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hey fred,
Yes good article, this has been going on for a while, afterall its how Statscounter.com got its pr10.
But people setting stat counters and having the links go to other sites has also been around for some time. About a year ago i noticed some Slots related sites getting their links like this and they ranked very well too. I cant remember the domain names as i dont have much to do with slots or casinos that much.
I also considered buying a site back then, it was advertised in sitepoint and was getting around 30 statcounter sign ups a day and they used to sell the link that would be in the counter code (i would have used it for my own sites).
But i decided not to buy it as i knew that would be too spammy and in time when google realises this and manually ban/penalises the site thats being linked to from the counters.
Backhat / grey areas are ok for the short term, but if you want a big, established and well ranked site for many years, its not a good idea as sooner or later you will get slapped by big G.
Like Darko123 said, this method has been around for awhile.
I’m always suprised that people want to quickly label any “innovative” approach as blackhat, or spam or whatever. Anyone who engages in active link building rather than passively letting their sites get natural, unsolicited links is in fact gaming the search engines according to their terms of service.
If these counter links were not hidden would you still consider this technique blackhat? My guess is many would.
The problem is not with webmasters but with how search engines value and ranks sites.
As long as links hold so much weight webmasters will be looking for ways to build links with the greatest ease and speed and I don’t see this changing until the search engines themselves change.
Since we are all really operating in a grey/black area with respect to link building I’m not too worried about what other people do unless it directly disrupts other peoples sites like blog spam, forum spam etc.
@darko123 138273 wrote:
Yes good article, this has been going on for a while, afterall its how Statscounter.com got its pr10.
Incidentally as an aside, if you upgrade (it’s cheap) Statcounter you get an option to have the link removed (and bigger logs). I upgraded and it’s worth it just for that IMO.
I noticed the site ranking #1 for “online casino” in Goolge.com did use this “trick” with very good sucess – that site is totally gone today so it might be that google has hammered this stuff now.
Black Hat White Hat – I don’t see any sites ranking for anything who does not do some kind of link development….. It might be that they were a bit too good at it.
I would say that anything that pulls data onto your sites, without informing you is blackhat
I’d say the same for something the covertly puts up links for 3rd party sites.
It’s also quite possible that the disclosure is buried in the terms. But that’s the same way scumware got loaded onto computers “with people’s consent”.
Sure, setup a service that links back to great. Rotate a bunch of links, only if you tell the users directly. Run a bunch of hidden links for 3rd party sites, behind my back? :flush:
The fact that they are hidden is the problem. There are hitcounters which display links openly as well.
That website who ranked #1 for “online casino” in Google.com was not hiding any links at all.
So I guess that google now conciders getting massive amounts of links this way a “link scheme” – and a violation of their SEO guidelines.
