[Forum Suggestion]: Can we make this illegal?

[Toz]

This is something that there is no definitive rule against, but I believe that there should be.

Creating and / or replying to threads that are specifically referencing websites, social media profiles, video / media channels, where the objective is to figure out if "someone" is using a PBN, SAPE, other blackhat SEO, etc, should not be allowed, in my opinion. Too many websites, YouTube channels, etc, have been destroyed in their respective SERPs, as the direct result of people doing this.

This behavior, in my opinion, is not too different than negative SEO, itself.

 

[MisterF]

I think @Zwielicht posted about this last year, and off the top of my head if it's outing a members site then it's not allowed.

 

[Gogol]

This is something that there is no definitive rule against, but I believe that there should be.

Creating and / or replying to threads that are specifically referencing websites, social media profiles, video / media channels, where the objective is to figure out if "someone" is using a PBN, SAPE, other blackhat SEO, etc, should not be allowed, in my opinion. Too many websites, YouTube channels, etc, have been destroyed in their respective SERPs, as the direct result of people doing this.

This behavior, in my opinion, is not too different than negative SEO, itself.

I saw this recently with some kind of youtube method thread (forgot what it was for. It flashed up on the home page all of a sudden). The channel who got posted got literally destroyed, as every video posted as examples got taken off. This is very bad. Blackhat or whitehat, whoever did the method did hard work. It should not have been killed like that.

 

[leechesBleechin]

How could you prevent it? Even if it's made to be against the rules, some random nooby nobody who (never reads the rules) posts the link, it's already crawled and the site owner is screwed. Google probably has an entire team dedicated to auditing links posted on this website lol. You make a rule for it, it prevents members in good standing from doing so, which most won't do anyway. But the main issue is flyby idiots, right?

 

[TheMarquis]

You make a rule for it, it prevents members in good standing from doing so, which most won't do anyway.

This. I think old members from here have ethics. Not sayin' the new ones don't have, but may be expected from a newbie to make mistakes. So it will be hard to prevent this rule.

 

[Dolan]

I think illegal is the wrong word lol but outing somebody's site (member or not) often always results in more negative than positive consequences.

But where do you draw the line? Can people not mention wirecutter and other affiliate sites for comparisons and ideas? Does the website have to be a certain size or age before users are allowed to discuss and mention them?

 

[Zatoichi]

Are you sure the youtube channel mentioned here is the reason for it's demise or it's something different? For example youtube catching the channel breaking the rules on it's own. Maybe for something unrelated to what was mentioned here?

 

[Gogol]

Are you sure the youtube channel mentioned here is the reason for it's demise or it's something different? For example youtube catching the channel breaking the rules on it's own. Maybe for something unrelated to what was mentioned here?

Not sure. It may well have been done because the channel got detected. Or, probably someone downloaded the videos and reported the channel (and then made a copycat channel)? You can't rule that out too.. right?

 

[deedee1whoa]

Well, I think it's alright. In these kind of threads, we can find out some new things we didn't know. And we surely did. There's a lot of BHW members who know how to analyze and that way, we can learn from them. I do understand what you're worried about but if those websites and their owners are that successful, I'm sure they have more online properties than just that one. And even if there is a bad person in here who wants to harm their website, I have a feeling they'll be just fine.

 

[silvi-kucedra]

Too many websites, YouTube channels, etc, have been destroyed in their respective SERPs, as the direct result of people doing this.

If your business is destroyed by random members outing it somewhere on the Internet, you have much bigger problems than BHW. While I agree outing sites like that is not ethical and shouldn't be done, you can NOT stop it. What you can do is protect yourself against it, so even if it happens, it won't affect you much, or if it does, you can get back up on your feet asap. Devise a plan against negative SEO instead of making suggestions that cannot be practically enforced.

 

[Deleted member 752298]

My suggestion will be: allow it in the jr VIP section. These forums are not being crawled by G.

 

[Dark Sky]

I've done this before, simply because I wanted to do it for educational purposes.

Member makes blackhat site, member upset blackhat site removed from SERPS? Isn't this part of the blackhat cycle to be deindexed? They are going to be deindexed eventually, why can't we share and learn from their methods?

A forum is where you discuss and learn, that's the beauty of a forum. Doesn't make sense to ban the dissection of websites IMO, you are just reducing the potential to learn here to favour the ones already making money. I mean lets be honest, the blackhat sites that get shared here are making a fk ton of cash.

I understand the upset from the websites owner, but at the end of the day we are on this forum to learn, and reverse engineering working methods is a great way to learn about the algorithm. We get to see what it favours in Realtime.

 

[itz_styx]

nothing good comes from outing a site/tactic in public, then telling everyone what has been done. it will not only destroy the site, but also the method.
reverse engineering a site can be done on your own if you want to find out more, you dont have to destroy it for "educational purposes". if you cant find out yourself what has been done, well too bad for you.

 

[Deleted member 1333509]

Concur with OP.

 

[Diamond Damien]

Interesting points raised. I'd expect that if a site is shared here then we're unlikely to be the cause of their demise. It's going to be something they are doing against a TOS somewhere. Imagine the negative SEO that could come out if all you had to do was post a discussion about a site on BHW to get it deindexed or removed from the service!

As you say there is no rule against discussing other sites on the forum and learning by example or deconstructing a site to their method, it's a valid method to reverse engineer a process.

The whole point of reverse engineering is to put your own spin on it or improve it in some way. So it's a valid discussion point and something that will remain.

There is no rule against this and it's unlikely there will be as reverse engineering is very different to negative SEO.

Asked - Answered - Closed.