. Her story of the terrible service followed by harassment by the website owner is disappointing, though unfortunately it is not that unheard of and another example of the practices of the few that damage the trust in Internet retailers for the many.

However where the story really becomes interesting is when it explains how the site in question got number one positions in Google results for many designer sunglasses related search terms and it is something that the unscrupulousness website owner is quite happy to brag about.

It seems in this age where so many internet shoppers are quick to voice their complaints about such services on blogs, forums and the like, the owner of this particular site quickly realised that such bad reviews were inadvertently resulting in back links from highly reputable sites such as Get Satisfaction.com (a page rank 7 site). The website owner in question (who goes by several aliases) even brags about this on one of the review sites and claims he now actively gives bad service in a hope to receive more such reviews and the resultant link juice they bring with them. He also claims that as the complaints have increased so has his websites organic traffic and hence sales.

Now obviously I am by no means condoning the practices of this dodgy dealer, however from an SEO point of view it is quite an impressive campaign and highlights a problem with the process of how Google ranks site based on incoming links without being able to distinguish the context of them, be it a glowing review or a condemning complaint.

I double checked and it does seem the author of this particular site was clever enough to make sure they did not put a link to decormyeyes.com, as I am sure a link from the NY Times would have only done further wonders for the site’s rankings.

You can read the full article here however in a typical underhanded newspaper site it is spread over 8 pages in order to increase their page impressions and advertisement views.