What does it mean not to leave footprints?

I know footprints in terms of scrapebox but what during my trial period of using GSA and readings posts, i read a phrase that said to NOT leave footprints. Is this related to the other footprints in scrapebox? I tried searching but all i get are definitions for the good kind of footprints. Thanks for stopping by

Don't leave a trace.

Basically if you can repeatedly find the same information in the code people/aglos will know who you are.

Example: You own 2 completely different sites but on the bottom in the footer you have "Copyright Jones Company LLC"

Someone could search for ""Copyright Jones Company LLC" and find all the sites you manage/own


What does this REALLY MEAN?

Means if you own a blog network and you have footprints the Search engines will know you own all the sites and are trying to manipulate them. It also works both ways that if you have open code and can be compromised. Hackers can find other sites that probably have the same exploits open when knowing the same admin runs them.

Not all footprints are bad, for example. If you're doing local SEO you want certain footprints to be identified for example Name, Address, Phone number.

Footprints in the context of scraping are used to find potential link targets based upon certain patterns. Such as, "Powered by vBulletin"

Footprints in the context of what you're talking about are the sort of things that send a huge red flag up in the air and says, "Look at me I'm doing artificial link building!"

An example of this would be using broken spintax, building links only from a single platform, all backlinks with the same anchor text, all backlinks from the same registrars, or IP, etc.. there's many.