After breaking Google's guidelines for years, they've finally be swatted with a penalty - and they aren't taking it well. You can read the full story, with an excellent analysis by Jennifer Slegg, on The SEM Post.

In brief:

• SEO agency gets tons of backlinks from footer links placed into a WordPress template they offer.
• Google figures it out and, overnight, they drop 60 places in the ranks and stop ranking for their company name.
• SEO agency, unwilling to cop to the truth, blames duplicate content (lmao)
• To try and "fix" the problem they joke on Twitter and Facebook, say that they don't need Google's traffic anyway, and act like flippant idiots.
• They also copied multiple versions of their site and set up some spammy, scammy, gross redirects to rank for their brand name again.
• Push notifications, crappy AdWords ads, and other moronic solutions are in place, too.

This is a perfect lesson in how to destroy your website and business. Also a perfect lesson in how not to fix the problem. I feel for the poor workers at that company.