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Condoning black hat techniques is like saying its okay to break into someones home and steal their possessions
Hi Simmo I understand your reasoning but here’s an alternative perspective.
The whole SEO game is quite like the body building industry. Where drug use is rifie. At first there were ‘natural’ body builders but they just couldn’t keep up with the body builders on steroids. Eventually everyone who had a hope was on them to level the playing field. This is all against the rules but it’s a matter of not getting caught timing your drug intake so when you take your drug test the traces of the drugs are our of your system.
We are all guilty of manipulating the search engines, does anyone link exchange because they have too much time on their hands? and every method from meta tags, to buying links was a drug to enhance our rankings.
This black hat stuff is just the latest drug – it has received extra attention because there’s a perception that black hat damages individuals where as white hat techniques doesn’t.
This is actually wrong – like in body building if you don’t rank in the top 3, you’ve lost.
It doesn’t matter whether someone has used white hat or black hat methods to knock you out of the top 3. You still get nothing either way.
Incidentally, so much talk of 888 p*ssing everyone off with their stand-off stance on this. But no-one has suggested removing them in protest or taking similar actions like against Party recently, or Fortune, ReferBack et al last year.
Thoughts?
Since this debate has produced a great response with both sides represented, Can we take this a little further. Excellent question from Simmo!. I hope it doesn’t get ignored.
888 contacted me a while back when the last CPA posts were hot, I was new to CAP. I bought into the fact that they were reasonable explanation why CPA commissions were not paid and signed up. Got a deposit rather quickly and got paid. I posted here about how well 888 was treating me.
Then I started reading the scraper posts and started limiting 888 on my site and now they are gone all together. I did this not because of personal dealings I had with them, just seemed like the right thing to do.
There has been no reaL “Call to Arms” or “Rallying Point” like it has been with others. So finally my “expansion” question from Simmo! post.
Is it that a lot of us here are making damn good money at 888 and would rather not get involved?
Come on, with T&C issues we could all rally, complain, threaten and still cash out….banning 888 till something changes effects pocketbooks.
It has been brought up in this thread that morality be damn….a buck is a buck. So can we as a community truely band together to fight a program that supports black hat tactics when there is so much money on the table?
I hope this comes out correctly, I am trying to get real answers and not come of as rude.
I think there’s a misconception that the SE’s are arbiters of moral standards. They aren’t. They’re in a business, and their stated objective is to deliver the most relevant results to any given search. Accordingly, they’ve published broad sets of guidelines in an effort to persuade webmasters to conform to certain protocols. These protocols are not, and never will be moral edicts.
In the competition for traffic, some will largely adhere to the guidelines, and some will not. Having hung out with some of the best SEO’s in the business for many years, I know many that are both white and black hatters. They’re simply hedging their bets. Moreover, you only see these issues raised in the more competitive commercial areas like gambling, online pharmacies, adult and the like. How many black hatters come from the quantum physics discipline?
That said, I agree that theft of content violates any moral standard. But manipulation through link exchanges, buying links, etc., for instance – what universal moral principal is violated? I guess it’s a matter of opinion, and the degree to which you think you’re being hurt.
I am not a fellow who believes in pissing against the wind. The situation with 888.com is quite simple one dollar for your two dollars for a scraper. So for the people who are quite content with 888.com this is what they are dealing with.
888.com could not pay me enough to promote their stuff. My mind and values are not for rent. greek39
I do not make money with 888. Well, I haven’t checked in some time, but I would be surprised if that textlink would produce, it never has.
I prefer keeping the channels of communications open. We can use the forum to bring the myriad of grievances, and it is still possible that they may do something.
It is also very good to have these long threads, maybe someone who is a member of investment forums will post the links and we will see some benefits.
There has been no reaL “Call to Arms” or “Rallying Point”
I find that quite surprising myself – I suspect they aren’t too dependant on affiliates given the amount of media buying they do. Are they quite big on buying up publisher sites as well?
