Home » Data Protection » Malware/Cybercrime

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.

That helped to block off the link farms and other egregious link-building techniques, but it did little to stem black-hat SEO. Bringing peers into the equation encouraged people to manipulate not only their own sites but their peers' sites too. It pushed SEOs into tactics like blog spamming, which proved so effective that links in comments fields and on online guestbooks essentially have been dejuiced all together. SEOs also targeted .edu domains. Because of their academic focus, the algorithms assume they're more credible than commercial sites, and therefore .edus pass more juice than .coms. SEOs would borrow students' unused Web space (sometimes they'd pay the students for it) and fill it with links. It was like lying on your resume. The algorithm didn't know that your links didn't really go to Harvard.

The more search companies tried to contain them, the more aggressively SEOs circumvented the rules. The game changed from using loopholes to actively abusing the algorithms. They deployed bait-and-switch schemes--using a phrase like "Click Here to Learn More" to get a user to click on what is actually a hidden link to boost someone's ranking. Cloaking emerged. Patel and others paid premiums for links, spawning link brokers, who streamlined the link-buying process. Good coders created complex schemes that sent users through several pages of links before they arrived at the content they're looking for.

The schemes are endless, like the imagination. And like all arms races, this one escalated to an untenable level. The game had to change again....

Editor's Note: This is part one of a two-part series. For Part Two: See SEOwNn3d!!1

(This story was originally published in print with the headline "Gaming the System.")