Janet,
arguing about what to label black hat, and what to label white hat, and what grey hat is an old debate, and there will never be an answer. Besides, as technology changes, the definitions change necessarily.
But it really doesn’t matter what we call it, like they say, a rose by any other name is still a rose.
All this theory is good and fine and we can go on and discuss internet philosopy til the cows come home.
Bottom line remains: If I catch a burglar in my back yard, I will tell him to drop the loot. If he doesn’t do it, I bite. He can claim all day long that the tomatoes he stole off my vine are god’s gift to human kind and I have no right to claim ownership. They are mine and I intend to keep them.
That said, yes, I can see white hat use for black hat tools. Apparently they are able to identify the majoriy of my SERPS which for me is too time consuming a task to perform.
I am about as white hat as they come. I design things with the visitor in mind only, and it has served me well. That includes linking.
Just had a quick check on google, using the names of sites without spaces and their tld extension, who have rogued 888 and it appears many have been hit by these sites with .pl and .info domain names.
Sites affected and which have subsequently accrued these thousands of backlinks are:
onlinecasinoreviewer.com
gamblog.co.uk
gamesandcasino.com
choicegambling.comThis is definately a crude attempt at google bowling our sites and there are many more being hit in addition to those four sites listed above.
yep, that is what it is. And it is malicious and I expect 888 to reel this person in.
It makes it look like 888 would like to start a blackhat/whitehat war.
That is not the way to solve things.
And you can’t google bowl white hat authority sites. You can only piss them off.
There is a difference between this and normal blackhat, which I consider to be a business model, albeit not one I condone or want to be apart of.
What is happening here is intentionally malicious, and not profit oriented.