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Link Spammer Complains To Google About Spam Not Working

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August 13  |  Black Hat  |   Ryan Clark

I just caught this while helping out companies on Google’s webmaster help and thought you folks might get a laugh out of this one. There are sadly way too many “SEO’s” who have 0 clue as to what’s against Google’s TOS in regards to building links. This bloke is definitely lost at sea as you’ll quickly figure out from reading his post:

Hi,
 
I’m doing only white hat SEO for my site www.e07.net but it is caught in Penguin update and it has given low ranking, it should be on top for the keyword “forum posting service” it is on the seventh place.
 
I don’t know where I made the mistakes.
 
Thanks

Yikes… While 7th place is no penalty, his site will surely end up much worse over the next few weeks. I know most of you forum owners most likely want to punch this spammer in the face so settle down… one more will bite the dust soon. A quick look at the site’s link profile shows more ignorance as they’ve just been spamming forums with a couple of targeted anchor texts. This is exactly the kind of stuff Penguin is automatically looking out for in its hunt – not to mention ALL the links are of one type.


 
So this brings me to another point. If you’re hunting around for a service provider to attract links for you, do your homework on them. A lot of folks have no idea what to do and where to start, so knowing what’s going to cause your business trouble in the long (or short) run will make your life a whole lot easier.

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More Garbage Google Results

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July 29  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

I was shopping for a specific watch and I think among any type of search result, shopping ones are such garbage. Post Panda you’d think things would be better off but a clear example of what should have been fixed, is well, spammed out. Duplicate pages from two sites littering the search results albiet the top few are actually form Omega. This post really doesn’t bring much substance out, more so just a quick rant from an online marketer when I’m actually in shop mode.

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Pay Me To Remove Your Unnatural Link

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July 17  |  Black Hat, Link Cleanup  |   Ryan Clark

I just came across a Google Webmaster Central thread where an SEO firm doing a link cleanup kept coming across webmasters requesting a monetary fee to have the “illicit” link removed. The Linkbuildr team talked about something like this happening a few weeks ago during a company retreat and now we see something in the wild. We don’t do link takedown requests on behalf of clients for two reasons:

  1. We help people attract links, not build sh#@ links.
  2. We don’t build sh#@ links. If a major brand has a trillabazillion naughty links, the cleanup mess is going to be a bloody nightmare.

How have you been handling requests for processing fees in response to your link removal requests?

Some webmasters are now requesting processing fees from $20 to $500 to remove links from their web sites.

I don’t like paying those fees, as I did not ask them to place the links in the first place. On the other hand, they see it as a reasonable fee for the time and effort required to remove links. Nobody likes to work for free.

The web site I am currently working on has over half a million inbound links and the link removal processing fees are starting to add up to quite considerable numbers.

How do you handle such requests?

EastwoodThere is a great possibility this person is trolling, but this scenario is definitely not far fetched at all. I imagine a lot of companies will do anything to get out of Penguin’s grip and pass that manual review. I’m probably not helping the situation by blogging about this as other nefarious webmasters are likely to start doing this to other companies trying to clean up a link mess. Regardless of the negatives, what do you folks think? Would you pay a webmaster or track them down and go Eastwood on their behinds?

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Link Spam In The Wild – Post Penguin

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July 10  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

Penguin has been in play for a while now and everyone is afraid to build links, well, except for the people who have dipped their toes in the post-penguin water and know what still works. It all depends whether you’re wanting your business to last in the SERPs for a while or just a short stint. The link spammers out there who target the usual big money keywords are still at it and are ranking in the top 10 faster than I’ve ever seen before. I’m not here to out anyone, nor would I, but we’ll take a look at real link graphs and keywords they’ve managed to dominate within a month…. yes in only a month!

There has not been much of an actual clean up of the SERPs in my opinion, so feel free to add a rebuttal or troll me for saying that in the comments below. In the 7 years we’ve been “building” and “attracting” links for clients, the one thing I can say is that slow and steady wins the race. The people hacking the SERPs are not doing it with any secret sauce of links, either; It’s full on junk links from junk sites and it’s quite embarrassing in my eyes for Google. I will give them some credit if the Penguin algorithm should eventually snap them out of the undeserved rankings within the next month. Within that time though, they most likely have a second and third site in the works and they’ll be right back to laughing all the way to the bank. The other spammers have noticed this as well and it’s still an all out payday for people with “turn and burn” websites.

Without specifically outing anyone, we’ll take a look at a few heavily spammed keywords just to showcase what’s still going on and what to avoid. Are posts like these productive? Maybe. Are posts like these cheap link bait for us? Maybe. Either way, I like to know what’s going on out there from all types of hats and stay informed. Keep in mind that the SERPs for each keyword are going to look a little different for everyone, but from what I’ve checked, multiple sources can confirm everyone I looked at was ranking top 5 for the term at hand. All of our backlink data was happily acquired through Ahrefs.com.

Search Term: Viagra

This first site shot up past Viagra.com for a while in my checking of the SERPS, which was pretty shocking. I won’t tell you if they’re still ranking or not but one thing is certain, they made it VERY high up for this search term quickly and easily. I’m keeping my eye on how long it last(s)(ed) and I suggest you folks do as well for the link spammers in your vertical.


Search Term: Bad Credit Loans

One of the other notorious keywords out there that’s heavy with competition and always an interesting peek into other types of link spam. The one thing I’ve noticed here is that the link volume seems to be a lot less, implying that Google is still giving a lot of weight to keywords in the domain name.


Search Term: Payday Loans

Just about every link spammer has a hard on for this keyword term as it brings in serious coin for affiliates. It’s always a hot bed of spamtivity and here, as well, I’m seeing the same time frame for quick ranking. Again, there aren’t as many links blasted as the Viagra term, but here we had another keyword domain in play so there’s that pattern again…


It’s a pretty fascinating world these “turn and burners” live in and while it’s not for me, it provides the other side with interesting details and facts. It seems the Google algorithm still has a long way to go and I don’t think we should be so quick to say “links are dead”. I’m still a big fan of doing the amazing things that make you stand out in your niche, which brings in everything you want as well as “natural” and quality links from sites that are relevant. If you’re one who does a lot of backlink research you’ll have no doubt noticed that the sites that have seen no drops and steady rankings have those great links and their anchor text levels are far from gamed.

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The Future Of Google Spam?

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May 3  |  Black Hat  |   Ryan Clark

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Bad Credit Personal Loans In Google

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April 28  |  Black Hat  |   Ryan Clark

The other day I wrote about the hilarity still showing up for buy Cialis still in Google even after all these “quality” updates. While I can see how Google’s toned down the power of having a lot of specific anchor text links, there are clearly problems still. So right now for the search term bad credit personal loans is showing one silly result. This is a very competitive term and this type of crap shouldn’t still be showing up, right?

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Buy Cialis Online Google Results

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April 26  |  Black Hat  |   Ryan Clark

So the super duper spam attack Google algo update hit this week and continues to roll out, so what do the search results for some of the most spammed keywords look like? Well let’s take a look at buy Cialis and see what we can find ranking in the top 10 for one very competitive keyword.

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Google & Link Building Services

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April 25  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

All those businesses out there who’ve gone and looked for a link building company have most likely ended up at the Google search box to start their quest. With so many people having problems due to links these days, I thought we’d take a quick look at what an unsuspecting consumer might end up being provided by both organic and paid search results from Google. I feel bad for a lot of small businesses who don’t know any better and end up getting a boat load of spammy links done in their name. While they’ll most likely enjoy the benefits for a while, they’ll one day get the stinger of Google in their arse and that can be disastrous. While I don’t condone you heavily rely on organic Google traffic, it does make or break a lot of businesses.

So I’ll pick a few random search queries a company might search for and see what results we get in the organic and paid (Adwords) results. I’ve looked at a couple and have been disgusted with what I’ve seen, which is what inspired me to get this post going. It’s also quite obviously a sly tactic to make people aware of our link “attraction” process and why we promote awesome content for links more than any other tactic out there.

Search Query: Link Building Services

So here in red we have the companies that offer services that are against Google’s TOS and good ol’ Vertical Measures holding it down in green at number one. They do a lot of amazing work and even as a competitor, I have no problem promoting them or kissing a little ass. Problem here? Most will go with the others because a link attraction campaign costs quite a bit of money and those cheaper services are just too easy to go with.

Search Query: High Quality Link Building Service

So, BuildMyRank, a very very blackhat link building network that has recently been kicked in the rear from Google is still ranking no1 for this term… strange? You can imagine how this will end up getting a lot of people and their businesses in trouble without them knowing any better. This is another great example of why this post is going up here and why Google may even need to specifically check in on these SERPs.

Search Query: Whitehat Link Building Service

These are looking a lot better as I can see our site in the company of Eric Ward‘s (which should be no1 in my opinion). You can quickly see that a lot of the other results for the “whitehat/white hat” queries bring in a number of services that are in no way approved under Google’s TOS.

Be Careful

As you can see there is a lot of room for people getting stuck with a company that has no idea what’s going to keep you out of trouble while getting them ranked. You’d be shocked at how many firms are using blog networks to pump up client results and they’re not even telling them. I can imagine this will also lead to a lot of lawsuits or threats from companies who wake up one day with their business on the verge of extinction.

We don’t claim to be all super whitehat either, don’t get me wrong. Ranking in some niches sometimes requires sneakyness and we know that techniques that are not squeaky clean often work.  We do, however, have ninja skills when it comes to acquiring links that can only be obtained via some monetary exchange. When it comes to stuff like that, the clients are always made fully aware of the potential risks at hand. I’d just like to drill it into companies’ heads that they need to be aware of what might be a problem for them in the future and not be in the dark. Flying in the face of Google’s TOS is like investing: you have to be willing to lose everything you put in. One day, it might not be worth anything.

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