There’s been a great deal of debate about “SEO outing” in the industry of late, and the concencus seems to be that it’s a no-no.
I happen to agree: in the vast majority of cases outing is bad. Glass houses, stones, etc. I map out a lot of shonky link networks that would make for amusing/informative “how not to do it” posts, but we keep a lid on it because, well, it’s just not cricket it it?
We came across one today I have zero compunctions about crying foul on though. Check out the following:
http://www.powerlevelings.com/
http://www.mygamesale.com/
http://www.trade-accounts.com/
http://www.likeaccount.com/
http://www.wowtot.com/
http://www.mmogcart.com/
http://www.wowxos.com/
http://www.wowtot.com/
Those are their bigger squeeze sites…plenty of others in this network. All have decent toolbar PR and are ranking well for target terms. And there’s absolutely no way they should be.
Can you see why? First person to tell me why even the most ardent anti-outing person wouldn’t have a problem with me reporting these to Matt Cutts wins a selection box!
24 Comments
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17th December 2008 @ 17:41
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Is it because their link profile suggests that they are an offshoot of the Chinese government, and you object on moral grounds (Tiananmen square, Tibet or poor quality sweatshop clothing)?
17th December 2008 @ 17:45
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@dave: Slightly shadier than that
@ben: I *am* intensely worried about the red menace, the creeping insidiousness of communism and the east/west trade deficit, but that isn’t why I find this network particularly objectionable. Or not the only reason, anway!17th December 2008 @ 17:46
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I’m intrigued to know but am stumped, just looks like comment spam to me on a massive scale. Unless it’s hacking to get the links?
17th December 2008 @ 17:54
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Selection box on its way to Mr. Hybrid if you want to email me your address
Dig into their link profile a bit and you’ll see oodles of links from hacked blogs. It’s not obvious at first (or wasn’t to me) but there’s a pattern of links from:* Existing blogs with quality content
* Same blogs update infrequently (i.e. owner doesn’t pay much attention)
* New blog user appears and begins posting crap WOW spamThey seem to be doing pretty well out of it too. The sites above are really just the tip of the iceberg.
17th December 2008 @ 18:01
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Whoop, whoop!
Thank you Dave!
Added my email to this post.
Thanks again, kudus for the good post, that’s what got my attention.
17th December 2008 @ 18:06
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Sorry, thanks Daniel.
17th December 2008 @ 18:08
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[...] [...]
17th December 2008 @ 19:44
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Manual Blogspam is still working good … shame on Google.
I personally would out anyone who spams me. I get a lot of WOW Gold Spam in a forum.
17th December 2008 @ 23:09
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I am in this industry and this is how we do it.
Go fuck yourself loser. We are millionaires and you are not.
18th December 2008 @ 08:23
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You’re a millionaire and you’re stuck in Groningen? Money can’t buy happiness I guess.
18th December 2008 @ 09:25
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Lol - That seemed to rattle some cages. Excellent.
18th December 2008 @ 10:41
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Because WOWGOLD spam my totally unrelated forum like mad and drive me mad?
Good enough reason for me, well outed!18th December 2008 @ 14:49
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one of my main competitors in kids bedding has been hacking blogs for ages - Google doesn’t seem to mind as he still outranks me onvarious keywords - go figure.
19th December 2008 @ 07:14
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Shame on the hackers. What’s the world coming too.
20th December 2008 @ 17:39
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If I ever meet any of these fuckwit WOW GOLD forum spammers, they’ll feel my fist in their face. Time wasting bastards. Block ‘em by username, email address, or IP, and they just keep coming back again. Fuck ‘em all.
20th December 2008 @ 21:33
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You reckon automated or by hand?
Doug
29th December 2008 @ 10:27
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Just looked at more…got to be automated
29th December 2008 @ 10:28
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I own a gaming forum - there wasn’t a single day over the last couple of month where I did not receive at least one wow gold spam post. Seems its more popular than viagra and co.
11th January 2009 @ 09:17
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Well… if you search say web hosting, you’ll still see link buying in full effect.
Search viagra, link farms are doing well. Though I’m surprised nobody has bothered doing a whitehat viagra website.
2- Some systems are vulnerable to SQL injections… saw that while searching buy viagra once. McDonalds.ca got hacked… very amusing.
19th February 2009 @ 07:22
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Block ‘em by username, email address, or IP, and they just keep coming back again. Fuck ‘em all.
25th March 2009 @ 05:41
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I was just now searching around about this when I found your blog post. Thx~!
I’m only visiting to say that I really enjoyed seeing this post, it is really clear and well written. Are you going to post more about this? It appears like there is more material here for more posts.28th May 2009 @ 06:45
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Insallah google will update its algorithym and block those sites as spam.
28th May 2009 @ 20:19
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There’s been a great deal of debate about “SEO outing” in the industry of late, and the concencus seems to be that it’s a no-no.
30th May 2009 @ 09:11
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Their links are all from major blog farms and major comment spam?