4 ms·
These pages rank at the top of the site: search because they have a lot of backlinks. Why? Because someone created the profile, then went out and created lin
by a5seo 15y ago
These pages rank at the top of the site: search because they have a lot of backlinks. Why? Because someone created the profile, then went out and created links to their profile page (e.g. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fuser%3Fid%3Dzithromax http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fnews...). Why? Because they were probably planning to drop a link on their HN profile page to a page that sells Zithromax.
This is a common strategy on Youtube or really any social site that gives you a profile page and the ability to drop a followed link. Even if you're building junky links to your HN profile page, the overall domain authority and trust of HN is relatively high, so it's a way to launder link juice and create a quality link to whatever it is you're selling.
Eric Ward wrote about it here: http://searchengineland.com/social-link-manipulation-11429 http://searchengineland.com/social-link-manipulation-11429
There's a fairly good sized contingent of the affiliate marketing world that depends on this link building strategy.
- joejohnson 15y agoOh wow. Thank you for that explanation. It's impressive how many of these profiles were made. This means the total number of real HN accounts is probably significantly less than 28k.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoI'd count "real" profiles by requiring that they either post a link, have at least one non-dead comment, or upvote a non-dead comment.
- pitdesi 15y agoa lot of spammers post their website to HN, so that doesn't work either!
- ChuckMcM 15y agoWe've seen people who post a link to HN, then have a dozen or so of their fake user accounts up vote that link. Given the economic incentive of being/lingering on the front page there will be folks who try to game it.
- a5seo 15y agoHere's a graph I found explaining the "link wheel" strategy: http://lemonarian.com/images/majorwheel.jpg http://lemonarian.com/images/majorwheel.jpg
- Alex3917 15y agoThe sad thing is that it's not just spammers who need to do this. Even people who are genuinely creating great content in an attempt to help others still need to create backlinks from social sites if they want to show up in Google. I've made all sorts of resources that are far better than anything else that currently exists, but without actively going out and building a few backlinks these pages would get literally zero hits.
- ZoFreX 15y agoWhile the core of what you say is true, I think the overall message, in the context of the comments above you, is slightly misleading. Yes, you cannot just create a great website and magically get hits, you do have to tell people it exists! This isn't news, and "SEO" while much maligned these days is still a valid, useful and in many cases necessary skill. However, it is not necessary to engage in blackhat SEO practices and it is far from true to say that you must build spammy backlinks from social networking sites in order to succeed. I don't think you mean that it is, but it came across a little like that.
- prawn 15y agoAmusingly, your HN alias sounds like some sort of pharmaceutical product. ;)
- ChuckMcM 15y agoAnd all created 955 days ago.