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I was doing some research and analysis on rakeback sites recently for one of my clients, and to my shock (and my client’s horror), It seems that the merchants [poker rooms] are quite happy to let superaffiliates get away with trademark abuse while legitimate “white-hat” affils fritter away their money, time and effort trying to legitimately get traffic. What also was amazing was the amount of blackhat activity going on among the top 15 sites for “rakeback”
some examples: Legit???
xhttp://betfairrakeback.com
xhttp://www.betfairpokerrakeback.com/
xhttp://rakebackdevilfish.com/
xhttp://www.powerpokerrakeback.com/
xhttp://www.cakerakeback.com/
xhttp://www.ultimatebetrakeback.com/
xhttp://www.absolutepokerrakeback.com/
xhttp://www.pkrpokerrakeback.com/
xhttp://www.interpokerrakeback.com/
xhttp://www.fulltiltpokerrakeback.com/I remember reading Matt Cutts saying that this technique is tantamount to spamming (buying a domain per keyword and mini-siting]..
Amusingly the owner of these sites (believe me, there are loads more) is the one and only [do the whois yourself if interested]. sound familiar? they should b/c they won some cap “awards” and bear the GPWA seal)
Funny that they I believe they are also whitelabel rakeback site providers. Ironically It seems they are screwing their affiliates (they don’t stand a chance of ever getting ranked now do they…) and also I notice they have a nice little link to their site on all the whitelabel sites too. The terms and conditions for many of these merchants FORBIDS trademark abuse like this.
Shouldn’t merchants be seizing these domains asap and encouraging genuine affils to keep promoting their brands?? Of course they won’t bite the hand that feeds them… they can obviously track who owns the sites by registering a dummy account on each domain and checking who it’s tagged to..
what do you rakeback affiliates think? Is there any point in setting up a rakeback site that depends on organic serp traffic If everyone is cheating?
Don’t get me started on the other sites who are blackhatting like crazy (parasite hosting spamming like crazy, or deploying copious amounts of daily blog spam articles that don’t even make sense..).. RB seems to be where all the dirty tricksters are..
I’m just wondering what the point is. If you can’t beat em, join em?
Thoughts from RB affiliates please….I’m not one for outing people usually, but this defies belief.
As in every walk of life, the “privileged few” will always get away with murder. The bottom line is that many sites don’t care how they are getting their traffic, as long as they do. And if these super-affiliates are breaking the rules, well, um, they will turn the other cheek and grant “an exception”. Sure this is B.S., but the entire rakeback scene has lent itself to it. You don’t think sites that have explicit directions on how perspective players should delete all cookies on their system, isn’t hitting below the belt ? Rakeback, along with legalization of the industry, will be the 2 reasons that this industry eventually comes to its knees, in the long-run.
What’s parasite hosting?
I have said since it’s inception that rakeback is a bad system.
Basing your income on theft of players from other affiliates is not something I can condone.
Rakeback is nice for the player, however, and it should be administered by the poker rooms themselves, not affiliates.
I know Cake doesn’t allow rakeback, do all the others above allow it?
I disagree that legalization of the industry will bring it to its knees, but that’s another discussion and maybe you want to start a thread on that.
Dominique,
I agree on your rakeback comment…..I don’t think it helps our industry at all, yet, provides players with competitive rates (akin to financial discount brokers). I know that AP/UB permit it, but you have to ask your AM for special privilege AND you have to manage the rakeback money transactions yourself, which can always be problematic.
I didn’t mean to clutter this thread with an off-topic comment about legalization. I have ranted about this on other threads, and will continue to do so, if/when the possibility for US legalization exists.
Still wondering about parasite hosting – does it mean hosting parasites on your server or parasitic occupancy of someone elses server?
From Wiki – “Parasite hosting is the process of hosting a site on someone else’s server without their consent, generally for the purpose of search engine benefit.”
Thanks
Guess I better start daily checks.Cake does accept rakeback don’t they?
@Poker Dude 213779 wrote:
From Wiki – “Parasite hosting is the process of hosting a site on someone else’s server without their consent, generally for the purpose of search engine benefit.”
How do they do this? I can’t wrap my head around that
. I’ve traded hosting with lotsa ppl for the same reason in the past. But getting in without their knowledge can’t be real easy.@LadyHoldem 213794 wrote:
How do they do this? I can’t wrap my head around that
. I’ve traded hosting with lotsa ppl for the same reason in the past. But getting in without their knowledge can’t be real easy.I don’t think it’s one specific mechanism that allows this to happen, but it is usually systems like WordPress (e.g.) that have specific back-end holes that permit entry into the system, and permit remote download. So, unbenounced to hoster, code is downloaded onto an existing site. Always keep FTP passwords fresh (i.e., change frequently) to minimize the chance of this happening. Hackers will always try to exploit any weaknesses that are out there.
What do you mean by “Traded Hosting” ???
@Dominique 213771 wrote:
What’s parasite hosting?
I have said since it’s inception that rakeback is a bad system.
Basing your income on theft of players from other affiliates is not something I can condone.
Rakeback is nice for the player, however, and it should be administered by the poker rooms themselves, not affiliates.
I know Cake doesn’t allow rakeback, do all the others above allow it?
I disagree that legalization of the industry will bring it to its knees, but that’s another discussion and maybe you want to start a thread on that.
I’ll always been right behind you on the rakeback issue. The concept comes up periodically, and my views haven’t changed.
I think regulation will make it better for everyone.
Traded hosting.. ie you host a site of mine on your server, and I host a site of yours.
I wouldn’t really recommend waisting to much time on it though, I really think that no matter what we do to optimize our site along the lines of using several hosting accts, swapping hosting, using more than one Google Webmasters account, etc, Googe already knows, so it’s not really helpin’ much.
To me, pursuing rakeback players seems more like the dark side of the poker affiliate industry, a place you really shouldn’t go, but of course there is money there, so it’s worth checking out.
Can’t wait for legalization.
