$4.8 million fine for black hat SEO

A US insurance comparison website has been awarded $4.8 million (£3.08 million) to be paid by one of its competitors after the latter was found guilty of creating fake leads.

The jury found MostChoice submitted over 3,500 false applications for quotes to the NetQote website, SEOmoz blog's Sarah Bird claims.

In addition, the jury made the decision to award NetQuote with double the damages it had originally claimed, illustrating the risk of using search engine optimisation (SEO) black hat techniques as opposed to the more ethical white hat methods.

The fake leads submitted by MostChoice resulted in insurance brokers complaining to NetQuote that the applications were "bogus", Ms Bird notes.

It was also revealed that MostChoice had hired an individual to create and submit the leads.

Meanwhile, SEOmoz's Randfish has recently urged search engines to carefully monitor the results that make up their ranking pages.

He stated that black hat techniques should not be encouraged or rewarded.

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