Spamming Yahoo results with Backlinks from a Free Counter

[Astir]

Lately I’ve noticed a site coming up very high in the Yahoo SERPs for no clear reason. It isn’t a particularly good or extraordinary site, and has basically no backlinks from relevant sites. It has A LOT of links from unrelated sites, all through free traffic counters from one counter provider.

I traced the free counter, and it is indeed advertiser-supported. I even signed up for one and it generated code that linked to this website that does so well in Yahoo. This is clearly a way for a site to get many in-bound links easily, from unsuspecting webmasters.


The keywords that this site comes up so high for are very high-priced terms in the PPC market (among the highest priced words on the Internet).

Obviously, high-priced words are going to attract spammers and Black Hat SEO techniques.

The reason I bring this up is that Yahoo obviously doesn’t want their results manipulated. They’re trying to provide the best results to their searchers, and this counter technique is manipulating their results.

Can I do anything about it?

[seobook]

you can report them

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam

but they may not do anything...they are more likely to act than google is though.

I have seen some mesothemioma lawyer counters recently :)

[Marcia]

Regardless of who likes it or not, "giving away" either tools for websites or information for websites and requiring a link back has been a viable, legitimate reason for getting backlinks since day one.

Same thing with graphics - the links back compensate the creator for their effort. Unfortunately, too many people don't keep their part of the agreement, thereby violating copyright law, and far too many just hotlink and steal bandwidth.

There is *nothing* in the world wrong with getting a link in exchange for providing a free product or service. Just because it's the internet doesn't mean that anyone should be expected to give other people a free lunch just because they're either too cheap to pay for what they need or for some reason they think everything is coming to them for free.

Instead of whining about competitors beating them, and/or trying to rat them out - particularly when there' s no legitimate gripe - webmasters would better spend their time learning a thing or two about optimizing their own sites to rank better.

[seobook]

Regardless of who likes it or not, "giving away" either tools for websites or information for websites and requiring a link back has been a viable, legitimate reason for getting backlinks since day one.
I agree with that to a point, but also there are some sites that have free tools which have you LINK TO OTHER HIGH MARGIN SITES as your linkback. that is a bit shady to link into mesothelmioma lawyers pages when you use a counter.

[PixelStreamed]

Personally, i don't see anything wrong with what the company is doing. I think it's actually smart.

[seobook]

Personally, i don't see anything wrong with what the company is doing. I think it's actually smart.
if you found something useful from my site and wanted to use it on your site would you have any problem linking into my online pharmacy / debt related / casino / porn website / other high margin site in exchange?

[Marcia]

What's shady is deception. If it's agreeable, it's nothing more than a business arrangement. Remember, a lot of people think that reciprocal linking isn't quite kosher either because there's a "motive" behind it.

IMHO none of it is any less moral than people narcing out competitors so they can move up in rankings - which is, as we know, a method some use.

[PixelStreamed]

if you found something useful from my site and wanted to use it on your site would you have any problem linking into my online pharmacy / debt related / casino / porn website / other high margin site in exchange?

if that is your agreement for using your content no i wouldn't have a problem. i either go by your rules or don't use it (give and take). if i don't agree then just don't use the counter.

[seobook]

if that is your agreement for using your content no i wouldn't have a problem. i either go by your rules or don't use it (give and take). if i don't agree then just don't use the counter.
but a bunch of people do not realize what they are doing when they take the counter. it is all about perceived value though and there is a reason some counter sites have a PR8, PR9, or PR10.

[Marcia]

A lot of people also don't realize that they can pay as little as $6 a year for *real* hosting or even some of the free hosting out there and not have to link to anyone for a counter. People are responsible for themselves to grow and learn what they need to know.

Personally, I can't see the huge difference between linking to some lawyer or linking to a site that sells stuff for potty training your kid, or gift baskets for your sweetie. As a matter of fact - not that I'd compete in that market, I don't like the heat so I stay out of the kitchen - technically, there is nothing even wrong with a viagra site. In fact, it just so happens that I can prove that it behooves any husband who needs it to order it and use it, as an *obligation* - and I can prove it right out of the BIBLE.

We need to get to the point that we realize we all, black hats and white hats alike, are all part of one and the same *industry* and part of the same community of brethren and reconcile ourselves to all living together in peace and harmony. Furthermore, anyone who even dares use the word "SEO" referring to themselves or uses the Google toolbar to check PR is no longer an innocent "white hat." They may fool some of the people all of the time, but they can't fool all of us.

[seobook]

We need to get to the point that we realize we all, black hats and white hats alike, are all part of one and the same *industry* and part of the same community of brethren and reconcile ourselves to all living together in peace and harmony. Furthermore, anyone who even dares use the word "SEO" referring to themself is no longer an innocent "white hat." They may fool some of the people all of the time, but they can't fool all of us.

I totally am not self described as white hat in my own eyes. I guess my problem with the counter issue is that I do not know programming and counters are flat out low hanging fruit (as far as cheap link popularity goes). I suppose it is as much envy as disappointment, but you gotta wonder the thought process of a person who puts static text links to "mesothelmioma lawyer" on every page of their site and does not even think about it.

perhaps I shall make a stat program. they really cant be all that hard... :)

[Astir]

Yes, the site I speak of is doing it for mesothelioma and related terms.

And I am not criticizing the webmasters who put free counters on their sites. And I am not saying that there's anything wrong with a free counter having a high value keyword in it and linking to another site.

I am just saying that the effectiveness of this technique undermines the integrity of the search engine results and will produce suboptimal listings to users. Search engines use links to evaluate whether sites are authoritative about certain topics. There are plenty of good mesothelioma sites that have worked hard to provide good content to readers, and that have links from other medical and related websites. These are the authoritative sites on the topic.

If someone comes in and gets a lot of links from completely unrelated sites with a counter, and consequently places high on the search results, that defeats the purpose of counting links in the algorithm.

[Marcia]

Are they putting mesothelioma links up pointing to sites about tennis shoes or hair ribbons? Or are they actually linking to sites about the topic in the anchor text? If the latter, I fail to see where the deception is, or how they're "tricking" the search engines.

[seobook]

Are they putting mesothelioma links up pointing to sites about tennis shoes or hair ribbons? Or are they actually linking to sites about the topic in the anchor text? If the latter, I fail to see where the deception is, or how they're "tricking" the search engines.

You do not necissarily need to trick search engines with off topic stuff to degrade the quality of their index.

Most people in the mesothelioma market are tricking search engines anyway. This marketing technique is perhaps one of the better ones out there in that market right now.

If someone really wants to create a quality site on this topic it would not be that hard to beat all the other dime a dozen lead generation site.

Simply spend a month learning and compiling the most comprehensive database on that topic. After you do that you will be able to get links from many legit medical sites (where the lead generation sites will not be able to get links from). Do that, register with directories, and then build a few more links here and there and you will likely blow the competition out of the water.

The biggest problem in industries such as mesothelioma are that most people want to create a lead generation website and are too lazy to put forth the effort to make a legit comprehensive quality resource on the topic. Do that and the other things listed above and you will win.

The fact that some arbitrary counter driven link popularity site owns the top listing shows just how under developed with legit resources that market is.