'Threatening' me with 'Black Hat'

dazzzoi · Mar 3, 2010

I have just had an argument with a freelancer working on white hat SEO for my site...he's now fired...

He's threatening to get my site banned from Google now, using obvious black hat SEO to intentionally get the sites reputation damaged...

I wanted your opinion on this....How to deal with it. I'm already doing well in search engines, the hard old fashioned way, so don't need black hat. otherwise I may have even considered it, but always knew it was risky if you have a business with an important reputation...Now I'm terrified of of having the reputation destroyed with black hat...

Any advice, help?

brutang · Mar 3, 2010

He's most likely full of sh!t. If he could go and get you banned from Google, he'd probably be making more money doing that than dealing with small white-hat sites.. Just ignore him.

wickid12 · Mar 3, 2010

Don't worry about it. If anything does happen you can send a site reconsideration report to Google and tell them what the situation is or was.

Kid Shaleen · Mar 3, 2010

One basic google principle -- repeated many times -- is that they do not penalize sites for things that occur offsite and beyond the control of the site itself. In other words, one could have a bazillion spammy inbound links and google would not penalize.

The reason for their decision is simple: if they penalized for these things companies would target competitive sites for hostile acts and then run to google saying "mommy, mommy, look what elbonia.com is doing!"

So as far as I understand you, you need not worry that he's going to do some "blackhat thing" off your site that will hurt you with google.

Of course you want to change your passwords and make sure he's now locked out or he could do some blackhat thing from your site and google would penalize you.

catapult copy · Mar 4, 2010

Just send him a note saying you will report him to his local authorities for blackmail and harassment...

I doubt he will do much...don't take it to heart too much as sometimes in business things don't work out. That's life.

nahor · Mar 4, 2010

So I'm lost, you came to BHW, joined, made one post and you want help off the bat as to what he can do?

maybe this can help you

Code:

http://su.pr/4g1kwy

jesdon2 · Mar 4, 2010

Tell the guy to go back to spanking his sister and leave the seo to the big boys. Whats he going to do, build more links for you? lol

wickid12 · Mar 4, 2010

Kid Shaleen said:
One basic google principle -- repeated many times -- is that they do not penalize sites for things that occur offsite and beyond the control of the site itself. In other words, one could have a bazillion spammy inbound links and google would not penalize.

The reason for their decision is simple: if they penalized for these things companies would target competitive sites for hostile acts and then run to google saying "mommy, mommy, look what elbonia.com is doing!"

So as far as I understand you, you need not worry that he's going to do some "blackhat thing" off your site that will hurt you with google.

Of course you want to change your passwords and make sure he's now locked out or he could do some blackhat thing from your site and google would penalize you.

Partially not true. It's called the Google Spam report. You can get penalized from spamming forums, deindexed because you were reported to Google by a webmaster and this SEO guy can pretend to be some webmaster or even spam his own forum. That's why you go for the Google Reconsideration.

dazzzoi · Mar 4, 2010

nahor said:
So I'm lost, you came to BHW, joined, made one post and you want help off the bat as to what he can do?

maybe this can help you

Code:

http://su.pr/4g1kwy

I've been a member LONGER than you! March 2008.

dazzzoi · Mar 4, 2010

Thank you for the advice, guys. It was very helpful. I knew about the reconsideration, which is handy. Yeah, I was wondering how google could punish someone for something outside of their control..

Kid Shaleen · Mar 4, 2010

dazzzoi said:
Thank you for the advice, guys. It was very helpful. I knew about the reconsideration, which is handy. Yeah, I was wondering how google could punish someone for something outside of their control..

Another thought while we're at it:

On wikipedia check out "joejob" and "sporgery."

Joe Doll and his cyberpost site were the victims back in 1997. Since he seemed to be the first victim a heavy false flag attack became known by his name.

Sporgery is one of those wonderful 'net terms that's a portmanteau word for "spam + forgery." It should give you some more insight on how certain nasty things are done and how people defend against them.

Best of luck.

HerzoG · Mar 4, 2010

Try and get some evidence maybe. Call him up and record the call, you can use it back on him then or else try and piss him off and force him to angryly email you and use that.

I would think of good questions to lead him into it. Stuff like 'Look it, what exacly do you think you can do to my website? This is my business and I decide what I do with it, so what can you possibly do to harm it?...I mean I don't want anything bad to happen after all my hard work with it'

Hopefully he goes off on one and thinks he has you pinned down but infact you get your own black mail material!

Good luck

cc1981 · Mar 4, 2010

I would go with HerzoGs suggestion. Or just plainly ignore him... He won't do anything anyways.

moonstarers · Mar 4, 2010

I actually think you should challenge him to try.

He can only get you sandbox or temp ban from google but if you explain your situation with google, they will sort it out for you. They ain't stupid to see that the spamming isn't really 'advantageous' to you.

BUT, the important part is:

1. He will either be spending alot of money to get you or alot of time. Which is pretty dumb anyways.

2. After the sandbox or ban is lifted, your site will actually benefit from it.

halfpoint · Mar 4, 2010

Unless your site is brand new and link less there is going to be very little he could do.

If he could then ranking for any keyword would be a complete crap shoot. Everyone would be sabotaging each other and no one would be able to maintain a ranking position.

Don't worry about it - Simply move on.

dazzzoi · Mar 5, 2010

Thanks guys. I may stick around. Cheers

stung · Mar 5, 2010

Piss him off as much as you can...hopefully he'll go and build you some links on porn sites then. Every little helps.

xamlit · Mar 6, 2010

To the OP,

The important thing is to make sure you change any passwords that this guy had from you. He might not be able to affect you off-site but he can criple your actual site if he has access to the hosting, domain and any other type of related services like analytics etc...

-X

XsenseX · Mar 6, 2010

U only need to be careful just incase he comes up and complete directly with you in the same product/industry ....

richcamp · Mar 6, 2010

Why do everyone thinks that google is fair and considerate. Do you think that google cares about fair competition so much that it will do everything in its power to prevent good site being drag down in SERP?

News flash, they dont care. If links from "bad neigborhood" can bring your site down, it sure as hell can also bring your competitor sites down. If a stupid linkwheels can send your site to the back end of the SERP, it can also be done to your competitors.

People seems to forget the fact that if your competitor is in front page then it may have a pretty strong BL and it will take you some times to do it, but it is possible, think about it.

Dont trust me? fine, have a look here
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34449

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