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@kwblue 129975 wrote:
2. Grey Hat SEO – Manipulative of SE’s, but not unethical
a. Blog and Ping – Pinging Blogs to let the search engines know that a page has been updated (This can and has been abused)
b. Link Exchange – This is not seen as acceptable to Google and other SE’s, but we all do it.
c. Cloaking of content to improve keywords while showing the user a more salesy page (done by many large companies to improve the SERPS for graphical pages)
d. Submittal (auto or manual) to Digg, Twit This, FeedBurner, Rojo, etc (done on my blogs and forums, also done here at CAP and many other places)
e. Using Social Networks to ‘Add A Link’ to your website. This is mainly social bookmarking (can be abused)I don’t think Grey/Gray Hat is unethical, I just think it means usage of web services that do not fall into Black Hat (devious methods).
Also, cloaking is not against Google’s TOS. Google states that it “may remove sites found to be cloaking”. Cloaking is not as devious as people think, also, people don’t know the full definition of cloaking. From a basic point of view cloaking is displaying different information to different users or spiders/bots. Sometimes this is totally acceptable. If someone comes to BMW.de and wants to buy a BMW but have come from the USA (detected by USA IP Address) then it is perfectly fine to either redirect or display USA info (with the option to change the locale in case the surfer is a german in the States)…
Anyhoo. This thread has gotten crazy!
Wasn’t it something to do with someone “outing” a black hatter?
Wow I am learning so many new terms here, I have to admit to being almost entirely white hat, but I may well take a closer look at some of these grey hat techniques, are there any good guides out there?
I think Black hat is really sh1tty as it is theft, and theft of someone elses hard work as well.
Grey hat can be dangerous. And while google may not penalize all those sites, show me one authority site that isn’t white.
Fair point, I prefer playing it safe, if you fall out of favour with Google then it’s all over so at least with the main sites I think its better to play by the rules. I was quite surprised to see some people listing link exchanges as grey hat though, I mean everybody does that and as long as it is relevant link exchanges then surely that is fine, isn’t it??:confused:
@heimdall 130082 wrote:
I was quite surprised to see some people listing link exchanges as grey hat though, I mean everybody does that and as long as it is relevant link exchanges then surely that is fine, isn’t it??:confused:
I only listed that one because it is open to abuse and Google says it’s a no-no to link with people by request. They prefer natural linking – only linking to sites you feel are worth linking to for particular content reasons. It’s not bad – just not ‘Google approved’
So- in the end, link exchange is certainly WH. However – reading some of the forums where people argue BH vs. WH – one of the typical arguments is that WH’s are just as bad for creating link exchange farms.
I hope that makes sense…
Google says it’s a no-no to link with people by request.
Where does someone from Google say this?
Google’s webmaster guidelines say, “Have other relevant sites link to yours.” I don’t know how you could do that without making a request. The guidelines also say “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.”
The guidelines also say “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”
Matt Cutts discusses link exchanges in a post on his blog here, and I suppose if you read his comments sideways then it might seem like you’re not supposed to ask for links, but that’s a big oversimplification of his point.
Yes – I was oversimplicating, of course.. The idea is to get links naturally, not by mass request. This is what I am talking about.
Google ‘prefers’ you to get links naturally, not to go around requesting links from everyone and their brother.
That’s all I meant.IMO it has to do with growth.
Google likes to see natural growth.
Adding 100 links in one day is hardly natural growth.
Also, (no I have no base for this other than years of personal observation) I think google has groupings of quality of sites.
New, barely indexed sites on the bottom, and so forth. I think that google lets you do grey things in degrees. Group one at the bottom gets to get away with a lot of stuff. When you move up a notch, it’s a bit stricter, and so on.
This would keep sites at certain levels depending on how grey or white they are, as far as bots determine that.
Before you reach the highest group (authority sites or whatever you want to call it) you get a real person looking you over. At that point you better be lily white and your history better be one of continued whitening.
I don’t think google outright penalizes most grey stuff, they just set a limit for how far up you can get with it. It makes for natural selection, the dark grey ones get frustrated and drop out of the game. Medium grey never passes a certain stage.
Page rank is not an indicator of this at all.
Thats just what I think, I don’t even read SEO forums. I occasionally (maybe once a month) read Matt’s blog. So go ahead and shoot it down, but it remains my own observation.
Of course, if you are all black, sites are disposable and none of this matters at all. You shoot up, and hope you stay long enough to make some money before you get removed.
I do read SEO-forums every day,
but never saw SEO described as you do Dom
i really like the way you look at it! :hattip:You always say you dont do any SEO, except some basics maybe
I bet you practise SEO in secret,
just like practising poker
:tongue:
Hehe, no secret poker. Actually most of my poker has been playing tournies, and you can count these on one hand.
BUT – I plan to pick it up, I like it. A matter of finding time…
SEO – simple thing. I put up the content I like, name it for what it is and google does with it what google wants. I read CAP though and watch what people do and what their sites do and draw my own conclusions.
I figure that G&C is a better ranking site than those of the experts, so whatever I do can’t be all wrong.
Google just knocked me down to PR4 and took away most of G&C backlinks and a lot of the indexed pages, and gave it better SERPS and got rid of all the blackhatters on G&C’s back.
Rock on google, I’ll take the SERPS anyday.
@Dominique 130036 wrote:
Grey hat can be dangerous. And while google may not penalize all those sites, show me one authority site that isn’t white.
I am not saying this to be argumentative but name a site and I’m pretty sure I can find something that falls into the “gray hat” category and therefore not white hat!
@Dominique 130129 wrote:
Google just knocked me down to PR4 and took away most of G&C backlinks and a lot of the indexed pages, and gave it better SERPS and got rid of all the blackhatters on G&C’s back.
Rock on google, I’ll take the SERPS anyday.
SERP’s are what matter! The crucial point to note about what Dom is saying is that for (y)our businesses to grow it’s all about ranking for (core) search terms.
If you are selling advertising then the little green bar and Alexa matter, otherwise get your site’s prominently placed in the SERP’s (That’s Search Engine Results Pages for newcomers).
