In 2013, before the most recent Google updates, big organisations with plenty of budget to throw at SEO and PR were not immune to falling foul of the rules.
For example, take the Interflora debacle at the start of 2013 as an example of how a brand can get its SEO so very wrong.
The UK’s best-known flower seller disappeared from Google’s rankings, even when searched for by name, after placing upwards of 150 local, online media advertorials making heavy use of back-links for terms such as Valentine’s Day and Father’s Day embedded in the copy. Google does not take kindly to companies effectively buying page rankings and punished Interflora by dropping it from search results. Our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience : It's the Inbound Marketing.
