Inspiring - a low quality site competes against multi billion dollar brands using blackhat

Clearly the post was not made to soft promote Link Detectives! CLEARLY!

brainstorm1 said:

I don't think it is fair for anyone to say what is a "good" or "bad" site. Users can make that decision for themselves and choose not to be duped.

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Haha, come on, man

If users could make a decision for themselves then we would be out of business, and I'm not talking about blackhat. I'm talking about marketing in general.

Google is a business and their business is to provide the best, most relevant, trustworthy search results for users.

Even if people could make the decision, why would they want the added stress? People just want to get something done, they don't want to have to spend hours researching sites to see if they're legit.


I just don't understand why people are trying to make out this site was in any way useful. No one ever used to argue that ewhoring was helpful, or that the old job lead scams on craigslist were actually helping people.

This site's utter trash. It makes money and that's cool, job done, but why argue that the site actually has a place up beside real insurance brokers, or useful sites like comparethemarket?

WTF! The guy mentions "What is this guy doing here between huge brands?".. Seriously, what is their problem? Where does it say that only big brands have the right to rank on top of other sites? If this is the case then thrs no point, even for an end user, to use Google as all the results are gonna be Commercial. Moreover, I hate SEOMOZ for ruining that guys parade.

Google don't want this kind of results at their ORGANIC results, but they will gladly accept it at thei ADWORDS/PPC network because it will bid for one of the highest paying keywords IMHO. What do you guys think? Ironic right?

xenix9 said:

But this site is clearly what google define as "thin affiliate site".

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Dude, this site has over 100 X 500 word unique, correct grammar articles.

Hardly 'thin'.
It was the links that trashed it not content.

Thanks for posting this, very inspiring
im going to open OSE and steal there good backlinks

I understand your point, but I'm talking about principle. Saying that a site is garbage or not opens up competitors/Google to claim that many things are garbage etc. It's like one of the anti SOPA arguments - once you start taking down sites, where does it end?

I understand what you're saying. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the ewhoring really provides anyone with any benefit.

BlueTurtle said:

Haha, come on, man

If users could make a decision for themselves then we would be out of business, and I'm not talking about blackhat. I'm talking about marketing in general.

Google is a business and their business is to provide the best, most relevant, trustworthy search results for users.

Even if people could make the decision, why would they want the added stress? People just want to get something done, they don't want to have to spend hours researching sites to see if they're legit.


I just don't understand why people are trying to make out this site was in any way useful. No one ever used to argue that ewhoring was helpful, or that the old job lead scams on craigslist were actually helping people.

This site's utter trash. It makes money and that's cool, job done, but why argue that the site actually has a place up beside real insurance brokers, or useful sites like comparethemarket?

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brainstorm1 said:

I understand your point, but I'm talking about principle. Saying that a site is garbage or not opens up competitors/Google to claim that many things are garbage etc. It's like one of the anti SOPA arguments - once you start taking down sites, where does it end?

I understand what you're saying. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the ewhoring really provides anyone with any benefit.

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What?!

How can some garbage affiliate info-site be compared to SOPA?

Of course we can say sites are garbage. That's different than claiming copyright. It's google's job to keep garbage sites off page 1 and if they fail to do that they'll go out of business.

What people forget is google.com is owned by google. It's a web site, and it's owned by google. They have every right to delist your site, that doesn't mean you can start saying google are taking our liberties.

This conversion is just ridiculous. I'm out.

The shit thing is that they are promoting Link Detective crap with that website.

check it but don't buy it haha

blackieman said:

Yes, why get upset? If you are blackhat and do a million spam links with xrumer and scrapebox and your site does not provide any value, then be happy with a few days of fame. That is what BH is all about, quick profits not long term staying power.

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was #2 for months. Also SEOLOZ are dicks. Rand Fish head CEO of selolz and his shiteboard friday jeez.

googlemonster said:

was #2 for months. Also SEOLOZ are dicks. Rand Fish head CEO of selolz and his shiteboard friday jeez.

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Is there a reason why you have to be such an ass? These shiteboard Friday's as you so politely put it are always informative from real studies, video's are created because people prefer watching them rather than reading it, they gain more links and gives people a reason to come back to the site every week.

Your comment was completely worthless and appreciated by none.

Fathom said:

Is there a reason why you have to be such an ass? These shiteboard Friday's as you so politely put it are always informative from real studies, video's are created because people prefer watching them rather than reading it, they gain more links and gives people a reason to come back to the site every week.

Your comment was completely worthless and appreciated by none.

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Well bloody said. I can't stand this whole "secret club" mentality some people on bhw have when they start bad mouthing other professional mainstream resources because it's slightly at odds with what they believe.

These kind of stupid bashing comments just bring bhw down to the level of DP and make the members look ignorant.

xenix9 said:

Correct grammar doesn't justify quality, or relevant content.

Build websites for users, not search engines - and it will go through any manual review.

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Go and read a random article then argue with me about 'quality'
I agree build 'quality' sites that will pass manuel review, but this was not a thin site, 100+ articles is not thin.

Now for the fun stuff, define 'quality'....good luck with that

Heh Eppie mentions scrapebox in his post. Never thought I'd see scrapebox mentioned on SEOmoz.

Anyway, it's a good post. Looks like blog commenting is still a viable link building strategy.

daveguy said:

Heh Eppie mentions scrapebox in his post. Never thought I'd see scrapebox mentioned on SEOmoz.

Anyway, it's a good post. Looks like blog commenting is still a viable link building strategy.

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I'm going to say that it was many factors, not just blog commenting.
Here are some things that I noticed:

The domain was not an EMD but was a domain that included the keywords and had "quote" as a related term on the end. Google seems to be giving some kind of penalty to emd's which is probably why the domain was not an EMD.

If we look at the seomoz 2011 ranking factors you'll see that the correlation data shows that emd's have had a significant drop while partial match has had a significant increase, the question to me is what would be better if you wanted to rank for "auto insurance"

Autoquoting.com or autoinsurancequoting.com

I'm going to assume both are ok but the second option is going to rank a little higher.

Another thing that I noticed was that the site was linking out to an authority in that niche which should always be standard practice these days.

Also the site has over 150 google +1's and other social influences.

Building 10000 linking root domains over a period of 3-4 months is impressive. Those 10000 links are not just links, they are indexed links. I'm going to assume the reason for this was for the diversity. IP, no follow/do follow, anchor text, pagerank, types of links, and so on.


The real links come from those pages that have high authority and trust, IE a followed link on the BBC? You can't ask for much better than that.

Whoever did this had a plan of action, and it worked. I have always said that if you can crack google, you will make millions, why? because you can rank for whatever you want.

A true SEO does not care about blackhat/whitehat, they care about what works and what makes money. Even if that method only lasts for a few weeks, it does not matter because it can be repeated as many times as needed. What really matters is, is profit greater than investment and if it is by how much. Are the risks worth it? It's all about making money, nobody does seo for any other reason.

I personally like to learn from other people's success, not very often do url's get shared like this and for that reason I'll be doing a lot of testing with similar methods.

I found similar case today, related to the keyword(s) I'm targetting.
It is a lucrative and competitive industry (can't reveal it, sorry).
(*My site is creeping and climbing on page 2)

And on the page one, at number 3 or 4, there 'were' a site that is not really 'ready' for this specific keyword.
5-6 months old, low PR, typical thin aff. site
The link profile is not that impressive, I didn't analyze it deeply, but not impressive.
It made me wonder, how come this site rank on #3 for this keyword?

And today, I see my rank improved by 1 point.
It is not because it really improves by it self.
It simply because there is a change on the page 1.
That 'not ready' site dropped to #200+
That's why my site is improving by 1 point.
*This specific site dropped on various keywords I track

And this thread comes into mind...
Manual review, competitors complain/report to Google, and such.
It makes me think again regarding my site.
I positively sure I can push my site to page 1 in a month or 2 max.
But my site profile is also 'not ready' for manual review as well

It is not about whether Google will manually review all the sites on page 1, even on competitive industries (maybe the do).
It is not about every site on page 1 on competitive keywords should be great

But it is about the competitors
If my site is not that good, those people will wonder, how come...
then analyze it, then report it..

It makes me think...
If you want to rank on these types of competitive keywords, you better make sure your site is ready for 'analyzes done by your competitors'
they spend lots of money and will not let my 'not so impressive' site taking their place.

PS1: They said, this world is not fair.. and we online world is lot more brutallll....
PS2: I should work improving my site now...

meathead1234 said:

Ditto. I bet the owner of that site will thank Eppie for his blog post. Probably just cost him $XXX,XXX assuming those rankings were relatively stable.

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Read the article. It says he published it only AFTER the site got slapped.

Hey guys -- Eppie here. Just wanted to clarify a few points in this discussion.

First, the site I audited in this case study dropped in the SERPs around the end of January. My take is that I'd never out an actively ranking site, but once it's dead I have no problem dissecting it. Some of you will disagree with that, but I believe it's a fair stance to take on the issue of "outing" a site.

Second, to the one or two guys who took issue with the fact that the post promotes Link Detective -- it's a completely free service with no limitations. I'm not making a dollar off of it.

Finally, I'm no SEO moralist -- I think it was an impressive achievement to rank that site and, quite frankly, I've ranked plenty of "garbage" sites of my own (though never for a keyword as competitive as these guys pursued). Good on them for getting their money. If Google doesn't like it, it's their responsibility to fix their algorithm to rank what they highlight in the search quality guidelines.

As for calling the site "garbage," when I say "garbage" sites, I mean sites that Google wouldn't want showing up in their SERPs. It's not my personal judgment of the site's value but is based on what Google's put out as their guidelines for search quality.

I know some of you will still think I'm a dick, but I just wanted to clear the air and get my side of the story out there.

A very interesting article Eppie, congrats on that!

I really laugh out loudly at some people bashing and badmouthing all day long, they probably wanna find excuses for not making any money online.

The guy who was ranked #2 for "car insurance" banked pretty well (and by that i mean a few $xxxk's so instead of saying thin content and other crappy justifications, you better try and achieve similar results

I remember a few months back when a guy was ranking for "sex" and other huge keywords, so there's definitely a loophole on G's algorithm which apparently hasn't been patched yet

It takes balls to rank on top of Google for highly competitive terms so kudos to the ones who have done it / are doing it