Matt Cutts, the head of the Webspam team at Google ... sounded remarkably upbeat and unperturbed during this conversation, which was a surprise given that we were discussing a large, sustained effort to snooker his employer. Asked about his zenlike calm, he said the company strives not to act out of anger.

Or maybe it strives not to anger companies like JCPenney, whom the Times points out spends millions on Google ads, in addition to lord only knows how much on SEO trickery. Cutts says the idea is absurd; the European Union, on the other hand, is investigating Google for this very practice. Segal writes:

Is it possible that Google was willing to countenance an extensive black-hat campaign because it helped one of its larger advertisers? It's the sort of question that officials are now studying in an investigation of possible antitrust abuses by Google.

Investigators have been asking advertisers in Europe questions like this: "Please explain whether and, if yes, to what extent your advertising spending with Google has ever had an influence on your ranking in Google's natural search." And: "Has Google ever mentioned to you that increasing your advertising spending could improve your ranking in Google's natural search?"

SEO is in the news more than ever thanks in part to . HuffPo is many things (not all of them printable on the pages of InfoWorld.com), but one thing for sure is that it is SEO-driven. owes much of its success to its ability to manipulate the treatment it receives at the hands of Google (and Yahoo and Bing).