Irishwonder’s Black Hat SEO Blog A blog about blackhat, general SEO issues and other things related to the life on the web

The post I’ve done on blackhat SEO vs. ignorance recently has gained some exposure - people have commented on the post itself,  it’s been commented on at digg, it’s even been translated into other languages. While it was pretty complete in the context of the discussion on  SEOMoz mentioned in that post (that discussion has actually ben one of the main things that inspired it), with this ider exposure it’s been taken out of context, so I fel it necessary to clarify my views on this topic. Do not worry, I won’t be bashing white hat SEOs (or even those who call themselves so) much anymore.  I just don’t want people to get the impression  that I endorse blackhat SEO wannabe scripting kiddies. Because  that is NOT  black hat SEO. that is stupidity in action, and ignorance of the same kind as whitehat SEO wannabe ignorance.

So you think the fact that you’ve got a comment spamming script makes you a blackhat SEO? you think firing it off to try to post meaningless bullshit accompanied by your pharm and casino links on my blog will get you far? If even 50 unsuccessful attempts don’t drive it home to you that comments on this blog are moderated you might as well  sell your computer to your neighbour and never touch anything related to the Internet again. What is it you’re trying to achieve, the same sort of relationship with me that Matt Cutts has with search engines Web? You’d be better off spamming A-list bloggers, they might actually let your stuff through  and if you piss them off enough they might even give you some link love.

So you want to be a true blackhat SEO? Put off all your scripts and start by learning all the classical whitehat stuff. Quoting Sugarrae, “every good blackhat I’ve ever known can whitehat their asses off”. Once you’ve learned the main things, make sure you’ve got some imagination. If you’ve got none btter stay where you are - a whitehat without imagination is mediocre of course but at least the amount of stupid things you will do is smaller. or you can still pass for a selfproclaimed whitehat guru if you start a KKK-style war against blackhats - the louder the better.

For those who hasn’t paid attention reading the first part of my musings, let me repeat it again. Blackhat SEO is NOT about pushing buttons to fire off scripts somebody else has written - it is about THINKING OUT OF THE BOX.

There was some talk recently whether or not it’s worth it listening to what Matt Cutts says - well he has just proved that he does have interesting things to tell us, and it’s only a matter of us interpreting them and in some cases reading between the lines - or even simply reading.

Here are some interesting quotes from his Q&A session on his blog and what I make out of it all:

1. BigMommy coming soon?

Q: “This datacentre http://64.233.185.104/ works differently to all of the others. Noticed just a few hours ago. . . . . Where does that DC fit into the scheme of things? Is it mainly made from newly spidered data?”
A: Sharp eyes, g1smd. That wouldn’t surprise me. As Bigdaddy cools down, that frees us up to do new/other things.

and also

Q: “The one thing that seems to be getting to people generally, is what are the post Big Daddy intentions? Fixes, spam issues, regeneration of ‘pure’ indices, supp. issues, PR and BL update, etc.”
A: I can’t give a timeline (e.g. “scaling up communication in April, more work on canonicalization in May”) because priorities can change, esp. depending on machine issues, deployments of new binaries, webspam developments, etc. Short-term, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some refreshing in supplemental results relatively soon, and potentially different PageRanks visible in the next couple weeks.

2. Site Deindexing 101

If you’re really sure you never want those pages to be seen, you can use our url removal tool to remove urls for six months at a time. But I’d be very careful with the url removal tool unless you’re an expert. If you make a mistake and (for example) remove your entire site, that’s your responsibility. Google can sometimes clear out self-removals, but we don’t guarantee it.

OK I see several interesting things about this statement (and the feature itself). First: what stops me from removing competitors’ sites from Google’s index? Second: if I see a site to another person but don’t really want that person to benefit from it what if I submit the site for removal right after the purchase happens?

3. Selling links

Q: “If one were to offer to sell space on their site (or consider purchasing it on another), would it be a good idea to offer to add a NOFOLLOW tag so to generate the traffic from the advertisement, but not have the appearence of artificial PR manipulation through purchasing of links?”
A: Yes, if you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google.

He doesn’t cover the consequences for those buying links - but the message is pretty clear, buy links for traffic alone or buy links for Yahoo.

5. Google’s Understanding of Spam

I love this one:

Q: “What about the problem of directories and shopping comparison spam overriding real pages?”
A: Fair feedback. I heard that recently from a Googler, too. Sometimes we think of spam as strictly things like hidden text, cloaking, etc. But users think of spam as noise: things that they don’t want. If they’re trying to get information, fix a problem, read reviews, etc., then sites that like aren’t as helpful.

6. A Way Out of Sandbox?

Q: “Would it be possible to add a date range to queries? I might get 91,000,000 results, but the first 200 are 2-3 years old. I would like to limit results to items no more than 6-12 months old.”
A: Check out our advanced search page for this option. Tara Calashain also did some really interesting digging into this too, e.g. this info she uncovered. Google Hacks is a pretty solid book if you’d like to read more fun Google hacks.

And finally, great news for all Adsense millionnaires out there:

7. Your AdSense ID is Safe - For Now

Indexing non-visible things like punctuation, JavaScript, and HTML would be great, but it would also bulk up the size of the index. Any time you’re considering a new feature (e.g. our numrange search), you have to trade off how much the index would get bigger versus the utility of the feature. My guess is that we wouldn’t offer this any time soon.

Not only does Google have access to whois data for your site, it also indexes whois database and even goes as far as to display the indexed queries in its search results:

Anybody out there with any serious business targeting young audience , e.g. fashion, health, wellness & fitness, sports & rec, music, film, TV, etc, MUST contact MySpace for their media kit for advertizers. Even if you’re not interested in placing paid ads on their  site, it’s a worthy read. Their media kit provides data on demographics, Media Metrix data on pageviews, specifics of MySpace site - a lot of food for thought.

Some define blackhat SEO as “using unethical techniques”. Unethical my ass! Killing a child is unethical. Exploiting drawbacks in an algorithm created by those whose professional duty is to create an algorithm that can provide most relevant search results but who failed to do it can only be called unethical by the algorithm developers in order to cover up their failure. It can also be called unethical by those SEOs who are either too lazy or too shortsighted to think out of the box predefined by Google’s guidelines. On the other hand, there are things that are truly unethical that have no rela relation to SEO, black or white. Serving up porn to a child looking for cartoons is unethical. Threatening people in order to get their money is unethical. Is it because SEO is mentioned in connection with those cases? - No. If a math teacher goes and robs a bank shall we call all math teachers unethical?

Just because Google calls certain techniques it cannot effectively deal with unethical doesn’t make blackhat SEO a crime. Unlike email spam that is persecuted by law in many countries, there is no law against black hat SEO anywhere in the world. Google is not the Internet police, nor is it the Internet, no matter what their ambition is. True, it does play a huge role in today’s Internet. But Internet has started its existence long before Google, and if tomorrow there would be no Google Internet will still exist.

Furthermore, there is no way to declare blackhat SEO illegal since the line between blackhat and whitehat is very thin and vague. Where do you draw the line? The same technique can be used for a perfectly legitimate purpose as well as pure SERPs manipulation. But to SEOs, there is no excuse for ignorance. The truly unethical thing is covering your ignorance by name calling. This is unprofessional and scamming people into thinking otherwise of your professional qualities, paying you money, risking their business to your incompetence IS the real crime.

Google’s official blog was deleted by their own folks. Any wonder regular Blogger blogs get deleted?

I have been getting emails from people asking me to let them into the forums. As you probably know, currently we have limited access of the new members and they should get manually approved before they can join. This has been done for a number of reasons that are detailed here. It DOES NOT make sense emailing me or Earl Grey unless you personally know me or him. It DOES NOT help and might even work against you if you piss us off. Just be patient or become someone we would be really interested in having in our forums.

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The launch of Yahoo! Answers beta last December seemed to go unnoticed, by Threadwatch members at least. However, looking at it now, I see a lot of activity going on. Some is serious questions, some is plain BS, the topics ranging from philosophy to cartoons. Some posters are advertizing their services, sure thing. Funny to compare it to Gary Price’s overview posted at the time of the launch and see his predictions come true.

There is a similar service offered by Google but it’s old (notice ©2003 on the FAQ page?) and seems like everybody has forgotten about it by now - though people still use it pretty actively.

You’d think Google has registered all the possible variations of their domain name, to prevent cybersquatting, spam, hate sites, etc. Not really. Running into a domain they have missed is as easy as a finger slip on the keyboard. Try typing googl.com (with the final e missed) into your address bar and you get there. the owner is using peple’s inaccuracy typing to his own benefit to the fullest, as we can see. This domain has been registered a good while ago (2001) and will be causing Gopgle problems till 2008 - unless they take some really hard measures (sue the owner?)

EGOL over at SEOMoz did a post on domain searches using Overture Keyword tool revealing a lot of interesting aspects regarding the “brand strength” and type-ins. While providing some food for thought, this information doesn’t seem very applicable in the practical sense - or does it?

Over the last few days, I got several phishing emails from folks posing as PayPal. Nothing unusual about it, of course. What was interesting about those emails, though, is that instead of trying to make me believe theirphishingsite.com was indeed PayPal they did it subtler - they provided a link to a Google or Yahoo search. Kinda pays to rank #1 for your own name doesn’t it?