5 ms·

"The tricks to beat and spam Google, Whalen said, no longer work as well." LOL. I know a half dozen guys who build millions of automated links every day. They

"The tricks to beat and spam Google, Whalen said, no longer work as well." LOL. I know a half dozen guys who build millions of automated links every day. They say an easy term and they're in the top 5 results after 5 days, a hard term (a variety of diet pills, etc.) and it takes them a month. They get manually banned from time to time, but they just pull another URL from their pool and start over. It's gotten more sophisticated and therefore is more difficult, but to say spam doesn't work is laughable to anyone who is or knows anyone in the blackhat SEO "industry."

hsod 13y ago
> "The tricks to beat and spam Google, Whalen said, no longer work as well." > It's gotten more sophisticated and therefore is more difficult sounds like you agree
- PilateDeGuerre 13y ago
  No necessarily. Just because it may be more difficult to achieve doesn't mean it is less effective. The process is more specialized now surely and yet the niche remains. We know that when supply is constrained the price rises. So it may now be even more profitable for fewer players.
toomuchtodo 13y ago
Google Engineers > "SEO" Monkeys Note: I mean no slight to the folks who provide a genuine optimization service, just those who are essentially scammers.
Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Hey Austen, if you'd be interested in sharing any specifics (companies, keywords, people, etc.) regarding people spamming by leaving millions of links gumming up the web, my team would be happy to investigate in more detail.
- austenallred 13y ago
  Email me - email address in HN profile
  - PilateDeGuerre 13y ago
    No one likes a snitch.
    - cmyr 13y ago
      No one likes spammers.
      - Axsuul 13y ago
        Hate the game, not the player.
        swang 13y ago
        No I think in this case: Fuck Spammers.
    - GrinningFool 13y ago
      Speak for yourself. Snitches on spammers hold a special place in my heart.
- Matsta 13y ago
  Hahaha do you seriously think he's gonna give up the keywords these guys are making money off. Spamming sites still worked pre-hummingbird and infact it works even better now. Even Negative SEO works just as well. Have a competitor you don't like? Give him 100k blog comments with "Buy Viagra" and suddenly he will be de indexed in 3 months or less. I think half the reason she quit is that SEO is so damn unpredictable now. You can make a spammy site and might rank or might get de-indexed. But at the same time you can make a 100% whitehat site and it probably won't even rank and can get just as easily de-indexed as a blackhat spam site. You need to read up on BlackHatWorld a bit more Mr Cutts.
qwidjib0 13y ago
Practicing "SEO" of 10+ years here. Yes, that's black hat SEO. It's very different from the Search Engine Land world. The idea is burn/rinse/repeat of sketchy affiliate sites, people make a very good living off it. Even still. Matt Cutts can surely find all he needs to know about that world on Black Hat World, I don't think that these guys are keeping much from them. But I also don't think it's easy for them to fix without potentially having negative consequences for the rest of the world. The flip-side of this is the "white hat SEO" world. I don't know about Jill's own practices, but the conference/publication world with which she's a part of is frequented by people like Matt Cutts. And I think she hits the nail on the head for that: it's driven by content/PR now. There is still a place for on-page SEO for a corporate site if you're strong with the technical stuff (for example, schema.org type stuff is just getting off the ground with the Google Knowledge Graph). But it's not the sexy / easy to sell fast salvation that it once was.

hsod 13y ago

> "The tricks to beat and spam Google, Whalen said, no longer work as well." > It's gotten more sophisticated and therefore is more difficult sounds like you agree

PilateDeGuerre 13y ago
No necessarily. Just because it may be more difficult to achieve doesn't mean it is less effective. The process is more specialized now surely and yet the niche remains. We know that when supply is constrained the price rises. So it may now be even more profitable for fewer players.

toomuchtodo 13y ago

Google Engineers > "SEO" Monkeys Note: I mean no slight to the folks who provide a genuine optimization service, just those who are essentially scammers.

Matt_Cutts 13y ago

Hey Austen, if you'd be interested in sharing any specifics (companies, keywords, people, etc.) regarding people spamming by leaving millions of links gumming up the web, my team would be happy to investigate in more detail.

austenallred 13y ago
Email me - email address in HN profile
- PilateDeGuerre 13y ago
  No one likes a snitch.
  - cmyr 13y ago
    No one likes spammers.
    - Axsuul 13y ago
      Hate the game, not the player.
      - swang 13y ago
        No I think in this case: Fuck Spammers.
  - GrinningFool 13y ago
    Speak for yourself. Snitches on spammers hold a special place in my heart.
Matsta 13y ago
Hahaha do you seriously think he's gonna give up the keywords these guys are making money off. Spamming sites still worked pre-hummingbird and infact it works even better now. Even Negative SEO works just as well. Have a competitor you don't like? Give him 100k blog comments with "Buy Viagra" and suddenly he will be de indexed in 3 months or less. I think half the reason she quit is that SEO is so damn unpredictable now. You can make a spammy site and might rank or might get de-indexed. But at the same time you can make a 100% whitehat site and it probably won't even rank and can get just as easily de-indexed as a blackhat spam site. You need to read up on BlackHatWorld a bit more Mr Cutts.

qwidjib0 13y ago

Practicing "SEO" of 10+ years here. Yes, that's black hat SEO. It's very different from the Search Engine Land world. The idea is burn/rinse/repeat of sketchy affiliate sites, people make a very good living off it. Even still. Matt Cutts can surely find all he needs to know about that world on Black Hat World, I don't think that these guys are keeping much from them. But I also don't think it's easy for them to fix without potentially having negative consequences for the rest of the world. The flip-side of this is the "white hat SEO" world. I don't know about Jill's own practices, but the conference/publication world with which she's a part of is frequented by people like Matt Cutts. And I think she hits the nail on the head for that: it's driven by content/PR now. There is still a place for on-page SEO for a corporate site if you're strong with the technical stuff (for example, schema.org type stuff is just getting off the ground with the Google Knowledge Graph). But it's not the sexy / easy to sell fast salvation that it once was.