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Captain wrote:The simple solution would be for the affiliate programs that are involved with these affiliates demand them to stop this practice immediately or else lose their affiliate account and commission.
Yep! I could care less who owns them, I want those who fund them to stop. NOW!!!
Stupid, no one said to scrape the scraper sites. That wouldn’t be very useful. The idea is to bring them down.
Anyhow…
There are 3 big affiliate programs which “sponsor” these tactics, and Dom mentioned them. My website disappeared from Yahoo because of being scraped to the bone, however, Google and MSN do not allow these websites to craw too high in the results, so I could care less.
If you guys scrape them – all you will do is re-reproduce your own content, in other words, you will create more and more of those scraper sites, which will even drop you lower.
The only one who could put an end to it is the affiliate program itself, but I would not count on it, as the money is way to big.
Actually Dom, Professor’s exact words:
It may be time to fight fire with fire and scrape the scrapers and push THEM out of the serps or have THEM banned for duplicate content.
If he did not mean this literally – my bad. :music:
He did say that – I saw it as a pun.
I am under the impression that some of us get together and find someone who comes up with a tech way to shoot them down.
Stupid wrote:2. We can get rid of those websites by taking action ourselves in a much better way, namely, by targeting the aff programs.If that worked with these affiliate programs the problem would be solved already..
krystall2 wrote:If that worked with these affiliate programs the problem would be solved already..
Exactly..it seems some affiliate programs do not care how they get their money as long as they get it and that, IMHO is where the industry will find it’s end one day if it continues.Has anyone tried contacting the hosting companies of these sites? Whenever I’ve had content copied in the past this was one of the things I done and they usualy dropped the site.
Even if they have their own server it has to be located somewhere, or if they host on their own PC they have to have an ISP to conect. None of these companies tolerate their users breaking TM & copyright laws.
Hi Everyone
I hope you don’t mind if I have my say as well.
For one I think Professor has made a very valid statement, Blackhat SEO’s is damaging the industry and we should look them in the eye and say this is enough. I also feel that affiliate programs should make a point of specifically mentioning this in their Terms & Conditions.
Dominique I also feel that you have a valid point these affiliate programs that clearly support Blackhats should make their choice. Either the one or the other.
I would also like to comment to Stupid. You have a valid point that it is difficult to classify someone’s actions as being blackhat and for some reason there is many SEO’s that disagreed on this point. For me there is no thin line infact the question is easy to answer(please note that is for me). If an SEO in any way intentionally cheat a SE algo in order to obtain high rankings that is defined as Blackhat. Now the argument will probable push into this direction… But if a webmaster intentionally increases his back links (or something similar) he is also intentionally trying to cheat the SE algo blah blah… The age old argument. However there is a clear line. Widget baiting, scraping and cloaking to mention a few is clear blackhat techniques. Whitehats just work hard at improving there rankings the legit way, by giving it the quality it wishes to have without cheating. I am sorry if this sounds like an argument, Stupid but that is not the intention, I am truly just giving my opinion. I have had this argument way to many times with other SEO’s in forums and the last thing I want is a discussion about this, I hardly think that was Professor’s intention with this thread. lol However, Stupid I would love to get your comments on this issue, as I have asked Cheza to review our Terms and Conditions so we can possibly add this to our terms and conditions at Moneymechanic. I would truly appreciate your input.
Let’s look at the disadvantages and advantages of the two hats. As usual Webscaz had a very valid point. It is simply not worth it to go over to the dark side, for the following reasons. Blackhat SEO is a science and I mean a real science, in many cases they are much better than Whitehats as they are in a continuous struggle against the well educated teams of the SE’s. They are also completely without any conscience, as they strongly believe they are doing nothing wrong with their cheat techniques. They feel it is purely business. However Blackhat SEO’s also loves the challenge of outsmarting other people and can in many cases be compared to hackers. To say it is business is actually stupid as Blackhats provide the casinos with badly targeted players that often do not convert. In numbers terms they probably need to supply about 7 times the traffic you need to supply to obtain the same amount of conversions. They also need to completely rely on the casino’s ability to keep the players and create loyalty. Therefore the blackhat SEO is spending much more time in order to obtain the same amount of conversions, that lasts for a much shorter time as most visitor soon relies they did not end up at the result they wanted.
There is one thing I do however in an attempt to stay up to date with their strategies. I keep on monitoring their forums and researching their techniques. Often this can also help you improve your knowledge and become true SEO Jedi without moving to the darkside.
Professor I don’t advocate blackhat SEO and if you feel this is damaging for this thread Please remove this, There is number of tools used by Blackhats, for scraping (as far as I know) they use Traffic Equalizer You will have to Google that though as I do not wish to link to it. There is a number of cloaking scripts freely available and RSS Mixing tools.
Thank you for this excellent post, chatmaster.
There is one easy, nontech way to deal with this I can think off, IF we can establish good contact with the afflicted engines.
We could offer to hand harvest all those sites and turn them over, complete with their serps. It would be labor intensive but hiring some help for this would be a lot cheaper than hiring talent to devise programs to shoot them out of the water.
A real people black hat patrol. I really think it would be more efficient than the engines are at this time. We find them, they wipe them out.
Maybe this is a stupid idea full of flaws, but it’s all I can think of that is easy to implement. If we can get the cooperation of the engines, I think all kinds of affiliates will be happy to help.
There is a number of cloaking scripts freely available and RSS Mixing tools.
Are these used to create scrapers or to protect yourself from them?
Also, if you are a newbie and not appearing in the engines, or unable to climb, you should be very involved in this because these guys are keeping you down.
Many valid points. Although the Black-White Hat SEO would always be a never-ending argument, it is true that there are basic techniques (such as scraping) which will always be Black Hat, no matter which side you ask.
One thing, however, each and every one of us is guilty of trying to modify the SEs for the sole purpose of their own well ranking.
Our relation with the search engines (as an industry) Dom will never be good. Nor will they ever agree on anything, since they make no money from us – the gambling advertising is “outlawed” by them. Also, Google as always been proud from the fact that their results are 100% machine generated.
My personal opinion is that these techniques will be cought by the SEs in a near future (except Yahoo). We should definitelly wait, as Google mentioned that they will be tweaking the results all summer long, and I hope this will result in cutting the Blac Hat techniques to a minimum.
As of a tool which could take sites of the search engines – first is very, very illegal. Second, if such a tool existed – it would definitelly be misused.
Every day we wait we get hurt more.
Here is an example:
Click on result 21 and look at the page. Then go back and look at the cached page.
This is an example of how our sites are being hurt.
The cached page, the actual page, now has all kinds of “duplicate content” out there. It can get penalized or even removed by the search engine for this.
This site is a victim of Black Hat seo.
There is no way anyone can claim this is morally acceptable – it is evil intentioned sabotage.
We need to put an end to this. Between programs starting to breach contract with us and adding very hurtful clauses to their T&Cs and unscrupulous Black Hat SEO types ruining our relationship with search engines and stealing our traffic and sabotaging our sites – damn, we are between a rock and a hard place.
We need to fight back – NOW!
What you can do Professor – FIRST ask CAP Certified Programs to suspend all affiliate payments to those websites.
Many affiliate programs can do this according to their T&CBrightShare
The Affiliate is responsible for ensuring that all material posted on its website(s) is legal and does not violate the rights of any third party.
Fortune Affiliates
content that we deem unsuitable includes, but is not limited to, content: … and/or or violating the intellectual property rights of any third party.
etc.
Regards,
vd752So are we going to do something or not?
People stealing content to gain serps need hunting down and forced to stop via contacting aff progs, hosts etc.
Those that just use techniques that you may not approve of should be reported to the SE’s (assuming they’re breaking the SEs T&C) and then left alone.
Google (and the other SEs) give you a free service and free traffic – you get what you pay for. If you don’t like it then pay for a better service or stop google from listing your site – don’t go crying to aff progs that someone is better at SEO than you.
These people who use these techniques will get unlisted eventualy, they’re running the risk of being blacklisted for short term gain – that’s a choice we all can make.
Sadly enough I have to agree.
SEs are free, and that’s what we get for it. Stolen content however is an issue, and if you look at Yahoo for example, 6 out of the top 10 websites are scrapers… MSN looks almost the same way. That does not mean that these scrapers are better SEOs.
If I pay with counterfeit money, it does not mean that I have a better press than the government :rasberry:
