JCPenney.com has returned to the Google search index with about the same rankings as it had before. (Some nice details from Search Engine Land here.) My takeaways from this:
1. Google manually returned JCPenney.com to its previous rankings, once again showing favoritism to a big brand. I highly doubt they’d do the same for a small website that got caught doing the same thing.
2. Other big retailers competing in the same space such as Kohls.com missed a window of opportunity to accelerate their own SEO programs and grab rankings.