Duplicate Content at BestBuy.com Attracts Attorney General
With all the fuss about duplicate content penalties and filters, I thought it quite interesting that BestBuy.com has found a way to get in legal trouble due to it. Yes, you read right the State Attorney General of Connecticut has initiated an investigation into BestBuy.com’s use of duplicate content.
Apparently what has been happening is employee’s of BestBuy stores have been using a duplicate version of the Best Buy website to deny customers discounts which appear on the online store. The second version of the web site does not always display the discounts so employees can “show” the customers that the discount is not in effect. Here’s a link to the full story:
Best Buy Confirms It Has Secret Website
Now to be fair, it is still unsure if BestBuy planned this or the result a few over zealous employees who figured out a scam using an intranet version of the site. As far as I can tell the second site is not availible to surfers or spiders so it likely will not warrent a Duplicate Content Filter or Penalty, but those Best Buy employees might just get a Duplicate Content Warrent.
Interesting… is that essentially “cloaking” and showing a different version internally than externally? Will cloaking slip from black-hat SEO to outright deceit and fraud? The real question, if you go to one of the display computers and type bestbuy.com on the machine, does it show you the real site or the internal version, and does it forward you or “cloak” the site.