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We all know the industry is being polluted by many affiliates using cloaking/blackhat/page hijacking techniques to rank well in the short term within the search engines. But what we need is support from the affiliate programs which allow these webmasters and their sites to sign up to their respective programs.
Just this morning I was searching for Online Casino Reviewer the name of my domain in yahoo.com and came across the following example of Cloaking Black Hat techniques and also copyright theft.
The site in question is xhttp://insidethecloset.com/casreviewer.html
I am guessing that there is a cloaked page on insidethecloset.com for every conceivable casino related search term.
But have a look at this, the google cache of the above page in question:
xhttp://216.239.59.104/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2005-17%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.insidethecloset.com
Remove the x at the beginning of each url to view the pages.
Now either this guy is ripping off and hijacking/copying onlinecasinoreports.com to try and rank high in the search engines or it is indeed run by onlinecasinoreports.com – which is very unlikely as they rank very very highly on own their merit.
The 888.com aff id is:
xhttp://www.888casino.com/main.cgi?refererID=506065What I would like to know is the views of all members of cap on the following:
1) Should all affiliate programs vet prospective websites before allowing them to join up, such as William Hill amongst others do?
2) What is the current position of 888.com for example on their affiliate sites using these dubious SEO tactics – bearing in mind they actually return a poor result in the search engines for their prospective customers and hit their honest hard working affiliates as a result.
3) Should the likes of CAP & GPWA consider the accredation of such affiliate programs if they allow this practice to carry on unabated by their affiliates.
We are told by affiliate programs not to spam by email, yet from where I am sitting it seems that some programs turn a blind eye to search engine spamming by some of their affiliates, until they are individually reported.
Just did a check and this site listed above contains hundreds of cloaked pages.
For instance : xhttp://insidethecloset.com/casino.html
Gets you to an 888.com landing page. As does
xhttp://insidethecloset.com/onlinecasino.html
This is just one site. There are thousands of such sites out there and they are all being accepted into several affiliate programs. and not just 888.com I hasten to add. It will also be interesting to hear feedback from Shelly the rep for 888.com on CAP.
What is their official stance regarding these type of affiliate sites, bearing in mind they rely on stolen content ( in this instance ) and black hat seo techniques to rank in the search engines?
Will they be spending some of their vast marketing budget at their disposal to actually employ someone to vet prospective affiliates before allowing them to be active in their program, as other reputable programs do?
Personally i think the Aff Programs should follow the examples of Will Hill, Ladbrokes etc and vet the sites for affiliation. After all, any professionally run business will only want to be represented in the best possible manner as it reflects back badly on them.
I’m sure all aff programs are in agreement with this and knowing the Prof I am sure it will be a part of the CAP accreditation process too, if not already.
Cheers
Simmo!
Quote:3) Should the likes of CAP & GPWA consider the accredation of such affiliate programs if they allow this practice to carry on unabated by their affiliates.I agree with this – and think it would hold more weight than we ever could as the GPWA alone, if CAP & GPWA teamed up on this. If we could get a few more major forums to join the issue and really band together as affiliates from all sides of the fence, we might be able to make something change.
I myself am finally diversified enough to drop even my biggest partner. (knock on wood)
It sure would be nice to accomplish something again – and if we could somehow get an action to take place, the reward would be monetary.
I think adding to T&C that search engine spam will forfait any revenue is the way for affiliate programs.
A lot of poker rooms are promoted now by a lot of people that don’t have websites. I can say offline promotion using bonus codes is around 10% of total affiliate marketing. That simply mean that no more people promoting offline will be approved.
Also each of the bad guys can setup a nice looking site to get his affiliate link and then use his tracking for other purposes. Most people here have 5+ sites. I doubt anyone ever submited them all when aplyed for a program.Does anyone know where I can read more about Cloaking/Black Hat/Page Hijacking ?
I don;t understand how a page that reidrect to 888 for exmple has a high se ranking.Actually …. just to put a different perspective on it …
I do something a little similar with links to several of my affiliate programs …
Essentially it’s a redirect to the target client with affiliate link – but it also contains a page count tracker and a bit of other stuff too …
(see http://www.goonersguide.com/power.htm for a link to Paddy Power bookmakers … although you may have to hit stop in order to read the source code)
The reasons ?
1) This method does beat some of the scumware products that substitute their affiliate ids.
2) It gives me an independant audit of clicks to a target client – allowing me to double checktheir reporting systems …
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Why would it be considered Cloaking/Black Hat/Page Hijacking. It beleive it’s a legitamate technique to verify business levels ?
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I can see that the webpages in question are a little different but they could still be counting them via web server logs or something. … you’ve got to be careful jumping to conclusions about why things are done.
As long as I don’t use copied content I can make my sites anyway I want. Google and the other SEs list the sites by their choice and rank them by their rules.
I shouldn’t be forced to design a site to please other affiliates and their view on how SEs should list sites.
I can see that the webpages in question are a little different but they could still be counting them via web server logs or something. … you’ve got to be careful jumping to conclusions about why things are done.
Check the cache in google for that website. It is clearly copying onlinecasinoreports.com home page content.
As long as I don’t use copied content I can make my sites anyway I want. Google and the other SEs list the sites by their choice and rank them by their rules.
I shouldn’t be forced to design a site to please other affiliates and their view on how SEs should list sites.
True you can, but the example I have given above is classic cloaking and if you forget the fact that this particular site actually relies on stolen content which is cloaked to appear in the search engine results, is also a very good example on how to spam your way into the search engines.
That said they don’t stay for very long in the search engines – the problem is when one is banned, they are replaced by 5 more sites.
What I would like to know is the views of all members of cap on the following:
3) Should the likes of CAP & GPWA consider the accredation of such affiliate programs if they allow this practice to carry on unabated by their affiliates.Hell yes. Its to the depriment to any honest Joe to help these programs in any way.
Ignore this situation and watch as it grows bigger and worse.
We are told by affiliate programs not to spam by email, yet from where I am sitting it seems that some programs turn a blind eye to search engine spamming by some of their affiliates, until they are individually reported.
yep.
I understand that the page you showed uses copied content but everytime I see a thread about the so called ‘black hat seo’ it goes hand in hand with copyright infringement.
I think everyone would agree that copyright infringement is not only wrong but against the law, so there’s nothing to argue about on that front (except for whether we should support aff progs who support copyright infringement)
We need to split copyright out of the equation and discuss the two points individualy.
On the point of copyright infringement, I think we should do whatever we can to persuade the aff progs that they cannot support these illegal affiliates and if they do then we need to take action against them.
But on the point of ‘black hat seo’ I believe the only people who should have any authority over what can and cannot be used as SEO is the search engines themselves.
Everyone uses whatever techniques they can use, and feel comfortable with, it’s the search engines call to decided what is and is not ok.
The authorities will deal with it.
This is a very European attitude.
I disagree. Self is the man.
If you don’t like it, fix it. Otherwise you can sit here til doomsday waiting for those in charge to do something about it.
Quote:We need to split copyright out of the equation and discuss the two points individualy.I agree with this. And while I avoid techniques like cloaking or keyword spamming myself, if I try to look through someone elses lenses I can see how they might manage to justify it to themselves. There maybe things I do that someone else might question. However none of the above is ripping off other webmasters.
There is a more sinister type of black hat seo out there today and these are the sites that concern me. THEY DO use copyrighted material … and not just this site, but all the “scraper” variety sites – whether they provide a link to me or not, they are nothing but our plageurized content with the Sufi-Scatter technique employed on them – an algorithm designed to shake up all the text (our material) and let it lay where it lands. I for one don’t want my material used in that manner: getting me dinged for duplicate content, competing against me with my own material, giving gambling sites in general a bad name, and frankly littering the internet with junk.
The sites I’m complaining about aren’t made by man, they are automated digitized bullshit.
blackhawk wrote:And while I avoid techniques like cloaking or keyword spamming myself, if I try to look through someone elses lenses I can see how they might manage to justify it to themselves. There maybe things I do that someone else might question. However none of the above is ripping off other webmasters.The sites I’m complaining about aren’t made by man, they are automated digitized bullshit.
I agree totally. I don’t care what anyone does as long as it is not hurting others. Cloaking and keyword spamming do not bother me particularly.
Copying and scraping and a few other techniques ARE designed to hurt others directly and need to be dealt with.
I think the recurring problem with these conversations is that we lack definitions. We are throwing all kinds of methods in one basket, and some people feel they have to defend some method or another.
Just rambling now
but I personaly think the worst form of SE manipulation is the link exchange.There was a time when you would find a site of interest and to gather more info you would go to their links page and find maybe 10 sites listed, all of which would have good quality info on the subject matter at hand.
Now when you go to a links page you get a list of a couple of hundred crappy little sites which are there for the sole purpose of improving SE listings – I long for the good old days
Everyone seems to think it’s ok to exchange links for the sole purpose of imroving serps, and many people even use automated links pages and spiders to check that their links are still in place at the other sites. And God forbid if anyone uses a directory script that doesn’t use static links!
There’s other SEO techniques that are used by the so called ‘white hatters’. How about sites that use mod-rewrite to turn dynamic pages into static pages?
This is a form of cloaking that everyone seems to think is fine. There’s no reason why a dynamic page should be cloaked into a static page except that of SEO (and possibly because it looks a bit better, but few people whould make themselves extra work just for this purpose).
Basicaly, what I’m rambling about is that there are many SEO techniques that many people regularly use and think are ok but complain when someone else uses a technique that they don’t personaly approve of (sometimes because they don’t have the skills to implement it).
I would personaly like the SEs to dump every site that engages in pointless link exchanges, although I think ‘dynamic page cloaking’ is fine.
At the end of the day the only people who decide this is the search engines.
