Something Funny Happen on EzineArticles

[steveniam]

This morning while reading articles on "Health-and-Fitness/Weight-Loss" category I notice something funny.

Almost all the "Most Viewed EzineArticles in the Health-and-Fitness:Weight-Loss Category (90 Days)" and "Most Published EzineArticles in the Health-and-Fitness:Weight-Loss Category" are monopolised by a single author.

I suppose he will be on the radar-screen of EzineArticles.

[Heuristic]

There was a technique circulating on how to boost your articles to the most viewed by sending junk traffic to the article. If that's what this guy is doing, then he's overdone it and EZA will likely put a stop to it (hopefully). In the meantime, I'm sure he's making out like a bandit.

[WilliamM]

I did a little research and this is what I uncovered.

The author has about 12 articles on the same theme. The articles are well written. The titles all begin with the product name and then some aspect of weight loss. Each article is about 500 words long. Each is broken up with about 2 or 3 subtitles. There is a pretty good call to action at the end.

The resource box has two keyword-focused links to the author's squidoo lens. The lens uses the product name in the url, title, subtitles, content and links. The lens is just five text modules with big pictures. The pictures are all relevant to weight loss, nutrition, etc.

The lens has a link module that points to three of the articles on Ezine Articles. The descriptions are about a paragraph long.

There is also a module with large arrows that point to a link. The link takes you to a domain that has the product name in it. The page is just an iframe of the affiliate program.

Two other methods I found that the author generates traffic is through Blogger and YouTube.

The Blogger Blog uses the product name in the url. It is nothing more than the articles posted on Ezine Artiles with no changes. They are placed in several different categories that are related to weight loss.

At the top of each article is the author's YouTube video that has a watermark of the url to his Squidoo lens.

The articles posted on the blog include the resource box with the two links to the Squidoo lens. This is followed by the Article Source information. There are two links. One to the author's list of articles on Ezine Articles and another to the actual article itself. The article link is the full URL and not a keyword or keyword phrase.

The author has two videos on the same subject on YouTube. They are less than a minute long and nothing more than a colorful background, a series of questions about losing weight and some music. Together, the two videos have been viewed almost 17,000 times in four months. One thing I noticed is that the author included a link to his squidoo lens on the video page and a link to his lensmaster profile on his YouTube profile page. He also favorited his own videos.

[lacraiger]

how do you find the most viewed articles in a category?

[oregongal]

To find the most viewed articles in a category, you bring up any article in that category. You scroll down past the article and you will find: most recent articles, most viewed articles and most published articles.

[ShawnC]

Hey William, a great amount of research there.

So what can we take away from this? Is what he doing a success? Is i considered slimeball? Is it rude, sleazy, smart, genius?

I read your whole thing looking forward to your take on what it all meant.

[jewin]

That's pretty intense

[T.I.M.]

Originally Posted by WilliamM

I did a little research and this is what I uncovered...

William, thanks for doing all that research. Basically reverse engineering their method. Well done brother. I know I have to stop printing stuff out but this was too good to pass up.

[steveniam]

From observation the author has 14 articles in the most views category and 13 articles in the most published articles category. Just look at the link where the article resources box point to and you will know it originate from the same author even if he use a different name.

It's logistically challenging to move all his articles to the most views and most published categories in one night. I do not know how much he has paid for the few hundred thousands clicks to move to the position and what tool he used to get all his articles published on the same day on so many sites or blogs.

I have to salute him but I doubt he will there for long and maybe banned by Ezinearticles. This is too obvious.

[Davion Wong]

Hi all, it is possible to get most of the slots in the "Most Viewed" category. I have done it for myself recently. Not easy but definitely not magic either. With the right techniques, you can get your articles ranking and pulling in huge traffic.

[steveniam]

Of course it's possible. I have done it myself.

From my experiences I am only to pull a few hundred views when I am on the top of the most views articles category.

But to get 30,000 to 40,000 clicks each in one night for 14 articles will be humanly impossible. That will be almost 500,000 clicks in one night. Are there so many traffic for weight loss articles?

Originally Posted by Davion Wong

Hi all, it is possible to get most of the slots in the "Most Viewed" category. I have done it for myself recently. Not easy but definitely not magic either. With the right techniques, you can get your articles ranking and pulling in huge traffic.

[Davion Wong]

Yup, 30,000 to 40,000 clicks in one day for 14 articles is a bit unbelievable. Actually, you can observe it overtime and that should tell you something. If that traffic stream is not sustainable, it tells you that the surge was artificial and definitely suspicious.

Originally Posted by steveniam

Of course it's possible. I have done it myself.

From my experiences I am only to pull a few hundred views when I am on the top of the most views articles category.

But to get 30,000 to 40,000 clicks each in one night for 14 articles will be humanly impossible. That will be almost 500,000 clicks in one night. Are there so many traffic for weight loss articles?

[nicholasb]

there is a way to buy article views, but it is blackhat and if you get caught they will ban your account

[steveniam]

It's 30,000 to 40,000 views for one article and for 14 articles it's almost 500,000 views in a single day. This is my niche and I am practically observing my competitors every day. For 14 articles to appear from nowhere from the same author is definitely suspicious

Originally Posted by Davion Wong

Yup, 30,000 to 40,000 clicks in one day for 14 articles is a bit unbelievable. Actually, you can observe it overtime and that should tell you something. If that traffic stream is not sustainable, it tells you that the surge was artificial and definitely suspicious.

[WilliamM]

Here are some results of further research.

The author has an account at freearticledirectory.co.uk where the same articles are posted along with some other. There are 27 articles total. Each has been viewed approximately 1000 times.

I also discovered that the feed from the author's page at Ezine Articles had been submitted to a few feed directories. A second feed from the author's page at iSnare (same articles) had been submitted to other feed directories.

One in particular at friendfeed.com seemed to be a mashup of three feeds. Two feeds were from two different authors at Ezine Articles. Further investigation revealed that the two authors (or pen names) have resource boxes that point to the same Squidoo lens.

At Ezine Articles, I found a third author (pen name) connected. However, the resource box did not point to the same Squidoo lens but to the same article content on webwire.com. How do I know there is a connection? The webwire.com article has one of the other author's names (pen names) and a link to the same website with the iframe of the affiliate program.

A new site that I discovered during this search was Yahoo Pipes. The author makes use of this site.

Does anyone have any experience using Yahoo Pipes - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/?

Just finished the research. Now I need time to evaluate it. I'll add my comments later.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Amazing....An article marketer markets, gets results, and then people
question his ethics.

The articles are well written, not junk...he's done all the things needed to
be done (submitting feeds, generating traffic via other means, etc.) and
has shown no evidence of doing anything wrong, but something must be
amiss because how is it possible for anybody to get those kind of numbers
with articles?

Simply amazing.

[steveniam]

Let see how long will his articles remain on EzineArticles most views category. If he has just do it for 2 or 3 articles no one will notice it. But he has do it for 14 articles on the most view category and also the most published cateogry.

He want to monopolised all the categories. Don't you think he is too greedy and that could be his 'downfall'.

[Pat Jackson]

Originally Posted by steveniam

Let see how long will his articles remain on EzineArticles most views category. If he has just do it for 2 or 3 articles no one will notice it. But he has do it for 14 articles on the most view category and also the most published cateogry.

He want to monopolised all the categories. Don't you think he is too greedy and that could be his 'downfall'.

Why are you acting like he is "gaming" the system or doing something wrong?

He has taken the correct measures to ensure his articles reach the full potential they have. Reading the above information he has done so via the use of RSS feeds and Web 2.0 properties. What is unethical about that?

Sorry to be blunt but don't you think your time would be better spent trying to grow your own business?

[Guitarnut]

So when someone questions how an article marketer can get approximately 500,000 views overnight they are completely off base?

I can't speak for anyone else but asking questions is how I learn.

[WilliamM]

It seems that the author in question has done practically everything taught to generate income with affiliate programs to be successful and is being criticized because it worked.

I don't deny that he (or she) could be using some black hat (unethical?) techniques but I haven't discovered them. It makes you wonder when his YouTube username is "sneakyaffiliate". From my observation, the author...

• Chose a high converting Clickbank product.
• Purchased a separate domain that included the product name.
• Wrote (or purchased) quality articles that were submitted to article directories, specifically EzineArticles.com and iSnare.com
• Created a Squidoo lens
• Created and submitted videos.
• Bookmarked the articles
• Submitted feeds to RSS directories

and who knows what else.

The only thing I could not find in his marketing arsenal was a squeeze page. While he may be making a lot of money through the affiliate program, I think he is probably missing out on a lot of backend sales.

If there is something "sneaky" being done to get such exposure for the articles, I did not find it. It just looks like intense, focused marketing that has paid off.

[Darth Executor]

If he's using iframes to rack up views it would be impossible for you to track it. ezine could though, easily.

[TheRookie]

This is great, its a great lesson for all of us, Ive attempted similar techniques but my knowledge of feeds is poor so that part I never have done but, interlinking articles to squidoo pages which link to a domain all works pretty good. Passing pr and getting google to rank you high as well. I am not sure if the person is targeting keywords for google though which would probably help him long term as well.

We should analyze this a little more on this thread. How about a fake scenario and all of our input off what this guy has done.

Here we go.

First lets pick a topic affiliate say softball bats (just an example)

This guy would buy a domain, softballbatsnow.com correct.
Then setup an ezine account, another article account, just 1 squidoo lens?
a blog (is the blog under his domain), setup a few bookmarking accounts (which ones), and rss feeds (explain).

[TheRookie]

Next ill write my articles and submit, while they are getting approved ill
setup my squidoo lens and put links to my blog. (the lens is about softball and bats)
articles approved, i book mark them a few times each. link my lens to them.
my blog links to my lens.

any changes fellas

[TheRookie]

Originally Posted by WilliamM

Here are some results of further research.

The author has an account at freearticledirectory.co.uk where the same articles are posted along with some other. There are 27 articles total. Each has been viewed approximately 1000 times.

I also discovered that the feed from the author's page at Ezine Articles had been submitted to a few feed directories. A second feed from the author's page at iSnare (same articles) had been submitted to other feed directories.

One in particular at friendfeed.com seemed to be a mashup of three feeds. Two feeds were from two different authors at Ezine Articles. Further investigation revealed that the two authors (or pen names) have resource boxes that point to the same Squidoo lens.

At Ezine Articles, I found a third author (pen name) connected. However, the resource box did not point to the same Squidoo lens but to the same article content on webwire.com. How do I know there is a connection? The webwire.com article has one of the other author's names (pen names) and a link to the same website with the iframe of the affiliate program.

A new site that I discovered during this search was Yahoo Pipes. The author makes use of this site.

Does anyone have any experience using Yahoo Pipes - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/?

Just finished the research. Now I need time to evaluate it. I'll add my comments later.

how was he using the pipes, was it to aggregate data on his own site from other sources or aggregating all his articles

[TheRookie]

could someone explain how he is using the rss feeds

[Heuristic]

He's not really doing anything special - at least nothing that any experienced article marketer wouldn't do. Yet, I doubt that most people would get that level of success overnight. Seriously, look at the numbers and tell me that it's all down to Web 2.0. RSS feeds, social bookmarking, and a few You-Tube videos. While that is a very solid approach to getting your view count up, it's a longer term strategy. It doesn't explain the surge (apparently, overnight) of traffic seemingly from no where. I know some people would love to argue the point, but you also have to be realistic about it.

[Jesus Perez]

He's sending junk traffic to EZA to boost Squidoo. Which, in turn, boosts his site. It's a friggin' no-brainer. EZA will never figure it out if he bought the traffic from a decent source and randomized it.

If anything, people should be taking notes.

[TheRookie]

Well if added his articles to isnare.com and they propagated them each to about 500 sites and his isnare articles linked to his ezine articles it would definitely get him a ton of views to his ezinearticles..

He would probably get huge google traffic temporarily to the ezines and traffic from each isnare article

[TimG]

Originally Posted by steve39

He's not really doing anything special - at least nothing that any experienced article marketer wouldn't do. Yet, I doubt that most people would get that level of success overnight. Seriously, look at the numbers and tell me that it's all down to Web 2.0. RSS feeds, social bookmarking, and a few You-Tube videos. While that is a very solid approach to getting your view count up, it's a longer term strategy. It doesn't explain the surge (apparently, overnight) of traffic seemingly from no where. I know some people would love to argue the point, but you also have to be realistic about it.

Between your post and WilliamM's postings we have a good description of what is probably taking place. I'm going to poke around and see what I can find but what baffles me is why do it this way.

Prior to EZA making the change from most viewed articles ever to most viewed in the last 90 days this would have been a better strategy. Of course, that's probably why EZA went with the 90 day most viewed in order to keep the scams that were taking place with the most viewed ever.

With the rolling 90 day window you are better off making sure that you have a consistent amount of articles coming in at a designated time frame so that as your previously viewed articles drop off the 90 most viewed list it gets replaced by another one of your submitted articles.

That method is extremely effective and can be done with one EZA account (which is what I recommend and probably stated in the EZA TOS) but can be enhanced with multiple pen names -

Respectfully,
Tim

[ladyshadowrider]

Originally Posted by BlueSquares

He's sending junk traffic to EZA to boost Squidoo. Which, in turn, boosts his site. It's a friggin' no-brainer. EZA will never figure it out if he bought the traffic from a decent source and randomized it.

If anything, people should be taking notes.

I agree! This is brilliant!

This person, whoever he or she is, has taken massive action and it looks like it is paying off!

We can all learn something here.

Thank you, steveniam and WilliamM for taking the time to do the research and post about it for everyone to benefit from.

Much appreciated!

Tamara

PS: Hi TimG, How's retirement treating you?

[TimG]

Originally Posted by ladyshadowrider

Hi TimG, How's retirement treating you?

Don't want to redirect this thread but let's just say life is good......real good!!

Been awhile since we've chatted, hope things are going just as well for you.

Tim

[Carl Pruitt]

Originally Posted by WilliamM

Here are some results of further research.

The author has an account at freearticledirectory.co.uk where the same articles are posted along with some other. There are 27 articles total. Each has been viewed approximately 1000 times.

I also discovered that the feed from the author's page at Ezine Articles had been submitted to a few feed directories. A second feed from the author's page at iSnare (same articles) had been submitted to other feed directories.

One in particular at friendfeed.com seemed to be a mashup of three feeds. Two feeds were from two different authors at Ezine Articles. Further investigation revealed that the two authors (or pen names) have resource boxes that point to the same Squidoo lens.

At Ezine Articles, I found a third author (pen name) connected. However, the resource box did not point to the same Squidoo lens but to the same article content on webwire.com. How do I know there is a connection? The webwire.com article has one of the other author's names (pen names) and a link to the same website with the iframe of the affiliate program.

A new site that I discovered during this search was Yahoo Pipes. The author makes use of this site.

Does anyone have any experience using Yahoo Pipes - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/?

Just finished the research. Now I need time to evaluate it. I'll add my comments later.

Yahoo Pipes is a great resource...and it's fun dragging and dropping all the feeds once you figure it out.

All this stuff is starting to sound like the guy must be Howie Schwartz with his teams of assistants "dominating the conversation".

[Daniel Molano]

I did some research myself and his Google rankings are impressive. That's all there is to it.

Almost every single one of his articles are ranking page 1 of Google for keywords with decent to extremely high searches.

Not to mention his Squidoo is also ranking high for almost all of the keywords he is targeting.

He is definitely one of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots super affiliates, no wonder these guys have made over 21,000,000 USD from CB.

With affiliates like that, anyone could.

As far as I can see, this is perfectly legit.

[TimG]

Originally Posted by jehutty72

He is making a lot of views due to the auto download in ezinearticle and re write some of it buy putting some new keywords and tags on it i think

Very possible. On a side note, I'm sure we are not helping his stats by looking at the articles.

Tim

[Art Turner]

I thought CB viewed iFrames as "illegal hoplinks." If he's really a super affiliate, how does he get past that rule?

Otherwise, there are several aspects that I intend to try.

Art

[D89]

EXACTLY!!!!!


Finally a sane voice in the house!!!! I am one such author in my catagorie and low and behold I found others talking about my articles and all I did was write damn good articles and I am in the number one spoti n my niche.

I tell you human beings are some f***ing bunches of somethign thing ****ty!!


Do good hard work and there must be some conspiricy.


laddy daddddd!!!


ENVY is a mother!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Amazing....An article marketer markets, gets results, and then people
question his ethics.

The articles are well written, not junk...he's done all the things needed to
be done (submitting feeds, generating traffic via other means, etc.) and
has shown no evidence of doing anything wrong, but something must be
amiss because how is it possible for anybody to get those kind of numbers
with articles?

Simply amazing.

[Matt Gannon]

Originally Posted by D89

EXACTLY!!!!!


Finally a sane voice in the house!!!! I am one such author in my catagorie and low and behold I found others talking about my articles and all I did was write damn good articles and I am in the number one spoti n my niche.

I tell you human beings are some f***ing bunches of somethign thing ****ty!!


Do good hard work and there must be some conspiricy.


laddy daddddd!!!


ENVY is a mother!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think most people here just want to know how it was done, that's no way to gain respect from your peers coming in with a message like this. I personally am taking some notes.

[jmac1031]

Originally Posted by jehutty72

He is making a lot of views due to the auto download in ezinearticle and re write some of it buy putting some new keywords and tags on it i think

I am relatively familiar with EZA but could you explain what the auto download is?
Thanks

[Eric Lorence]

Originally Posted by steve39

There was a technique circulating on how to boost your articles to the most viewed by sending junk traffic to the article. If that's what this guy is doing, then he's overdone it and EZA will likely put a stop to it (hopefully). In the meantime, I'm sure he's making out like a bandit.

Why would EZA choose to stop it?

Understanding and allowing this type of promotion has allowed them to reach the top of article directories. Imagine the hundreds of marketers all driving traffic to their articles this way, (they are also driving traffic to EZA).

[MizzCindy]

Originally Posted by Eric Lorence

Why would EZA choose to stop it?

Understanding and allowing this type of promotion has allowed them to reach the top of article directories. Imagine the hundreds of marketers all driving traffic to their articles this way, (they are also driving traffic to EZA).

I could see them putting a stop to it ('it' being the driving of junk traffic) for two reasons. Number one - if many marketers begin driving nontargeted traffic just to boost views, then that has to negatively impact ezine article's CTR on their contextual advertising. If it happens enough, I can definitely see EZA getting cranky.

Number two - if this becomes a wide spread practice (ie a big old spam fest), then EZA's rating system becomes worthless. If the integrity of the articles/rating system comes into question, then the integrity of the whole directory takes a hit.

I don't know, those are two thoughts that popped into my head anyway.

I can't say if this person is driving junk traffic to his/her articles, but the rest of the strategy looks pretty nifty to me. It's cohesive and focused. I like it, personally.

Cindy

[Zacman]

I have to agree.

Why would EZA care since they are getting tons of traffic from this author.

Great tactics which can be applied to numerous online ventures.

Cheers,
Zac

[Lillian]

Thanks for the analysis. Off to write some articles and build a squiddoo lens

[marciayudkin]

I really appreciate this thread, because I had no idea there were so many different "most this" or "most that" tallies on EzineArticles.

I just looked up one category where I had submitted nine articles on the same topic a few months ago - Teleseminars. Although not one of these articles showed up in the "most recent" list or the "most viewed" list, FOUR of the 15 articles in the "most published list" are mine (2,6,14,15).

I can tell you with certainty that there is nothing black-hat about this. I put the articles up on EzineArticles and never linked to them there in any way.

It's the quality of the article content that helped them appear on that list.

One thing I can tell by comparing the lists is that the articles whose titles appear to appeal to beginners show up in the "most viewed" list. However, none of my articles are aimed at beginners, and it seems likely that helped them land on the "most published list."

Again, thanks! I am going to do this kind of comparison in some other categories I've submitted to so I can draw more conclusions.

Marcia Yudkin

[Fabian Tan]

Some authors could very well be buying 'guaranteed visitors' or what is known as ghost visitors. It's not difficult for anyone to buy 10,000 or 20,000 visitors for each article and get them dominating a niche, if for only a temporary basis.

Basically, these 'guaranteed traffic' companies embed your web page multiple times onto high traffic sites like porn sites, but visitors don't see them. So one page load can equal 10 visitors, but the visitors don't actually see your site.

Another tactic these companies use is to use pop ups, again on high traffic sites like porn sites.

Now, of course, all this is unethical.

What I'd suggest is to contact Ezine Articles and ask them to investigate if anyone's methods are suspicious.

I wouldn't recommend anyone trying this junk traffic tactic, especially if they looking to build a real business, not a hit and run.

Fabian