Anyone Experimented With Black(hat) Ops.?

[Melissa82]

A common argument in this forum is that adding 6-7k back links overnight wont hurt your site because you could easily target your competition and blast them from page one.

Has anyone ever actually done this in experimentation? I understand it wont work on authority sites but blasting someone on the top page one that has aged for example eight years, become a PR 3 and only a few hundred back links. Think of the worst kind of links, all of the same type and all coming in from the same IP, pinged thoroughly, and all done in one night.

I really have to think that this would work. The damage might even be permanent if the owner of the site did nothing to try and recover.

...and no, I'm not interested in being the guinea pig ...not saying I'd do this to the competition but I am curious if these type of black(hat) ops do happen.

[LinkVariety]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

A common argument in this forum is that adding 6-7k back links overnight wont hurt your site because you could easily target your competition and blast them from page one.

Has anyone ever actually done this in experimentation? I understand it wont work on authority sites but blasting someone on the top page one that has aged for example eight years, become a PR 3 and only a few hundred back links. Think of the worst kind of links, all of the same type and all coming in from the same IP, pinged thoroughly, and all done in one night.

I really have to think that this would work. The damage might even be permanent if the owner of the site did nothing to try and recover.

...and no, I'm not interested in being the guinea pig ...not saying I'd do this to the competition but I am curious if these type of black(hat) ops do happen.

Yes I have done it:

1) It CAN hurt your site in terms of a TEMPORARY filter / loss of traffic
2) It is always TEMPORARY and the site bounces back, sometimes stronger than before, anything from 2 weeks to 4 months depending on stature of your site.
3) People regularly test this stuff on competitors

The day Google ban sites for this the value of "black hat link building" will rise ten fold, as will the volume of spam sent out.

[markowe]

So, conversely, we should be able to blast the living daylights out of our own sites and they will always recover eventually! Actually, I am trying this with a new site - so far I have got it to disappear, but the reappearing with higher rankings part I am still waiting for!
I wonder, perhaps blasting a site with relevant anchor text is more likely to trip a filter since few would have the nerve to try THAT on a competitor's site. Thus you are more likely to bury your own site that way. So maybe we should be blasting our OWN sites with warez/porn/other dodgy anchor text since no-one in their right mind would do that on their own site , ipso facto Google wouldn't penalise it. Hey, I am beginning to get the hang of this SEO I think

[JSProjects]

BH SEO is fine for "churn and burn" sites. I've seen people make a living from these types of sites. Target an up and coming trend / product, throw together a site, blast the crap out of it, rank high, move on. By the time it's penalized they've already moved onto the newest trend or product.

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by markowe

So, conversely, we should be able to blast the living daylights out of our own sites and they will always recover eventually! Actually, I am trying this with a new site - so far I have got it to disappear, but the reappearing with higher rankings part I am still waiting for!

You did this deliberately to see how and when it recovers? Are you throwing quality links at it now? Suicidal scientist!! Love it!

[retsek]

Blasting a competitor's site is wrong, it shows how weak and small minded you are. Don't do it.

For your own sites and properties:

Blasting thousands of links is not the main problem. It's the fact that all or most of the links have the same (or similar) anchor text.

I've done much testing on this and found:

-For new domains, if you blast 10k+ links with the same (or similiar anchor text), the site will disappear for 1 - 3 months. With varied backlinks, it may last as little as 7 days.

-Aged domains with PR and some links, are much more able to withstand blasting without disappearing. They may drop a little intially, but they always bounce back very quickly at higher positions.

And the same thing applies. Varied anchor text will prevent or shorten those "sandbox" periods.

For variations, i use things like click here, visit this site, long long tail versions of keyword, naked backlinks, etc. 10k backlinks with just 5 keywords/anchors is not enough.

So my testing has also proved that if you are sandboxed for blast tons of links using too few varied anchor text, you can quickly recover by blasting it again but this time using much more variations.

[paulgl]

People confuse stuff that hurts with SEO. Anything that hurts
is not SEO. So, you need another term for black hat other
than black hat SEO.

Getting around common SEO don'ts is not black hat. It's being
smart. It's thinking.

If it works, it's SEO. Not gray, white, black, beige.

People who think white hat are mostly just spinning their
wheels on very common stuff.

Just look at the threads with 5,000 forums to profile spam. Then call
that garbage white hat.

Maybe we need a new term.

Stuff that works, works. Period. All is fair in love, war, and SEO.

Why do you think some SEO people are more successful?

5,000 backlinks over night would not even be seen. How is this
black hat anyway? That means going viral would be bad. Hardly.
Going viral is good. In fact, as someone said. the only true "white"
hat would be link bait (going viral).

People confuse hurting with not helping. They are not the same.
People are too into cause with false effects.

Paul

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by retsek

Varied anchor text will prevent or shorten those "sandbox" periods.

Great post, thanks. I forgot to mention in the "attack" to only blast a one word anchor repetitively.

[retsek]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

Great post, thanks. I forgot to mention in the "attack" to only blast a one word anchor repetitively.

Doing it will only help your competitor in the long run. If they are proactive, they will realize what you're doing and take steps to even make it benefit them in the short term as well.

That doesn't sound like an attack to me.

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by retsek

Doing it will only help your competitor in the long run. If they are proactive, they will realize what you're doing and take steps to even make it benefit them in the short term as well.

That doesn't sound like an attack to me.

If the competitor has to do something to get his site back on top as we agree then it has to be called an attack that put him down in the rankings.

Thank you for mentioning that the attacked site owner has to be "proactive". There are a lot of older sites where owners have become comfortable for years on top and do nothing with their sites. I honestly don't think they will be "proactive" at all. I'm sure alarms will go off but I doubt the response time will be quick.

[retsek]

It's not an attack if you're helping him -- long term or short.

An old established site? even more so.

[rahmanpaidar]

What should be the reason for *temporarily* penalizing a blasted site?

If a blasted site will get penalized for a few months, then gets boost in
SERP because of those links, then the reason for penalizing become a pure meaningless.

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by rahmanpaidar

What should be the reason for *temporarily* penalizing a blasted site?

If a blasted site will get penalized for a few months, then gets boost in
SERP because of those links, then the reason for penalizing become a pure meaningless.

That's assuming that a site will recover by itself. I've read several threads, excluding those who panic after a few days, where sites do not recover on their own and blame Google. We here at WF are among a tiny fraction of people that own sites and research modern SEO approaches. When most sites fall of the end off Google's earth I'm sure they curse loudly and either give up or start over again with a new site.

[mattlaclear]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

Has anyone ever actually done this in experimentation?

For sure we have. I have seen new links cause sites to dance but never disintegrate.

People get impatient and think the worse when they see their site dance around. So it's easy for other like minded people to believe there is such a thing as a Google Sandbox.

[yukon]

All a blast does is bounce the site like a mofo.

When your ready for the site to stop bouncing in the SERPs, stop blasting, & create a handful of high PR authority links, then STOP everything for a week or two. The authority links almost always bring the page back & stop the bouncing.

BTW, the blast isn't a penalty, it's Google trying to figure out "wtf am I supposed to do with all these links". Google doesn't see any of the blasted links until they crawl the backlink pages again, which could take weeks.

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

For sure we have. I have seen new links cause sites to dance but never disintegrate.

People get impatient and think the worse when they see their site dance around. So it's easy for other like minded people to believe there is such a thing as a Google Sandbox.

But Matt if you're talking about your network those links you provide are on multiple IP's and use varying anchor text. Sure your customers dance and panic a bit but they then rise and settle higher in the rankings. I consider those links of yours quality.

Have you ever blasted thousands of single IP, single anchor text links at a site? That's what I want to know if you have experimented with.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

But Matt if you're talking about your network those links you provide are on multiple IP's and use varying anchor text. Sure your customers dance and panic a bit but they then rise and settle higher in the rankings. I consider those links of yours quality.

Have you ever blasted thousands of single IP, single anchor text links at a site? That's what I want to know if you have experimented with.

Who (or why) in the world would only blast links to a single server?

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by yukon

All a blast does is bounce the site like a mofo.

When your ready for the site to stop bouncing in the SERPs, stop blasting, & create a handful of high PR authority links, then STOP everything for a week or two. The authority links almost always bring the page back & stop the bouncing.

BTW, the blast isn't a penalty, it's Google trying to figure out "wtf am I supposed to do with all these links". Google doesn't see any of the blasted links until they crawl the backlink pages again, which could take weeks.

Ping the crappy links constantly until they are indexed to speed up the process of demotion. Also, adding high PR links assumes the blasted site owner knows what to do to recover.

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by yukon

Who (or why) in the world would only blast links to a single server?

Are we on the same page here? I'm asking hypothetically how to hurt a competing site's ranking.

[glennforum]

Blasting your site with so much backlinks can really hurt your rankings. Google does not want quantity of backlinks but rather quality backlinks. A site that is linked to a PR6 website can have a PR4 or PR3.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

Are we on the same page here? I'm asking hypothetically how to hurt a competing site's ranking.

If you spend the time to rank your site, instead of trying to dethrone the #1 page in the SERPs with BH techniques, it will make getting the #1 postion an easier job.

Once you blast the H out of #1, you only have 11 million more pages to compete with.

You going to spend all your time blasting competition, or building up your own sites/pages authority?

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by yukon

If you spend the time to rank your site, instead of trying to dethrone the #1 page in the SERPs with BH techniques, it will make getting the #1 postion an easier job.

Once you blast the H out of #1, you only have 11 million more pages to compete with.

You going to spend all your time blasting competition, or building up your own sites/pages authority?

Current thought in this forum states that back links can only help a site or at worst be ignored by Google. Please don't vilify me for digging further into this. I'm putting a lot of time into my current project using your above methods and everything is going exactly, if not better, than I hoped. It's just a thought experiment Yukon. Thanks for you input.

[rahmanpaidar]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

That's assuming that a site will recover by itself. I've read several threads, excluding those who panic after a few days, where sites do not recover on their own and blame Google. We here at WF are among a tiny fraction of people that own sites and research modern SEO approaches. When most sites fall of the end off Google's earth I'm sure they curse loudly and either give up or start over again with a new site.

Thanks Mellisa. From my knowledge of computer programming,
Google dance and a lot of other flactuations in SERP that people
experience after building links, could be simply the results of updating
affected Google servers which are holding the links data.

Google owns nearly 10.000 computer servers located all over the world
most of them in U.S.

Depend on how massive links you build, you affect more and more data
centers and hence the more severe updating the servers take on,
and hence the more time it needs to recover for a correct result.

**I want also clear that these are only my assumption and could be
simply wrong as there is no evidence to it.

[mattlaclear]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

But Matt if you're talking about your network those links you provide are on multiple IP's and use varying anchor text. Sure your customers dance and panic a bit but they then rise and settle higher in the rankings. I consider those links of yours quality.

Have you ever blasted thousands of single IP, single anchor text links at a site? That's what I want to know if you have experimented with.

We spend a lot of money testing everything we can get our hands on. We have swarms of servers dedicated to several different types of link projects. But if it is on the market we've tested it. We grab as much link juice as we can from multitudes of different sources.

Not too many people believe me when I share this type of info with them.

I have run thousands of campaigns for Warriors in the last 15 months and I have not seen anything resembling a penalty box with Google rankings.

With the firepower we have at our disposal we could melt all our competitors off the serps if we were to open up on their sites. But we just do not have the ability to do that.

Trust me on this.

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by mattlaclear

We spend a lot of money testing everything we can get our hands on. We have swarms of servers dedicated to several different types of link projects. But if it is on the market we've tested it. We grab as much link juice as we can from multitudes of different sources.

Not too many people believe me when I share this type of info with them.

I have run thousands of campaigns for Warriors in the last 15 months and I have not seen anything resembling a penalty box with Google rankings.

With the firepower we have at our disposal we could melt all our competitors off the serps if we were to open up on their sites. But we just do not have the ability to do that.

Trust me on this.

I do believe you on this Matt but it just doesn't account for the many threads I've read where people have had there site fall from page 2 to page 80 after adding an unnatural looking back link blast and are currently there after several months. This does not include those that panic after a couple of weeks, start a thread here blaming Google, only to rise back where they were two weeks earlier.

I'm coming to the conclusion that some sites will stay ranked off the charts unless they proactively do something about their recent demise like add high PR links etc.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

But Matt if you're talking about your network those links you provide are on multiple IP's and use varying anchor text. Sure your customers dance and panic a bit but they then rise and settle higher in the rankings. I consider those links of yours quality.

Have you ever blasted thousands of single IP, single anchor text links at a site? That's what I want to know if you have experimented with.

A bunch of spun articles (and in some cases unrelated content) on PR 0 and PR n/a sites... And you think those are quality links? If they were quality links, it wouldn't take thousands upon thousands of them to rank a website.

I don't think Matt would even argue that those are quality. Quantity, yes. They can make huge quantities of links.

When you say the same IP... Search engines only count the IP address of where the site is hosted that contains the backlink. It doesn't matter what your IP address is when creating the backlink. A lot of people get confused by that and think that somehow search engines are spying on you and know the IP address used by the person who created the backlink. That is not true.

To blast thousands of links from the same IP would be pretty tough. You could use your own site and just setup pages and pages of links, which Google would probably just disregard as a link farm and wouldn't give you anything to go off of. You could try setting up thousands of profile links on the same forum, which I think most moderators would catch on to and delete. You could post thousands of articles to a site with backlinks embedded, but unless it is a site with super high authority, it would probably take the search engines weeks or even months to crawl all the pages.

You could try setting up a site on a Web 2.0 property to blast links from the same IP, but the Web 2.0 property would undoubtedly shut your account down almost immediately with that many links.

It would be pretty tough to accomplish blasting thousands of links from the same IP.

[Jessicalohan21]

Hi,

Black hat search engine optimization techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

- break search engine rules and regulations

- creates a poor user experience directly from the black hat SEO techniques used on the website

- ethical content is presented in a different visual or non visual search engine spiders and search engine users.

[Melissa82]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

A bunch of spun articles (and in some cases unrelated content) on PR 0 and PR n/a sites... And you think those are quality links? If they were quality links, it wouldn't take thousands upon thousands of them to rank a website.

I don't think Matt would even argue that those are quality. Quantity, yes. They can make huge quantities of links.

When you say the same IP... Search engines only count the IP address of where the site is hosted that contains the backlink. It doesn't matter what your IP address is when creating the backlink. A lot of people get confused by that and think that somehow search engines are spying on you and know the IP address used by the person who created the backlink. That is not true.

To blast thousands of links from the same IP would be pretty tough. You could use your own site and just setup pages and pages of links, which Google would probably just disregard as a link farm and wouldn't give you anything to go off of. You could try setting up thousands of profile links on the same forum, which I think most moderators would catch on to and delete. You could post thousands of articles to a site with backlinks embedded, but unless it is a site with super high authority, it would probably take the search engines weeks or even months to crawl all the pages.

You could try setting up a site on a Web 2.0 property to blast links from the same IP, but the Web 2.0 property would undoubtedly shut your account down almost immediately with that many links.

It would be pretty tough to accomplish blasting thousands of links from the same IP.

I did mean that Matt's links are quality compared to the type of links that might do a site harm. Regardless, points well taken Mike, thanks for your input. So if you were a website assassin what would you consider the worst of the worst to blast at your competition? Think of the types of links that do make Matt's links look like quality in comparison.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by Melissa82

I did mean that Matt's links are quality compared to the type of links that might do a site harm. Regardless, points well taken Mike, thanks for your input. So if you were a website assassin what would you consider the worst of the worst to blast at your competition? Think of the types of links that do make Matt's links look like quality in comparison.

I have never been convinced that links can do harm to a site.

You might see a lot of threads on here from people claiming they blasted a bunch of links at their site and now it is off the SERPs. There are generally some consistent themes with many of those sites. Usually one of the following applies...

The site is brand new and was only ranked highly due to QDF in the first place. They never deserved their higher ranking to begin with and now have found their proper place in the SERPs.

The site is of extremely poor quality. They are not w3c compliant and/or present a horrible user experience (constant popups, nothing but ads above the fold, etc).

They are simply going through a bounce in the SERPs, which happens ALL the time.

At worst, I think a bunch of spammy links can trigger a manual review. If the site has some really dodgy things going on or extremely poor content when reviewed, it may get knocked down the SERPs at that point. However, there are billions of webpages out there, so I think this is very rare.

I think the one thing that most people don't want to admit when their site drops in the rankings is that their site sucked to begin with. Everyone ranked above them deserves to be ranked above them because they have a better website and have done a far better job creating quality backlinks.

For whatever reason, so many people think that if they build a website, come up with some crummy content on it, submit some awful spun articles to a few article directories, and make a few blog comments, that they somehow are entitled to the #1 spot in Google and that none of their competitors could possibly just be doing a better job than them.

Nope. That couldn't be true. So instead they hit the forums starting threads about how they blasted 5000 forum profile links at their site, it dropped to page 3, and it must be someone else's fault.

[LinkVariety]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

You might see a lot of threads on here from people claiming they blasted a bunch of links at their site and now it is off the SERPs. There are generally some consistent themes with many of those sites. Usually one of the following applies...

The site is brand new and was only ranked highly due to QDF in the first place. They never deserved their higher ranking to begin with and now have found their proper place in the SERPs.

I have a lot of sites, and a lot of experience with penalties.

I have PERSONALLY lost rank on established sites (3 years old PR4, previously solid ranking).

I have PERSONALLY received keyword and page specific penalties on sites after aggressive link building (4 years old, Ex PR5, was PR4 at the time).

I PERSONALLY know people who have tested ways of applyging negative SEO to other competing sites, and were able to measure an "effect" from doing this.

In all cases the effect is temporary, an automatic filter is applied and then expires. You cannot permanently kill another site, becuase if you could everyone woudl be doing it.

With regard tot he people who were testing negative SEO, they gave up precisely because the results were temporary. If the results were permanent, they would probably have made a very good career out of it.

However, it is perfectly possible to harm someones Christmas sales.... IF the right conditions exist, i.e. you are not trying to depose a true authority site.

A PR3 "mom and pop" e-commerce site is most definitaly disruptable... if you are a nasty piece of work, and can be bothered wasting your time messing with other peoples sites as opposed to developing your own.