The X files have reopened in SEO land this last week or so, “the truth is out there somewhere” and it all started with a Fake Story and then another fake story. The news of hookers, a 13yold and a credit card has spread like wildfire around the net with extensive coverage from Fox News and other media networks. The claimed creator of the high traffic generating link bait is Cornwall SEO. Over half a million page views cannot be ignored.

What of sensationalism we ask ourselves, who knows what is the truth and what isn’t. Just because Lyndon has claimed creating the post, did he really write it? What if he has no real connection with Money.co.uk and the whole thing was Lyndon lapping it up and creating Linkbait to his site

Lyndon, now hailed by many in the link world and here in the DaveN camp as the ” Master Baiter” has also been rebuffed by others for exploiting journalistic boundaries could now face the Google penalty guns with Matt holding his finger on the trigger.

Who can determine what is true and what isn’t ? Should Lyndon even face the Google penalty ? What if you base an article on what you believe to be factual content and then find out the source was making the whole thing up. Joost explores a similar theory with his blog.

To take this in context, Dave was about to write a blog post last week about what happened to him London, but then thought it may well look like sensationalism. He was assaulted. Yes that’s true. I guess to back that up I would need to post pictures of the scar he now has on his forehead. Most people are moaning and taking the stance that the article was labelled has fake or a joke but Google themselves are in fact no strangers to fake stories : google gulp. Another example of this is when we were looking for News about Bournmouth installing fibre optic cable through a local sewage pipe and did this search, what came back…shit (excuse the pun)

I don’t see anywhere on those page that say HAHAHA only a joke ..

In fact when I searched for this what I wanted was this story.

The bottom line is how can Google possibly make an arbitrary decision on what news articles are true and what are false. Here’s an idea then, make something up, then link it to your competitor then watch them perish as Google employs the penalty on their site.

The post on Lyndon’s blog about what he did has been removed, yet someone else copied it and republished it, is that story on their blog true or fake ? .. I guess he’s now waiting for pistols at dawn….