Early this evening, I had a phone call from Chris Osborne, head of business development at FT.com who stated very clearly that the Financial Times “aren’t interested in doing anything underhand with the search engines”. He said that all the hidden links on the FT.com site had now been changed to visible links pointing to Moneysupermarket.com with whom FT.com has an ongoing business relationship.
I asked him directly how such a thing had happened, but not surprisingly he declined to give an answer other than to say it should not have happened. I guess we’ll never get to know the inside story.
The important lesson from this incident is that link building is more than just about search engine marketing – it has important implications for branding and reputation management. Anyone who has overall responsibility for managing a website has responsibility for ensuring that everyone on the team plays by the rules.
I find this very disturbing!
I find this very disturbing! All links should be clearly listed on the web site. This is the type of tactics used by hackers, not commercial companies.
I find it disturbing that
I find it disturbing that the FT feel it appropriate to sustain a business relationship with a company that clearly uses black hat search engine optimisation techniques (which are in effect vandalism of search results), has user hostile web design (inc. popups and other nastiness) and who subscribes you to their spammy mailing list when you buy a travel insurance policy and then refuses to honour the unsubscribe links at the bottom of the mails, forcing you to find and email their customer services directly in order to be removed.