Guybrushthepirate
Regular Member
- Dec 23, 2015
- 281
- 169
Looks like a combination of extremely aggressive link building/spam + cloaking. They'll be catch soon, but by then, they will also have made some good cash.
Darker than BlackHat : What is this method?
- Thread starter darkinferno
- Start date
hideath
Elite Member
- Jun 16, 2019
- 6,620
- 7,370
Here's some of the content shown to Google bots:
It's a pure manipulation with spammy content, generated html pages,
cloacking to cpa offers and using a huge network of sites interlinked to each other while targetting a shit load of kwds
Basically, it's just a classic link wheel taken a good scale,
Using foreign TLDs might make a difference in fact
It's a pure manipulation with spammy content, generated html pages,
cloacking to cpa offers and using a huge network of sites interlinked to each other while targetting a shit load of kwds
Basically, it's just a classic link wheel taken a good scale,
Using foreign TLDs might make a difference in fact
KHer0
Elite Member
- Mar 22, 2011
- 2,465
- 2,981
First, thanking for not outing the domain name. It's lesson for newbies that we can discuss something without ruining people hard work.
Second, as this is first time I see such respectful thread, I will shed thoughts on it. Although, It won't make it any easier to accomplish, but a food for thoughts.
There is only one question which answer can open up a lot of possibilities. Which is, does 301 redirects path penalties?
Imagine if you have multiple spammed to death domains, those domains who each expired domain seller avoid like a plague, they sell for cheap and contain millions of spammed links. And just like PLA sites, you generate tens of thousands of pages and upload them at once. Then start redirecting those millions of links to those thousands of pages. It only makes sense that for google crawler, you need to crawl something first, give it pagerank before the spam detectors analyze it and give it spam score.
For indexing crawler, he sees and authority website with thousands of unique pages and millions of backlinks passing juice for it. So, it is like a goldmine and starts indexing and ranking this sh*** like crazy. As it gains ranking comes the spam investigation and find how rubbish it's and kills it. But like all of you already said, it has already made a good return on investment.
Then, you have multiple websites (full network) with thousands of pages having millions of backlinks, indexed and linking to each other. This is like nuclear force shooting the websites to the moon and destroying all on its way. It will rank for weird keywords, but it will gain good traffic.
Now, come the cloaking part which is easy but can't talk much about it because will cause damage than good.
Does this make it any easier to pull, I don't think so as it needs multiple skills to achieve. But it shows that spamming is very well and alive. Makes you cry about all people having hard time indexing their 2000 handwritten articles
Second, as this is first time I see such respectful thread, I will shed thoughts on it. Although, It won't make it any easier to accomplish, but a food for thoughts.
There is only one question which answer can open up a lot of possibilities. Which is, does 301 redirects path penalties?
Imagine if you have multiple spammed to death domains, those domains who each expired domain seller avoid like a plague, they sell for cheap and contain millions of spammed links. And just like PLA sites, you generate tens of thousands of pages and upload them at once. Then start redirecting those millions of links to those thousands of pages. It only makes sense that for google crawler, you need to crawl something first, give it pagerank before the spam detectors analyze it and give it spam score.
For indexing crawler, he sees and authority website with thousands of unique pages and millions of backlinks passing juice for it. So, it is like a goldmine and starts indexing and ranking this sh*** like crazy. As it gains ranking comes the spam investigation and find how rubbish it's and kills it. But like all of you already said, it has already made a good return on investment.
Then, you have multiple websites (full network) with thousands of pages having millions of backlinks, indexed and linking to each other. This is like nuclear force shooting the websites to the moon and destroying all on its way. It will rank for weird keywords, but it will gain good traffic.
Now, come the cloaking part which is easy but can't talk much about it because will cause damage than good.
Does this make it any easier to pull, I don't think so as it needs multiple skills to achieve. But it shows that spamming is very well and alive. Makes you cry about all people having hard time indexing their 2000 handwritten articles
darkinferno
Regular Member
- Mar 28, 2014
- 470
- 316
I smell money
I'm studying this case as well. One of my competitor doing this kind of link wheel.
He creates many sites which target specific niche and interlink between them, and create something like "enormous topical authority" from his huge network.
Well written mate, good food for my brain
I think we can take something valuable from this case. I'm not sure i can duplicate what he is doing, but make a site network like this is really effective. You dont have to make only one super quality site, but bunch of them, so they can support each other.
He only got 1.2k RD with 7 Mill backlinks. Most of the backlink is repetitive from his other site with the same build spammy site.
KHer0
Elite Member
- Mar 22, 2011
- 2,465
- 2,981
I smell money
I'm studying this case as well. One of my competitor doing this kind of link wheel.
He creates many sites which target specific niche and interlink between them, and create something like "enormous topical authority" from his huge network.
Well written mate, good food for my brain
I think we can take something valuable from this case. I'm not sure i can duplicate what he is doing, but make a site network like this is really effective. You dont have to make only one super quality site, but bunch of them, so they can support each other.
He only got 1.2k RD with 7 Mill backlinks. Most of the backlink is repetitive from his other site with the same build spammy site.
Didn't really focus on the RD's as I have seen many similar cases over the last 10 years. Giving up on the redirect 301 part should make it live longer. I have seen such linkwheels survive for years, but they have taken much smarter approach. They use programmatic content to create their website, so google don't have anything against them. And while they have hard time ranking, they start renting links from their network. Their network is over 300 website now with DR 32 to 44 and have been going strong since 2018
Sanctioned
Junior Member
- Apr 23, 2022
- 116
- 147
Yeah. So, imagine you search for "cool Jesus quotes" in Google, Google lists 10 websites/web pages on the first page. They copy the meta description of those pages + title and link and create a page. I've seen a lot of these websites, they rank high, especially for very low-competition KWs.
Hawkeye Digital
Rules Violation
- Feb 23, 2022
- 6,316
- 1,708
They could be good spammers mate , hence many click point sites rank with random AdSense and get out of the market .
- Jan 17, 2015
- 5,263
- 4,956
Last year I got one of my site hacked, and they created literally 1M pages with thin content linking to their sites. They do this so fast, that even Semrush and Ahrefs won't be able to pick those links on time
You may only see 2 or 3 pages with this profile, but if they found a zero-day bug on some WP plugin or WP core itself, they could have "infected" like thousands of WP sites, that might have recovered a after a short or a long while.
But the funny thing is, that since they get access to root folder, they can verify the property with GSC and then send their links to index. So their indexability rate will be 10 or 20 times faster compared to what Semrush or Ahrefs could do.
You might perceive this as darker than blackhat because it is basically BH + hacking, which is really obnoxious.
You may only see 2 or 3 pages with this profile, but if they found a zero-day bug on some WP plugin or WP core itself, they could have "infected" like thousands of WP sites, that might have recovered a after a short or a long while.
But the funny thing is, that since they get access to root folder, they can verify the property with GSC and then send their links to index. So their indexability rate will be 10 or 20 times faster compared to what Semrush or Ahrefs could do.
You might perceive this as darker than blackhat because it is basically BH + hacking, which is really obnoxious.
darkinferno
Regular Member
- Mar 28, 2014
- 470
- 316
yeah, i'm still not sure if this case is hacking activity or not. Didnt found any hack evidence so far.
sam55
Power Member
- Dec 5, 2013
- 578
- 892
You're mistaken buddy. It's not 1 month but only 5 days. The domain was registered on 11 November
darkinferno
Regular Member
- Mar 28, 2014
- 470
- 316
i guess i missed that
Holyshit, 5 days only.... And he got 60k pages indexed... World Speed record?
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Do you think these guys are going to stop in a few months, after they are taken down? First, not all of them are taken down so fast. Second, they will pump even more sites. My local serps are polluted with weird translated content for years and NOTHING happened. Even for medical terms...
- May 8, 2012
- 4,217
- 3,728
well see kids, serp spam still works ... after every google update the whitehats run around screaming "SEO is dead", "blackhat doesnt work anymore, google is too smart" yet this is going on for many years and no google update could stop it sofar. auto generated sites cloaked to affiliate offers work well if its done right.
... after every google update the whitehats run around screaming "SEO is dead", "blackhat doesnt work anymore, google is too smart" yet this is going on for many years and no google update could stop it sofar. auto generated sites cloaked to affiliate offers work well if its done right.
patrickpogi123
Junior Member
- Mar 11, 2022
- 127
- 62
Next in the news, Google Programmer who's been laid off Hacks Google and Get That Bag
Bybit
Junior Member
- Jan 10, 2019
- 144
- 132
I’ve seen this earlier. I knew a guy who rented entire floor of a multi-storey building and ran a spam call center + hired few guys to run shady sites like these to generate money.
There is huge $$ in these kinda business but you need to crack a code to start this.
There is huge $$ in these kinda business but you need to crack a code to start this.
I don't understand. How does this make money tho? What is his site offering / selling? Or is it just ads that he posts on the site and they pay you per impression?
arap09
Regular Member
- Oct 10, 2022
- 455
- 96
Remember the formula Traffic = $$$. Even if they sell $1 per lead with those traffic at 5-10% convertion rate they still make millions