Plato once remarked, “Honesty is, for the most part, less profitable than dishonesty.” While this may sometimes seem true in the short term, should profit be the ultimate goal? More importantly, what does dishonesty do to the credibility of businesses, particularly in the digital age, where search engines govern how we access information?

Take Forbes as an example. After hiring an SEO firm to boost their rankings, they recently achieved massive online visibility. Before long, Forbes.com dominated search results in categories far beyond its expertise, such as travel and appliance reviews. This unusual surge in rankings led many in the SEO community to speculate about unethical practices or even secret arrangements between Forbes and Google.

This was proven wrong when Google issued a “manual penalty” against Forbes last month, removing 97% of their search listings. The reason? The SEO company they had hired was engaging in “Parasite SEO” tactics—stealing content and manipulating link structures to artificially inflate Forbes’ search authority. While these tactics may have momentarily boosted rankings, they compromised the integrity of search results.

Plato also wrote, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth,” acknowledging the difficulty of honesty. Yet, not just our words but also our actions must embody truth. Forbes’ manipulative SEO practices may have led to short-term success, but such tactics undermine the principles of fairness and transparency that businesses should uphold.

When companies game the system, they don’t just cheat the algorithm—they degrade the trust users place in search engines. Private Blog Networks (PBNs), once a popular strategy, illustrate this perfectly. Companies would purchase dozens of domains, create content-filled blogs, and link them back to their main business sites, creating the illusion of widespread endorsement. This artificial link authority boost misled search engines and users, distorting genuine content with fabricated hype.

Immanuel Kant’s ethical framework fits here: What would search results look like if every business acted this way? The answer is clear—we would witness the “enshittification” of search engines, where results are no longer trustworthy or valuable but merely controlled by those who can afford to manipulate them. Just as we’ve seen the decline of banner ads’ effectiveness, search results would lose credibility, and organic traffic conversion rates would plummet.

True authority cannot be faked; it must be earned through relevant, high-quality content and legitimate links. Forbes was never an expert in appliances or travel, but their SEO firm manipulated the system to make it appear so. This wasn’t just a marketing tactic—it was a lie, a direct assault on the integrity of search results.

As the saying goes, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” If a business is willing to resort to dishonest tactics to manipulate search rankings, what other ethical standards are they willing to compromise? Authenticity and transparency are the pillars of long-term success. Businesses prioritizing these values don’t need to spend a dime on deceitful strategies—people will naturally want to engage with and link to real, trustworthy, and honest brands.

In the end, short-term gains from dishonest tactics pale in comparison to the lasting value of integrity. Truth should always be the guiding principle for search engines and the users who rely on them.