Remember when things hit the fan at Enron and story after story came out about the retirement losses of the 21,000 employees who's 401k's largely disappeared? Here is one example (emphasis mine):

"As Skilling did his macho-boy routine on guys-only motorcycle treks through Mexico, the retirement funds of hard-working employees who believed in the company were flying off the in the dust: Showers lost $435,000 in her 401(k)?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùall her retirement security except for Social Security, which, no thanks to Bush?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s privatization efforts, is still intact?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand Perrotta lost $40,000 in her 401(k) and, ultimately, her house."

There was only one way they managed to lose $435,000 and $40,000 in their 401k's during the Enron collapse: by having that much money invested in Enron. That turned out to be a big mistake, and clearly ruined the financial future of thousands of ex-Enron employees.

However, did they really lose that much money? I don't believe so, because the money they supposedly lost was based on false gains. How can you lose something that didn't really exist in the first place? Okay, the money (as measured by stock valuations) really did exist, but the basis for that valuation was a house of cards.

In my opinion, while the losses were tremendous, one needs to take the false run-up in valuation into consideration to properly measure the losses.

Let's apply this principle to search engine marketing:

Jim Boykin points to an interesting conversation on Webmaster World discussing whether Google gives a search engine ranking boost to sites buying links, PageRank, and other related topics. On contributor to the thread, martinibuster, shared a comment that very much parallels the Enron effect:

"Please, think about it rationally for a moment. If you are spamming with guestbook links and are ranking well for five or six months then lose your ranks when the links are pulled out from beneath you, you may view that as a penalty. But it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s not. Your site is ranking where it should be because your guestbook links are not counting, they have become neutral, as in they don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t count."

Sound familiar? Success is based on a flimsy short-term strategies can lead to disaster.

But, there is one huge difference between the two examples listed above. The ex-Enron employees who lost their retirement savings may have made some poor investment decisions, but they were also deceived by their company's leadership. In the case of search engine marketing, you are responsible for the tactics used to market your web site.

Can you rank high in search engines using nefarious tactics? Yes.

Will search engines eventually close the loophole you're exploiting? Yes.

Will your site drop in the rankings once that happens? Yes.

Will you feel like you've been penalized? I hope not.