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Black Hat SEOs: Is This the Future of Search?

Search Engine Optimization is the trick to winning online revenue. What happens when hackers start going after the prize? Part one of a two-part series.

But for his black-hat SEO work, the rules are different. For example, according to search engine terms of service, one is supposed to disclose when links are paid for. Paid links give less juice than "organic" links--ones that exist because someone decided that there's something valuable behind them. It's the difference between a deejay playing a song because he likes it and playing a song because the record company paid him to. Patel, though, like many black-hat SEOs, will conceal the fact he's bought links. At BlogWorld Expo, "I said, "Not only do I not disclose when I pay for links, I'll pay you double if you don't disclose the fact it's a bought link.'" It was this comment that spurred someone in the audience to question Patel's self-worth.

It didn't bother Patel. "Everyone has their own bottom line," he says. "I'm making good money and not getting in trouble."

Of his black-hat SEO and search marketing days, Naylor says, "it was anything goes. Was blogspamming illegal? "I don't know' is the honest answer. There's a form that says leave a comment. It doesn't say, "Don't leave an irrelevant or automated comment.'"

"Look at it this way," says Dellanave. "Who is making these rules that say you can't buy links? Are you breaking a law, or are you breaking a law of a free market that someone has created? If you get caught, you get banned and that's your punishment. Sure, ethics bells go off sometimes. But at the same time, the search companies' business model is flawed. It enables this. Even encourages it. So who's the fool, the guy who takes advantage of that or the guy who doesn't? There are hedge funds on Wall Street based on arbitrage. Is that unethical or is it exploiting a flaw in the market?"

"The problem is, there's quick and easy money," says Patel. "If you know you can't get caught, you'll do it all day long. If people don't like it, they can try to stop it."

Cat and Mouse

For a long time, SEOs say, the search companies' attitude toward black-hat SEO was best described as clement. One SEO called Google's former position on enforcing its terms of service a "rhetorical stance." Matt Cutts, Google's chief liaison to the SEO and search marketing community, says enforcement against "high-risk SEO" was neither lax nor selective for any reason other than the obvious one: "As you get larger as a company, you have more resources to pursue what you always wanted to enforce."