[CASE STUDY] Sandboxing your competition

Update:

One of the keywords went back to it's original position -1 spot.

Another 4 are currently at about 2x the original position.

And one (not one of the main KW's) sits at #169, when the starting position was 45!

So bassically the only effect it seems to have is that you force a dance with this method? You may have just made the site stronger.. Very interesting to see how long this dancing around will last. I wonder if this could be used to keep someone dancing permanently.. How frustrating would that be to the owner? *evil grin*

spruitje said:

So bassically the only effect it seems to have is that you force a dance with this method? You may have just made the site stronger.. Very interesting to see how long this dancing around will last. I wonder if this could be used to keep someone dancing permanently.. How frustrating would that be to the owner? *evil grin*

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I think it's wrong to do this to you competition or to anyone.

Great case study to show how mass spam links affect your rankings.

But in the end, I hope none of us use this as a method to get above the competition.

What if we all did this too each other? It would be chaos. Let the man who creates the best content and the best backlinks win. Simple.

We're in it to win it, we don't care what Google computes. This is a good case study. I might try it on some domains, without the bad words. It's dog eat dog.

Honestly if you guys can't handle this then stop reading the thread. It's a case study and yes your on BHW not white hat world.
OP, I wanted to ask 2 thing if you do not mind.

1.) What keywords did you use for anchor text ? I know you said unpleasant ones but could you be a bit more specific ?

Wow, just read the opening thread -- none of the replies yet -- this is surprising and kinda scary.

flaw3d said:

Honestly if you guys can't handle this then stop reading the thread. It's a case study and yes your on BHW not white hat world.
OP, I wanted to ask 2 thing if you do not mind.

1.) What keywords did you use for anchor text ? I know you said unpleasant ones but could you be a bit more specific ?

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I'm gonna PM you in a min.

phluid said:

First I think you guys are idiots for doing this. Second, google isn't stupid and they won't sit around and do nothing about it. If you are paying attention you will see that they are already putting more weight on other things and many types of links are not holding as much value as they used to. The more of this shit that goes the more they are going to devalue those types of links then they will be completely worthless to us along with the tools that build them.

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I'm gonna have to agree with this guy. The case study is cool, but now everyone's gonna do it because they know it works, and then after some time (when Google changes something) it won't work anymore.

THIS IS BHW!

do-gooders


rep given

long live OP!!

I would be interested to see results for something similar...

I'm very paranoid about my linking neighborhood.. Basically, who has links next to my links? What is on the page my links are on? Etc. IMO, that all matters. So what I'd be interested to see, is a XRumer campaign with back links set like this:


So basically, surrounding your competitor's URL is a bunch of big dick pills, titties and overseas gambling. Then blast this SAME bunch of links all over the place, index them and see what happens.

I would assume that having negative elements surrounding your competitor's anchor text (for the actual keywords they're trying to rank, mind you) would reflect poorly on their campaign.

To the people knocking this method... Cut it out. This is a black hat forum and by using tools like Scrapebox, XRumer, SENuke X, spinners, etc.. I don't understand how anybody here has a high horse to ride on.

It's sort of like the black hat vs. white hat link building debate (both are black hat in Google's eyes for self promoting). Whether you knock your competition down by outranking them or sabotaging their campaign, what's the difference? You're essentially stealing their traffic in the end.

Besides, there are many reasons to want to know whether it's possible to tank competition... Which for so many people calling others trying this assholes and such, then stupid because "no way, it doesn't happen." There's been a lot of evidence that it, in fact, does. Whether or not it's permanent (or if it simply stops when the "campaign" stops) is another story, but it seems to be possible... At least, so long as it's not a big SEO heavy hitter you're trying it on.

meatro said:

I would be interested to see results for something similar...

I'm very paranoid about my linking neighborhood.. Basically, who has links next to my links? What is on the page my links are on? Etc. IMO, that all matters. So what I'd be interested to see, is a XRumer campaign with back links set like this:

Code:

<a href="http://www.{randomporn|pornsite|porno|porn}.com">Click here for {big dicks|fat cocks|big titties} in your face!</a>
<a href="http://www.COMPETITORS-URL.com">competitor's {keyword1|keyword2|keyword3}</a>
<a href="http://www.{gambling|online-poker|texashold-em}.com">Win big at {poker|black jack|texas hold em}</a>

So basically, surrounding your competitor's URL is a bunch of big dick pills, titties and overseas gambling. Then blast this SAME bunch of links all over the place, index them and see what happens.

I would assume that having negative elements surrounding your competitor's anchor text (for the actual keywords they're trying to rank, mind you) would reflect poorly on their campaign.

To the people knocking this method... Cut it out. This is a black hat forum and by using tools like Scrapebox, XRumer, SENuke X, spinners, etc.. I don't understand how anybody here has a high horse to ride on.

It's sort of like the black hat vs. white hat link building debate (both are black hat in Google's eyes for self promoting). Whether you knock your competition down by outranking them or sabotaging their campaign, what's the difference? You're essentially stealing their traffic in the end.

Besides, there are many reasons to want to know whether it's possible to tank competition... Which for so many people calling others trying this assholes and such, then stupid because "no way, it doesn't happen." There's been a lot of evidence that it, in fact, does. Whether or not it's permanent (or if it simply stops when the "campaign" stops) is another story, but it seems to be possible... At least, so long as it's not a big SEO heavy hitter you're trying it on.

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Backlinks on pages with relevant content hold a lot of SEO value, so it would make reasonable sense if irrelevant content makes the backlink invaluable. Based on my tests it even has a negative impact on SERP's if the content (anchor text in this case) is irrelevant.

I'm not sure whether or not it would make a difference (in profiles backlinks) if the surrounding backlinks are irrelevant or if only the anchor of your backlink is.. I'm thinking it doesn't make a difference, since that's pretty much the only "content" on that page.

I don't know, it would need some tests to clear that up a bit.

thanks a lot for sharing this!

Any updates about KW1 and KW2 ranks?

Any update about this site rank now?

Swiss said:

Backlinks on pages with relevant content hold a lot of SEO value, so it would make reasonable sense if irrelevant content makes the backlink invaluable. Based on my tests it even has a negative impact on SERP's if the content (anchor text in this case) is irrelevant.

I'm not sure whether or not it would make a difference (in profiles backlinks) if the surrounding backlinks are irrelevant or if only the anchor of your backlink is.. I'm thinking it doesn't make a difference, since that's pretty much the only "content" on that page.

I don't know, it would need some tests to clear that up a bit.

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But you'd think it would matter, particularly in a case like this where you're attempting to "associate" the competitor's link with negative sources. Sort of reaffirming your first point, but questioning your second.

Especially since we know that Google does associate the page's content with the link (we know that links in relevant content are very good). So since the other links are some of the only on page content and even in the same placement, you'd think Google would associate these pieces of "content" with the other links. That's just the way I've always looked at it and why I've always avoided things like Scrapebox blasts and anything else where my link will be surrounded by spam links.

Hmm.. What if those links were already blacklisted sites? So that to Google, it looks almost like the competitor is up to the same stuff as these shady sites and maybe it groups them all together.

Then like you said, switch up the anchor text to irrelevant keywords like "click here to {find sex|watch porn|jerk off|etc}" Haha. Auto post comments and forum postings with little to no spinning and just crap content with no point.

So the sigs are: [blacklisted link]-[competitor's "porn" link]-[shady site 2]
Then blast the oldest, shittiest, most blacklisted low-PR link lists you can find. AA Blog lists from 2008, old forums, etc.

I'd imagine what it would take would depend on their actual existing campaign, though. If they had a pretty solid, well built, organic campaign, you probably won't rattle them. You probably won't bowl Digg or YouTube. But a someone with flaws in their SEO, possibly already riding on blog comments, I bet you could negatively impact their rankings significantly.

Again, just my thoughts.

Sorry... but this wont work... The reason is simple the domain age.. its the same thing on BHW.. if a newbie claims a jnr member is evil and the jnr member does'nt even say a word who would you believe.

Infact, you'd only make "him" more popular.

Instead a solution to this problem would be to "dilute" strength by finding all his high quality links and wrecking em.

OR

Building an exact replica of his site with same keywords but unique content on an aged domain you bought of freshdrop or something.. Then find all the sites he links to and you link to them, then find all the sites he links to that you can place a link to yourself on... and do so. Try to copy as many of his high quality links as you can.

You might not beat him but you are gonna come very close to him. Find all related keywords build similar sites and use the same linking technique. Then dont forget twitter, facebook and google + .

At the end of the day, you're gonna outrank him. If you persist.

With the nature of IM and get rich quick seekers..
This is going to cause a war on the internetz.

great study....

Wow...I'm surprised; after all the threads I've read about how the comp would just come back stronger and 'g wouldn't allow that', etc. The next question is whether this method would allow you to keep comp down permanently; just use it to keep them bobbing around page 20 forever...not that I'd ever do that, but it is interesting.

I can add some 4 years worth of 'longterm' data to this study.

4 years ago I started SEOing a customer's new shop and got it into top10 for a dozen keywords with about 100k exact matches per month each. Lots of good longterm keywords ranked ok as well.

2years ago, he really pisses me off and I flooded the top10-landingpages with [keyword]-style, auto approved forum links for a week. Like 10k times the amount of the existing links, compared to the amount I built over the last two years, let's say greyhatty style.

For about 9 months, the keywords stayed in top5 after a short peak into top3 rankings and I was pissed off even more.
After that 9 months, the keywords dropped dramatically, and slowly dropped out off the top100 in about two to four weeks.
Up untill today only a handfull of keywords are in the top100, none of them better than top80.
Nearly all pages are still indexed but nowhere to get any visiters except payed ones.

Mission accomplished

the temporary dance could help with trend type keywords or related to specific days e.g. Christamis. You could force dance the top websites the day before