SEO websites built on WordPress that contain cracked software

• Why do these very similar WordPress sites manage to rank in Google?
• Roughly how long does it take from launching the site and publishing pages until they start getting their first visitors from search?
• What techniques are they typically using to get their sites into the top search results?

• Why do they hide the download links behind JavaScript and use different redirect chains instead of direct links?
• Why do they generate the downloaded file dynamically, and why does the file seem to be different each time?
• Why do these websites often stay online for such a long time without being removed? The only thing I've consistently seen getting taken down are the redirect domains, which the operators seem to replace very quickly.

xwesty said:

I don't work in SEO myself, but I'm involved in a somewhat related field.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that Google search results often contain hacked websites with pages targeting "crack software" keywords. They still seem to appear pretty frequently. Besides hacked sites, I've also seen plenty of regular WordPress websites built specifically around the same niche, with AI-generated pages, images, and videos.

This particular ecosystem is what I'm interested in. I'm not looking to copy it—I just want to understand how it works from a technical and SEO perspective because it clearly operates at a massive scale.

I'd also like to know where people involved in this kind of SEO usually hang out. I know there are black-hat forums like XSS or Exploit, but surprisingly there's very little discussion there about this specific topic.

Here are the questions I'm trying to answer:

• Why do these very similar WordPress sites manage to rank in Google?
• Roughly how long does it take from launching the site and publishing pages until they start getting their first visitors from search?
• What techniques are they typically using to get their sites into the top search results?

From what I've observed, these sites often have various anti-bot protections. The "Download" buttons are usually hidden behind JavaScript, and clicking them starts a chain of two or three redirects through different types of URLs. Eventually, the visitor lands on what looks like a file-sharing website.

Another interesting thing is that the final download page seems to generate a new file almost instantly for every download request. The site appears to assemble the file directly in the browser, and the resulting file is usually around 700–900 MB.

I'm also curious about a few more things:

• Why do they hide the download links behind JavaScript and use different redirect chains instead of direct links?
• Why do they generate the downloaded file dynamically, and why does the file seem to be different each time?
• Why do these websites often stay online for such a long time without being removed? The only thing I've consistently seen getting taken down are the redirect domains, which the operators seem to replace very quickly.

Thank you in advance for all your responses

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