Internet visualization demonstration from Soteria Network Technologies, shown at BlackHat ’07 in Las Vegas, NV. This is a pre-alpha technology demonstration that highlights a high-level autonomous-system view of the Internet with the capability to drill into internal routing structures, individual routes, and host-level information. soteriatech.com
Archive for the ‘SEO Blackhat’ Category
SoteriaSight BlackHat ’07 Demo
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010Recent Thoughts On The Search Engine Industry
Sunday, August 8th, 2010
I thought it might be fun to write what I have noticed recently in the ongoing evolution of the Search Engine industry. To help set the stage – allow me to provide a little background.
That was then…
I was very active in building websites in the mid to late 90\’s, I know, I know – that was oh so last century. I learned a great deal about how to help my clients get their websites into good positions on the search engines without using what is referred to today as Blackhat SEO. Eventually my interest in developing websites led to a position in a small dot com where I developed an application for the Automobile Insurance Industry – connecting Claim Service Representatives to a network of repair shops. Fun stuff!
Through an usual turn of events – I ended up starting a small business manufacturing surfboard shaped signs for the surf retail and specialty store markets. Maybe you have seen them for sale in stores like the Ron Jon Surf Shops or the Margaritaville Stores. When it came time to move our product list to the web, I selected an open source shopping cart and after a month of customizing the user interface – went to market. After getting our products online – it was time to focus on optimizing the site for the search engines, and make an attempt to position the sites as best as possible.
Having been \”out of the industry\” for nearly a decade, I was certain it would not be an easy challenge to spin up again and learn the tricks of the trade and all the new do\’s and don\’ts of modern day SEO. Turns out, there\’s a new bag of tricks being used, but the old fashioned, tried and true methods of generating valuable content – still apply today just like they did 10 years ago and are still rewarded when found by the search engines.
So there you have it, an unusual perspective at best. Having been out of the industry for so long, it was really fascinating to see the changes that have taken place and be in a position to compare them to the way it was when I exited the arena.
What follows are some key observations and occasional postulations on where I think the Internet search industry might be headed. Having gotten our background behind us… here\’s the first of three articles I intend to write.
Article 1: Googles Rendition of the Hawthorn Effect
For those that aren\’t familiar with the term \”Hawthorn Effect\” here\’s a brief definition and explanation.
The term Hawthorn Effect refers to the tendency of some people to work harder and perform better when they are participants in an experiment. Individuals may change their behavior due to the attention they are receiving from researchers rather than because of any manipulation of independent variables.
This effect was first discovered in 1924 and named by researchers at Harvard University who were studying the relationship between productivity and work environment. Researchers conducted these experiments at the Hawthorn Plant of Western Electric in Chicago Il. and found that productivity increased due to attention from the research team and not because of changes to the experimental variable.
So… how does this relate to Google in this century?
Google is watching you. Before you get excited and run to grab your bathrobe – I don\’t mean in a clandestine or illicit way – but in a user behavioral and beneficial manner. Google is working on several products and projects that will eventually reshape how the search engine will respond to your interaction. Google captures your request for information and measures the response to the data it provides to you. By measuring your response, Google obtains key data that helps them understand how to better manipulate the results that are being returned to you. There are several tools currently in place or that are in various stages of beta testing to help them determine their course of action and refine their process in their effort to produce a better user experience for you – their customer.
One such tool is the \”Web History\” utility that is now available to all users of Google Search. Using this tool, Google will collect information about the sites you visit and use it to generate a better response to your queries. Some of the key points of the utility are:
1) The ability to view and manage your web activity – search across the full text of the pages you\’ve visited, including Google Searches, web pages, images and news stories.
2) Get search results that are more personalized and based on the things you\’ve searched for on Google and the sites you\’ve visited.
3) Get reports on your trends and web activity – how many searches did you conduct and at what time of the day. Which sites do you frequent the most?
You can read more about the capabilities and features of Web History here: http://www.google.com/psearch
How will Web History affect the Search Engine industry?
It will help Google provide you with results that you want to see the most, and, when combined with another tool in the beta process, will help remove items that you are not interested in seeing in your search results.
Want to try an experiment?
Break out your google goggles and let\’s get started! Begin by creating a user account with Google. Then turn Web History on for a week or so, and chase your tail looking at keywords that are specific to the ranking of your website or a site you are maintaining. Check several times a day, closing and relaunching your browser each time you check. Eventually you are going to see a message near the top of the window that the results of your search are being influenced by … you guessed it… Web History. Pay attention to where your site is ranking with Web History turned on.
Now, after a week of allowing \”Web History\” to collect some information… go to your google account and turn it off, and check your page positions on Google for the same Keywords? Did you see any difference? You betcha! Google is watching you and capturing your behavior and they are manipulating your search results to match your expectations and what they perceive is your preference based on the \”experiences\” they have collected from you. If Web History perceives that Blue Donuts by a particular manufacturer are important to you in the majority of your searches, they will bubble to the top of the page while other Blue Donuts by different manufactures will sink lower and lower.
Is it the end of the Search Engine Optimizing Industry?
Probably not, factors that will account for the appearance of one sites links above another may not be completely limited to the users interaction and preference in the future, other traditional factors such as content and page ranking may continue to play a part in winning the position on the page ahead of some of the clients perceived preferences, in addition to other new developments currently underway.
Does it end here?
I for one don’t think so. There\’s at least two more prominent areas where Google can capture user preferences and then modify the result set to meet their expectations, and they are actively testing or running programs to do exactly that right now. I\’ll cover the second area in my next article. \”There\’s Room for 10\”.
This is my first online article and I\’d like to thank those that have taken the time to read it. I hope you will find this useful and that it might stimulate some additional discussion on the subject material covered.
Gaver Powers
www.SurfboardSigns.com
www.AuthenticEndlessSummer.com
Gaver Powers is the owner of and actively maintains the following web sites:
www.TropicSigns.com
www.AuthenticEndlessSummer.com
www.SurfboardSigns.com
Blackhat MLM: Network Marketing Online Using Free Internet Tools
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
Network marketing can be wildly profitable, but it must be done correctly. That means NO wasting time on cold calls. Instead, you need to learn how to LEVERAGE the power of the Internet to your benefit. How, you ask? By using a few simple tools to drive thousands to your website. You can even get a free website by using blogs! One method to increase your page ranking is to get your presence all over social networking sites, like Friendster. If you go to my webpage, you can download a FREE ebook that will detail how to do this. Those who join my MLM downline will receive advice on how to get free hot leads like how to become extremely popular on Twitter, how to write articles for profit, and much, much more.
MLMs are a tool that can really get you to the next level, because not only are you getting paid from signing up people, you get money every time THEY sign someone up! You can’t lose! I have had great success in my MLM just by using all the techniques that can be found in my ebook. Meanwhile, some of my other friends are wasting their time on the telephone talking to people who could care less and being hung up on. Poor guys…I give them advice but they insist on doing it the old-fashioned way…and fall on their faces. Trust me, it’s MUCH better to have interested people calling YOU every day instead of the other way around. So check out my website, and check out the awesome product line.
Susan C. is an professional in the area of lead generation. Her website is http://blackhatmlm.blogspot.com.
Top 3 Blackhat techniques ? Learn more about them
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
This is going to be an interesting discussion for sure – Anything concerned with Black Hat techniques often gives rise to a lot of curiosity in people. How ‘Black’ are they? Are they really illegal? Do you really get penalized for Black Hat techniques? These are popular questions raging in the minds of people when they hear first about Black Hat techniques.
Webmasters and marketers on their part have lived up to the popularity of this subject and have posted a lot of content for this topic. Surprise of all surprises – There could be many times when you can get away with Black Hat techniques.
We spoke to about 100 Internet Marketers. 60 of them told us that they employ one or the other Black Hat technique. Surprisingly, only 5 of them told us that they got their site banned by search engines.
Curious enough! Let’s start learning some Black Hat Techniques
Hidden Content – This indeed has to be the king of Black Hat techniques, and no surprises, a lot of webmasters use this method to spike up the traffic to their pages and of course, the search engine visibility too.
Normally, the purpose with which webmasters insert content in their code is to ensure they are visible to end-users or visitors. Now, this is in normal run, but in Black Hat techniques, the content is placed in the code in such a manner that it doesn’t appear to the users.
But, as the content is placed in the code, it does get indexed by the spiders of the search engines. This happens because the Comment tag has a syntax, which supports useful content to be inserted.
A comment tag will look somewhat like this – <! – Comment Tag ->
If you wish to use this correctly, the syntax would be <!- Main Content->
And here is how you would use it as a Black Hat technique
<!- Keyword 1, Keyword 2, Keyword 3 and so on ->
In doing so, what you do is you stuff your comment tag with keywords and not content. These keywords are crawled on by the spiders of search engines and provide traffic to your websites.
This is just one way of including hidden content in your website code. Some other methods include writing of scripts, or using CSS comments to hide the main content or useful content.
Bottom-line – Keyword stuffing is the basic principle on the minds of people when they end up writing hidden content.
Stuffing of Meta Keywords – Ask any Internet Marketer and he will tell you that meta keywords are important ingredients of their website code. But, do you know that a lot of Internet marketers actually play around with the syntax of these keywords? And, often to a point when they get called, Black Hat.
The basic idea of writing meta tags is to allow search engines to crawl a useful piece of content written for your website.
A properly written meta tag will look like this
<meta name = “description” content = “Company ABC is a premier service providing company specializing in IT Consulting, Business Consulting and Business Outsourcing. If you need IT Consulting Services, please contact us now.”/>
Here is a Black Hat meta tag for you
<meta name = “description” content = “Company ABC is a premier IT Consulting company specializing in IT Consulting, Business Consulting and Business Outsourcing. IT Consulting, Consulting, IT Services are provided by our IT Consulting company. Choose our IT Consulting company for best services. Contact this IT Consulting company now.”/>
The length of the meta tag is rather conspicuous, but noteworthy is the stuffing of the keyword IT Consulting in the example above. Needless to say, the meta tag written correctly probably would make more sense to people and search engines alike.
Nevertheless, this is a Black Hat technique!!
Link Farming – Back-linking is considered to be a highly effective strategy to increase the quality scores of your web-pages. Building back-links from reputed websites to your website not only increases the traffic, but in essence, the conversion rates and sales jump northwards in a big way too.
Anything good on the Internet, will have a dubious deviation too and link farming is something associated with the linking strategy.
First things, participating in link farming is not desirable for your website at all. Basically, it results in your website being pointed to by a slew of links that can be considered practically useless. Think about it this way – When search engine spiders crawl your web-pages and find that there are some non-sense links to your website, your page’s Q-Score could take a big hit.
And to encourage web-masters to participate in Link Farming, there are a lot of Free for All Links pages on the Internet. Do this – Get onto one of these link farms and try procuring some links to your website. Within no time, you will get hundred links to your site.
But, how many of them are actually worthwhile? Practically none, right!
These are just the top 3 Blackhat techniques that are used by webmasters with a lot of fervor. The objective – To find of a smart and a mean way of pulling traffic to their website and to beat competition, by hook or by crook!
And to their credit, in most occasions, if these techniques are done properly, they do deliver traffic.
But remember, if you think you are smart, search engines are probably smarter. They keep revisiting their algorithms to detect such malicious practices. And, if they get a whiff of something illegal with your website, they could probably penalize you. Worse still – Your site could go up on their SPAM List too.
Though this article talks about Black Hat techniques, we would still recommend you to go for their counterparts – White Hat Techniques. They are legal, they are credible and most importantly, using them wouldn’t get your site penalized or banned.
Article author having expertise in Financial Services, Internet Marketing, Healthcare and Legal Affairs
AdSense Click Lock – Click Fraud Prevention.
Monday, July 26th, 2010Mr. Blackhat – Every Minute Every Hour
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
Mr. Blackhat plays Tom Principato’s “Every Minute Every Hour” live at DJS Dordrecht.
Blackhat SEO
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Image taken on 2008-03-21 16:47:05 by pittaya.
Matt Cutts on Big Brand BlackHat Sites
Saturday, July 10th, 2010
Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, weighs in about big brand sites that have been banned for black hat seo practices during the Black Hat/White Hat session during SES San Jose 2008. I happened to be sitting beside him. My original post about it is here: seo-space.blogspot.com
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