Google Targets Common Black Hat Technique
CNewsAuthor: William Gallahue
The Scheme
Imagine you are a trial lawyer or marketing information aggregator with a new website devoid of worthwhile content and no pagerank. All too often these sites would use hit counters or "counter-scheme" in order to climb atop search engine rankings.
The scheme involvings buying counters on free counter provider websites or starting their own site. The sites would offer free web counters targeting inexperienced web developers (think grandma's blog). The counters would then have a link to sites advocating everything from online gambling to mesothelioma and DUI lawyers to free (insert prize here) sites.
Example Code from E-zeeinternet.com
<"a href="http://www.lawcore.com/dui-dwi/" target="_blank""><"img src="http://www.e-zeeinternet.com/count.php?page=119524&style=comic_book&nbdigits=5" alt="NY DWI Defense Attorney" border="0" "><"/a"><"br"><"a href="http://www.lawcore.com/dui-dwi/" title="NY DWI Defense Attorney" target="_blank" style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: #000000; text-decoration: none;"">NY DWI Defense Attorney<"/a">"
Note how this code inserts "NY DWI Defense Attorney" 3 times. The site LawCore by the way is owned by B.A. Marinnan who also owns Mesolink.org (asbestos litigation) another site that advertised through e-zeeinternet.
"It Works"
The technique worked well, too well in fact and legitimate sites were soon pushed off the radar in favor of these spamdexing sites. A search for gambling addiction might have brought you to online casinos while a search for anything remotely asbestos related would bring you to page after page of legal sites.
Part of google's ranking algorithm scores pages by the number and quality of their backlinks. Counter schemes allowed for sites to gain massive amounts of low quality backlinks in a matter of weeks making their high setup and ad costs (One SEO professional stated it cost his firm nearly $75,000/month) easily recouped.
This created an instant divide as site owners were faced with a six-figure investment just to stay competitive.
Targeting What Isn't There
Many SEOers knew that one day someone would complain loud enough that Google and other engines would begin cracking down on their technique. Posts about "counterdexing" began appearing from disgruntled webmasters who ran "white hat" sites that found themselves without the budget or knowledge to compete. While google never directly addressed the issue a back alley campaign soon pushed the search giant into action.
But targeting the counters wasn't easy. Often the code would contain millions of variations and changing target urls so that if google was on to one specific form of code it would leave the other counters unaffected. After a few months things began to change.
Removed (Somewhat)
In late February and early March sites that had used counters soon found themselves completely removed from search results. While the sites are still indexed they are penalized from results. But it is not a complete victory as these sites still rank high in MSN and Yahoo searches.
The length and terms of site penalties are unknown but as soon as we have more information we will report it.
posted by William Gallahue @ 4:09 PM
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