Just over a week ago, the New York Times introduced the world to Vitaly Borker, who boasted of being abusive to customers and claimed, inaccurately, that such behavior had a side benefit of producing good rankings in Google. Now another side benefit: Borker's arrest.
The full press release hasn't yet been posted on Bharara's web site — it may appear here later. CNBC says he was arrested on charges of cyber-stalking, making interstate threats, mail and wire fraud.
Borker's eyeglasses site, Decor My Eyes, and his tactics, were given a huge spread in the New York Times business section two Sundays ago.
In reaction to the piece, Google quickly introduced a change so that merchants with bad reputations would lose rankings in its system. It also debunked the notion that bad reviews somehow managed to help him gain prominence in its search engine. A similar piece from us did the same.
I pointed out that the site was ranking for this search back when Google announced that it had a fix to prevent this type of thing. Five days later, the site is still there. It doesn't appear for a variety of other terms, however. Before the change, I could find it ranking for a variety of specific terms. Now, its visibility seems greatly reduced.