[PHPAdam]

This story should be more about Google's ranking code than a none story about JC Penny paying a SEO company, who did their job.

Matt_Cutts, people pay 3rd partys to "get me to the top for xx" when they deliver, you penalize then into oblivion?

[sabat]

Yes, Google does generally penalize that behavior, if the SEO companies cheat. Do what JC Penney apparently did -- use a load of unrelated sites to artificially boost its standing in search results -- and Google has a good reason to penalize you. Google can only stay trustworthy (and therefore relevant) if it eschews results like that.