I purchased an established wordpress site with 2000 UH a month. I've installed statpress as it seems to be the only one that worked (don't want to install analytics as Ive heard it spys on any auto generated content). The plugin tells me the number of hits, the IP address, but it also tells my the keywords used to search in google. All 30 hits today have used the exact same (well defined and very specific) keywords to arrive at the site. Statpress shows all different IPs and EVEN different OS/browsers. Do you think it is A) the plugin just being crap, as so many are. B) the guy has some kind of bot that is hitting the site behind proxies using the same path again and again (does such a thing exists). If he does, I'll F* King kill him. Forget blackhat. I'll track him down and destroy him. Thanks and all the best
Scammed does NOT mean blackhat nor does blackhat mean scammed. Seems every noob out there think in order to implement bh methods mean they have to scam someone. Just sayin...........
With all due respect, I said 'black black hatted' which is a double negative. I wasn't saying anything about BH seo. In fact I am an advocate of not allowing engines define what is and isn't acceptable. Having said that, I visit this site often to get insight into the spectrum of SEO and thought it may be a good place to ask for opinions. I did as much research as... my researching capabilities allowed me to. Given I am a researcher, I thought it was enough. From what your saying apparently it was not. Does such a bot sound plausible? Presumably he'd just do it for a while until my clicks died away leaving me to think it was my poor marketing. If that it what is happening, I have to admit... it's bloody genius. But very upsetting too. ta
I should add. I get a PR of 3, which looks genuine everywhere EXCEPT via scrapebook plugin which suggests it may not be. Let us assume I'm not being scammed, what could be causing that? Any genuine and constructive advice would be greatly appreciated. If you just want to slate me for being a 'noob', thats cool too.
Google these keywords while you are not logging into google account and see if you actually rank for these keywords.
Why not just check the blog actually ranks before you buy it? And just check now using some kind of tool.
Ranking of keywords is the best way to check any-site, I rarely look at traffic on sites, if the keywords attract traffic and they rank well with those keywords traffic will follow.
Thanks guy, It ranks with plenty of keywords and seems genuine. And that is one of the reasons I bought it. It is an aged news site that is well indexed with a unique name that fits my niche. I'm an investigative journalist & researcher and am building a site around this... so its not about money, its about readers. I know that he has BHated the cr*p out of it (I can tell by bits of script left about) but I don't have a problem with that. I wouldn't even be that bothered if he lied about the unique hits with redirects, etc. I'd have problem if he was pulling some 'post sale' scam, throwing my genuine traffic stats off. Could anyone tell me if it would be possible to write/or have heard of a program that could rotate proxies AND disguise which OS it is coming from (XP, 2000, vista, 7, server have all appeared). To me black hat = automation, so if anyone could write such a thing... they'd be in here somewhere. Thanks
I would check all of the ersatz traffic boosters that have been featured at BHW such as SuperAlexa Booster so you have better sense of how they operate. Secondly I understand that you are ranking well with particularly keywords but what type of traffic is associated with those keywords?
Well my dear fellow bher. Such tools to generate fake traffic do exist and lie around here, in this very same forum. It is possible to scam people with these, as they will generate real traffic reports. The seller will go to hell, and you have learned your lesson I hope.
Oh, by the way, the softwares I know that are capable of doing so are Fastvisits AND super alexa booster.
Just because all the traffic you got on a day was for the same keyword doesn't mean that you got scammed. It might be because you are ranking well for that keyword and other keywords you are ranking well might have very low search volume. Anyway watch your stats for a week or two. And if you see that all your traffic is for a single keyword for an extended period of time, then there is something fishy.
thanks neo.... ...but the term is "RESUME OF" test -sample -example I'm pretty sure telling you that aint gonna give away some grand keyword strategy and as you can see... it must be fishy. Right?
The first thing that comes to mind is that this was a sale done by someone who inflated the view count with a bot..... I think that exact method is explained somewhere in this forum
Thanks JuicyB!!! If someone could help me find the bot/post and/or method... I would be hugely grateful. I've just received an email from seller who claims he knew nothing about any such thing bot, but as he has not always been owner... does not rule it out. The fact that he replied, installs at least some trust. I'd like to know exactly what is going on so I can renegotiate. ***breath in.... WHOOOOSAAAAA****
Ah, social engineering to save the day. I'm gonna tell you what I think is going on. The guy inflated the traffic in order to sell the site (common technique in the website selling world unfortunately). You called him out. He got nervous and probably gave it some thought. In the end, he decides to pretend who knows nothing about this and is sorry in order to gain trust/pity. He keeps the money and you move on with a lesson learned.
Phunky, my sentiments exactly. fastvisits looks like it would do the job perfectly. But google has not called this, it has a highish PR, it has plenty of keywords and nearly 8000 backlinks I insisted on a discount, which he has just agreed to. The question I ask myself now is... is a great domain, 8000 backlinks, 10 years of archives and plenty of google indexed content... worth keeping. Hell, is the bot that is messing up my stats worth keeping!!!!
