Alex Reid

In what could be dubbed ‘creative’ at the Pickering Institute is considered ‘Black Hat SEO’ by most. The “diploma mill” is renting out sub-domains of it’s pi.edu domain for.. wait for it.. $50/month.

None of the blogs set up so far appear to be populated with content, and Google’s Matt Cutts has already indicated that Pickering’s blogs won’t show up in search results. Searches for “Pickering Institute” and “site:pickering.edu” both return blank or irrelevant results now, so Google appears to be serious about stopping this sort of behavior in its tracks.

Yahoo, however, continues to index the site.