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

Recently, I got approached by SEOQuake developers (of SEODigger fame) who let me know about their new tool called AdsSpy. AdsSpy is a tool that does the opposite of SpyFu - if SpyFu lets you see “inside” AdWords and who bids on what keywords, AdsSpy lets you see what sites belong to the same owner based on their AdSense pub id, Yahoo partner id and so on.

Besides AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network, AdsSpy also handles smaller advertising networks such as Chitika, AdBrite, Kontera, Amazon and IntelliTXT. The source of information for AdsSpy is the SeoDigger database of sites. As of today, that is 338 835 unique advertiser IDs. Not much compared to the overall number of sites using different ways of monetisation through displaying ads, but it’s growing, just as fast as the user base of SEODigger (for those unfamiliar with it, it’s a tool that lets you see what keywords a site ranks for, based on the keywords appearing on the site itself).

What are the possible uses of this tool? Well, when I had my first look at it, I thanked God it’s not 2005 any more when most people’s main source of income was AdSense. Back in the days when blackhat MFA networks consisted of thousands of sites, this tool could have been a threat to a lot of them. However, nowadays that a lot of people have switched to affiliate networks and learned to mask their affiliate IDs, this is not that scary any more.

AdsSpy basically fills the niche that was empty so far, with people wondering how to search for bits of JavaScript code (which is how advertisers’ IDs are mostly implemented in the pages displaying ads) - something that traditional Google search is not capable of, despite Google’s long proven ability to index JavaScript. I see how this tool can benefit AdWords publishers using Google’s publisher network first of all. The developers suggest also such uses as researching ad placement and identifying site owners.

While playing with the tool, I tried looking up the O’Reilly network and found out that they use AdSense on at least 12 domains and 2 subdomains and Yahoo ads on at least 5 domains that AdsSpy knows about (the tool displays the complete list of all sites). Too bad the tool doesn’t show you the size of income the site owner gets from these ads - would have been interesting to see how AdSense treats its premium publishers these days (O’Reilly is one, isn’t it?)

You may remember a post I did about tramadol for dogs and spam associated with it a while ago. Well so, recently I noticed in my stats that I am getting referrals from Google searches for related terms, e.g. this one. I checked and well, it appears that out of over 23,000 results in Google.co.uk I rank #5… Do you think I should start selling tramadol in special packages for dogs exclusively on here yet?

As for other stuff people are trying to sell in these SERPs, one has striken me as particularly funny:

Click here to GET tramadol dogs side effects. Save your $$$. FREE delivery: tramadol dogs side effects.

Ah, the clueless newbie scraper builders! I am still of the opinion that no matter how large my keyword lists are, I need to have at least a quick look at them before I run them through the site generating software (that is, if I don’t have a nice intelligent filter to do that ) - or else, this is what you get.

On the second thought, Google could build a list of such meaningless keywords and hammer down scrapers using these patterns - that is, if they are not doing it yet.

Talking of keywords, watch this space (which is my other, whitehat blog if you are not familiar with it yet) for a nice long keyword research article that I am going to post there soon.

The news has reached me that Bompa, a.k.a. the newbie babysitter of Syndk8, has started a Blackhat SEO Bootcamp - basically, a standalone version of his newbie babysitting at Syndk8.

Who is it good for? Clearly, newbies. Those same newbies who come to syndk8 without knowing the first thing about SEO in general, let alone blackhat, and start by pissing people off and getting themselves under attacks for asking newbie questions. Bompa solves this problem by giving them an option to get their answers elsewhere without being ridiculed. Moreover, he gives them some basic tools good enough to get them started and get the feel of making money online as blackhats - basically, empowers them to make a step from a blackhat wannabe to a real fully-functional blackhat.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely. Knowing Bompa for all this time, I know he doesn’t promice anything he cannot deliver, and I know how experienced and, even more importantly for this case, patient he is. However, he only lets in 25 people at this time so don’t blame me if all seats are taken by the time you get there.