WHY are success rates in BH tools plummeting? Are we all screwed?

A lot of talk lately about how tools that once had an amazing success rate, such as AMR, Senuke, and BMD... pretty much all seo tools, are now suffering GIANT drops in their success rates.

I've heard reports of success drop from 1 in 20 submissions to something like 1 in 500.

Are the blogs, and article sites getting "smarter"?

Things that used to guarantee success like private proxies and captcha services aren't seeming to save us now. So here is the ultimate question... is there a way for the tool-makers to find around this? Something that THEY or WE can implement or update that will stop the down-slide or is black hat seo kind of screwed as the web gets smarter?

Yes, we're all screwed. Sell your sites and get a day job while you still can.

I've only been in seo a couple years, has this happened before... where the success rate of most seo tools uniformly drops across the board?

It seems like reason for concern. I've never seen it happen in my time in seo. What I'm worried about is that sites are finding a way to figure out private proxies... I don't know how else the rates would all drop like this. Very odd...

The sky falls roughly once a year in every segment of the IM market. The suckful marketers complain and drop out, whilst the resourceful marketers keep on hustling and thrive. You just gotta decide what side of the fence you want to be on.

Personally I'm sick of off the shelf tools killing useful link spamming methods.

It's just a matter of time before a new wave of tools comes out. SEO is a constantly changing market and when one provider goes 10 take his place. Just be patient... The strong will survive!

Black Hat tools can also be used at white hat tools if you do things properly.

It's not the tool, it's how you use it.

Autumn said:

Personally I'm sick of off the shelf tools killing useful link spamming methods.

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I certainly don't think any thing that can be "automated" to a huge degree will survive for very long, even if programmers are the first ones to take advantage of it.

However, the more links die out by way of these tools becoming useless for SEO (like how SEnuke is practically worthless now), the more lucrative it becomes to be the one guy hustling with the most dedication.

MKelly said:

It's not the tool, it's how you use it.

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Or perhaps even more accurate... It's not the tool, it's the tool!

Expertpeon said:

I certainly don't think any thing that can be "automated" to a huge degree will survive for very long, even if programmers are the first ones to take advantage of it.

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And that is the crux of it. When certain portion of IM become far too easy to automate and everyone is doing it, the market shifts away from that to something else. Then in another year, the same thing will happen with that, and so on.

trolleyrider said:

I won't be a smart ass like some of these punk Yahoo Answers fools here. Income is definitely down and you have to work 2 times as hard now. I'm busting my ass to make 1/3 of what I used to. Times are changing.

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And apparently you aren't.

I think it's more how you use the tools, are you leaving footprints? You have to spend more time covering your tracks, can't just use the generate button for account info. Spinning everything you can will help to not leave footprints.

DamageX said:

And apparently you aren't.

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Listen to this guy. DamageX was / is one of the best marketers in the adult game which is the playground of some of the best online marketers in the world, working some of the toughest traffic in the world. I only know him from reputation not personally, but having read his board for a while when I was spamming adult TGP submissions (at one point I ran a pretty big, automated one-person multisubmission factory for adult thumbnail galleries), he really knew his shit about generating and managing TGP / MGP traffic and also about converting it. He was / is at the top of his game in adult and by all accounts making real money. Life was sweet.

He, as I did, saw that the writing was on the wall for adult due to tube sites and business consolidation killing it. Virtually overnight, porn went from being a goldmine to a wasteland with people desperately fighting for scraps. Did he whine and complain and waste time beating a dead horse? No, he moved sideways into mainstream and SEO, learned a new market and new tools and new techniques, and got back to making money.

Times change, tools change, methods change - but your job as a marketer is to adapt or die. You might not be making money the same way next month or next year, but if you're committed you will find a way to keep your stuff pumping in the serps, this year and in years to come. Even if you move away from SEO, if you are a professional marketer you will find some way to get traffic and make money from the internet - because the alternative is getting some shit house 9-5er, and if you're going to do that, you may as well kill yourself now.

Adapt or die!

Autumn said:

Did he whine and complain and waste time beating a dead horse?

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Well, to be fair, I did complain, as did pretty much everyone. I guess the difference is the ones who stopped complaining and took action are doing well, while the others are either out of the game or still complaining.

So do you expect new tools to emerge that ARE more successful? I, for one, am rather stuck in seo and cannot move sideways as I am tasked with ranking e-commerce sites in the serps. So I don't have the choice of jumping ship should the tools continue to sink.

But here is a deeper question we need to consider: Why? What is causing the tools to uniformly degrade... and by what means are the sites we target combating our postings? Are we looking at a simple increased sensitivity to proxies, or is it something else that we might be able to put our finger on.

I guess the point is that many of us are in the position that we must "stay and fight" and we definitely would love to figure out what is going on

It's a game. Always has been. New tools will come out that will do different things. And google will always make algorithm changes to fight those new tools. I'm sure it'll be like this for a very very long time.

I have noticed as well though that most of the popular tools that are out just aren't that effective anymore. They still are effective but not nearly as much as they used to be.

Things will turn around with new tools etc. etc. just like others said Adapt or Give up.

ThopHayt said:

Are we looking at a simple increased sensitivity to proxies, or is it something else that we might be able to put our finger on.

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I suppose it never occurred to you that Google keeps busting blackhat SEO methods as they age and get more widespread?

It's not the tools, it is the person operating the tools. Automation is still alive and well if you know how to use it properly.

It's like placing 2 people in a kitchen and asking them to cook. One is a world class chef while the other is a newb.

Same ingredients and same tools. However one is going to come out with a gourmet dinner, while the other is going to make cafeteria food.

If you think automated tools is just about clicking a few buttons and waiting for increased SERPs, you're gonna get destroyed. There is so much more to it then that.

Success rates with BH tools are plummeting simply because there are so many people using them. Tools like AMR are only good as long as there are enough target sites to utilise. As these sites get spammed, the owners are less likely to bother to approve articles, or site bandwith is eaten up by thousands of submissions per day and thus hosting accounts are suspended. Same with some blogs - less tech-savvy bloggers are swamped with spam and give up blogging.

This has always happened with link building on the blacker side - about 8 years ago I used to get great results with a simple submitter targetting shoutboxes and guestbooks until people noticed. Everything has a lifespan.

The trick is never to rely too heavily on one thing. It just isn't going to last as long as you want it to.

(christ that last paragraph has sparked off my paranoia, I need to build a few more money sites now!)

No, I'd say it's the tools, alot of the tools are (to an extent) point and click automation.

But this does NOT mean it's time to give up, like DamageX and Autumn say, adapt. Change your game. I've already started to move out of the 'standard' thought pattern, I'm trying to think of new ways to make some muniez!

People have been saying for a while now, white hat is best, long term yes, but blackhat is extremely fun!

I'll be waiting for the next gen of tools in the next 12 months

Its not the tools that are the problem. Its that heavy spammers that have made the site owners take preventative measures to tighten up security. One of the bigggest problem that I find today with using tools is that you get a lot of error messages telling you that your user name and passwords are incorrect even though you've only just signed up to the sites. What does that tell you? A lot of article, web 2.0 etc sites now have programmes installed to detect automated signups and delete the accounts even before you post your content. Until the tool makers figure out a way round this, we just have to revert back to manual sign ups for those difficult sites.