Traffic Power was a Las Vegas, Nevada search engine optimization company that engaged in black hat techniques. These were spamdexing practices that violated Google's webmaster guidelines. As a result, some Traffic Power clients were banned from Google's organic search results.
According to a Wall Street Journal profile of the company, Traffic Power used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[1] Wired reported that Traffic Power sued a blogger, Aaron Wall, and the website Traffic Power Sucks, for mentioning that they were banned.[2] Google software engineer Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.[3]
In January 2009 Traffic Power's CEO, Matt Marlon, was jailed on accusations of fraud related to a foreclosure "scam".[4]