News Source: http://fantomaster.com
Published: Dec 21, 2007 - 07:13 am
Story Found By: fantomaster 3472 Days ago
Category: SEO
20 Comments
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News Source: http://fantomaster.com
Published: Dec 21, 2007 - 07:13 am
Story Found By: fantomaster 3472 Days ago
Category: SEO
20 Comments
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Comments
Why couldn’t google bot just spoof their IP and then see what you are up to? And even Google suggests only using the multivariate testing with PPC campaigns directing traffic to pages excluded from Google spiders because they may be flagged as cloaking.So, I could be wrong or not understanding this whole idea but it seems like a lot of work for something that probably wouldn’t be effective for very long, imho.
It’s nice to see the sinister clandestine labs are busy re-inventing the wheel and so many people Sphunn it like it was the discovery of penicillin.This is nothing new, people have been doing exactly what you describe and call it Geo Targeting and it’s been used by some major websites for quite some time. The only difference here is the intent of what you’re using the cloaking for, but the process is old hat, not black hat, but thanks for playing.
inflating file sizes with comments is a nice tip, but cloaking is cloaking.
It’s a whole lot more complex and sophisticated than that. Yes, it’s cloaking (as is fairly obvious from the title), but what makes it entirely different from the conventional approach is its compartmentalization, the synching of algorithmic similarities between cloaked and non-cloaked content (think character hash etc., but that’s only the tip of the iceberg), boosting undetectability, and more.While geo targeting operates with compartmentalized content, too, it’s not what this is about even though the two could easily be combined, of course.@Bill: If you honestly believe this to be merely another case of "reinventing the wheel", I’d strongly suggest you read that piece (and the sources it refers to) again and give it some more thorough thought. Your choice.
I didn’t say it wouldn’t work, I just said it wasn’t new ;)I did read it and follow the sources. Unless I’m missing something earth shattering it sure reads like something that’s already been done for quite some time except the intent usually wasn’t to trick the SE’s.As a matter of fact, from an SEO perspective it’s not that hard to figure out that compartmentalized cloaking is going on unless you’re way more clever about it than someone I caught doing this very technique that created about 5K cloaked backlinks for themselves in a domain park. They cloaked one part of the page to Google and showed everyone else something completely different and it was "undetectable" - yeah, wrong.If you combine your Mosaic cloaking with scraping you’ll definitely get caught by someone eventually, probably sooner than later.
The point about "undetectability" is, of course, that there’s really no such animal. The real issue is how easily cloaked stuff can actually be detected, i.e. how much effort has to be thrown at it."Cloaked backlinks"? Not sure what you mean by that - obviously, the term "cloaking/cloaked" is used to cover lots of different approaches these days (as in "cloaked affiliate links", for example).What we term "industrial-strength cloaking" actually IS "undetectable" for humans unless they’re search engine employees working via SE IPs etc. etc. You may have hunches, nurture informed suspicions about a given Shadow Domain being cloaked or not, but you can’t actually ever be certain. (Not more than 50% that is, meaning it’s a coin toss.)With Mosaic Cloaking, the search engines have a hell of a time detecting any differences between cloaked and non-cloaked content even if they check it out specifically, because that’s what the entire tech is really all about - making the two algorithmically identical.Obviously, this relates to on-page factors only - you may still be caught out if your link building sucks bigtime. But that’s another story, of course.
I see your up to the same old tricks. Spamming or Attempting to trick the SEs one way or another. Unfortunately innocent webmasters may get hurt in the process. Of course no one will blame Fantomaster when they loose their rankings because of your new trick. Google is always the evil one.
I’m sorry Connie, but first off, personal attacks are no good. Secondly, I know several of fantomaster’s customers, and I have yet to hear of him being at all misleading about what may happen to their sites. They know it’s against the rules, and know the penalties.Fantomaster’s software is exceptionally good at what it does. Better than my own software(which is pretty damn good), and it keeps the risk as low as possible.If someone loses their rankings, they have no one to blame but themselves. (Although I conted that Google shows no loyalty to me, so I show no loyalty to them and their rules)And btw, excellent article fanto. I’ve been toying with something similar on one of my sites that’s getting damaged a lot due to some outbounds to affiliate offers. Gonna kick it up a notch though, and this looks like it’s going to be a nice guide to get it to the level where it can go live. The thread over at Perkiset’s forum blows my mind.
*** They know it’s against the rules, and know the penalties. ****** If someone loses their rankings, they have no one to blame but themselves. ***I am gald that at least someone had the guts to point this out for those people reading who might be tempted to use this and not realise the big risk that they take in getting their sites banned.
Thank g1smd.For Mosaic cloaking, done properly(once again, go to fanto’s link to perkiset’s forum), I’d say the risk is pretty low, but all the same. It’s a risk :-)Thanks again.
Yep, it is a risk and everybody had better be aware of it. Personally, I’ve never claimed otherwise.On the other hand, it would simply be inane to assume that staying white hat doesn’t constitute a risk - guess why the forums are brimming with whining webmasters who got trashed by the likes of Google, even though they never violated any of the engines’ stipulations. "Stick to the guidelines, play by the rules - lose your rankings anyway" is an age-old contention and a perfectly valid one at that.And no: I’m not saying this to play down the risks of doing it the black hat way - merely putting it in perspective. Claiming that "white hat is the safe way" is the SEO equivalent of believing in fairy tales...Lots of our clients are white hatters who’ve just about had it being gamed with by the engines - all they want is level the playing field, and - business aside - I for my part certainly can’t blame them.Point is, it’s an ever-shifting ground because the search engines are changing the rules all the time. The cards are always stacked in the webmasters’ (i.e. content creators’) disfavor.No, I’m not whining about it, even though I strongly disagree with the prevailng view that they’re perfectly free to do what they like as it’s their own companies. After all, they are parasitically living off other people’s content without giving anything in return. nd no again: They’re not "giving" you traffic in return, as so many people will have it - traffic merely happens if you get ranked fairly well. Which is entirely beyond your control and entirely at the engines’ discretion. Unless you happen to know how to game the system - which is what black hat is all about.Thanks for the kind comments, SlightlyShady - and yes, Mosaic Cloaking is going to be big, very very big indeed.
"Claiming that "white hat is the safe way" is the SEO equivalent of believing in fairy tales..."My side hurts from laughing so hard.Tell that to all the fringe directories that Google recently torched while the ones playing clean were mostly left untouched, not to mention all the paid link demotions, etc.You can still rank well simply playing the game as Google guidelines specify and that’s no fairy tale but it requires skill.
No surprise to see spin allowing and thus condoning blackhat promotions. What’s the next level spin will stoop to, hacking into other businesses? Stealing cars?
@Dave:Did you seriously just compare the two? Blackhat SEO is a part of SEO, like it or not. If you don’t like it or want to use it, that’s fine. Read it to protect against it, or read it to inform yourself.Very few things nowadays are in line with the Google TOS. Blackhat is expanding as a result.Especially this method. It actually endorses the idea of making sites for USERS, not Google. Believe me, a standard cloaking site, there’s no way you’re going to play around enough to make the legit/illegit file sizes the same. Blackhat is not a crime. It’s a method of promotion. Many sites you’ve visited probably used blackhat, and you just never noticed it.@IncrediBill:Much respect on this one. I’ve read comments of yours before, and realize you do know what you’re talking about. But I have to disagree.While you CAN rank well playing by Google’s rules, it’s becoming more and more impractical by the day. Penalizations/Bans occur for: Paid links, link exchanges, link farms, promotion based solely in directories, XSS injections, article aggregation, and a number of other link gathering methods. There’s no reason these shouldn’t be legitimate. And as much as everyone likes to say that we should all play by Google’s rules on the basis that they provide us a service, keep in mind that without us, they would not exist. They "scrape"(oops, did I use a blackhat term?) our websites, index/copy the content, and use it to profit from. And it’s all opt-OUT, not opt-IN. Try and run an e-mail list like that some day."If you would like to not recieve e-mail from us, feel free to create a robots.txt on your mail domain, excluding your addresses. Otherwise, if we can figure out your e-mail exists, we will message you".... that would not work.So as much as I love Google, and respect their algorithms, I remember that without people like me, they would not exist.So is it possible to promote using only google friendly methods? Yeah. But why would I?
*** While you CAN rank well playing by Google’s rules, it’s becoming more and more impractical by the day. ***It is not becoming impractical at all. It is only impractical for those that say they are following the rules, but in fact are bending them in every direction they can... until they get caught. All those white hatters that say they got burned? Most of them were gaming the system in some way, and hoping no-one would notice.*** Penalizations/Bans occur for: Paid links, link exchanges, link farms, promotion based solely in directories, XSS injections, article aggregation, and a number of other link gathering methods. ***Sure, that’s because those things aren’t "natural". All of those things are gaming the system and reducing SERPs quality. Google has to take action to get rid of the effects of those tactics.*** So is it possible to promote using only google friendly methods? Yeah. ***You said it. Yes it is. That’s why Google has to take out of the equation, those that game their system to such an extent, that no other sites would appear in the SERPs.*** Blackhat SEO is a part of SEO. ***It wants to be a part, but in fact SEO is a part of marketing, and blackhat is a sub-division of SPAM.
Ouch g1smd, that stings. Alright, let me try and do this point by point.***Sure, that’s because those things aren’t "natural". All of those things are gaming the system and reducing SERPs quality. Google has to take action to get rid of the effects of those tactics.***SEO(external seo, like link building) is by it’s very nature not "natural". Any form of submission, any form of article writing with a link back, all of this is intervention on YOUR part. All things like blackhat link building are is the automation of a process that others are doing by hand.*** So is it possible to promote using only google friendly methods? Yeah. ******You said it. Yes it is. That’s why Google has to take out of the equation, those that game their system to such an extent, that no other sites would appear in the SERPs.***I don’t object to Google banning my sites, and I’m not arguing from the idea that they should stop it. I like it. Honestly, if ANYONE could do what I do, then competition would be nasty and saturated. And while it’s possible to rank using google-friendly methods, with some niches, it’s VERY VERY hard. Much more work than the financial payoff. For example, let’s say I’m selling packing peanuts. I can guarantee you that no matter how good my packing peanuts site is, no one is going to link to it. Because quite frankly, it’s boring. Now this is not to say people aren’t going to want to buy packing peanuts online. They just won’t link to it. So if those lovely consumers want their packing peanuts, and no one will link to the site "organically", what should the person do? Just sit on it? Or should they get their arse out there and start submitting there site wherever they think the link will stick?*** Blackhat SEO is a part of SEO. ******It wants to be a part, but in fact SEO is a part of marketing, and blackhat is a sub-division of SPAM.***Spam is just an inflamatory word people use to describe it. "Link Spam?" Sure. I will agree that that, as its name suggests, is a subsection of spam. But there is a LOT more to blackhat than that. In fact, not all blackhats use link spam. And if your logic is that it’s "spam" as in it clutters up the search engines, I can tell you right now that if you properly setup a blackhat site, it can deliver users where they want to go a lot more intelligently than 99% of the sites out there. It’s all about targeting. Granted, not all do this, but some(like most of mine) do.
Hmmm, let me take a quote from your own site:"I will not ever spam or damage a forum to the point it becomes an honest burden to operate it."So you admit you spam people and any amount of spam is a burden.It’s kind of like the dog owner that lets a dog crap all over your lawn and doesn’t clean it up but lets the dog crap on the other neighbors yards too just so doesn’t become a burden.Sorry, crap is crap, spam is spam, it’s a burden.Would millions of people try to secure their email, blogs, forums and wikis if it wasn’t a burden?Not to get personal, but you already know it’s a burden at any volume so that code of ethics isn’t worth the HTML it’s written in.
I’m not arguing link spam. Honestly, it’s something I try to avoid. I do it sometimes, but I try and avoid it.I’m talking blackhat in general, which does not require that. Cloaking for example.I will address your point though.When I say that, I mean that I will not do what many do, and bombard every single category with a tremendous amount of links, killing the effectiveness of the board.If you’re familiar with XRumer, it’s default setting is to actually give precedence to any board marked with the word "spam", "links","ads", etc. This would be part of that. Sacraficing my own effectiveness in a sort of compromise with the board owner. Beyond that, I rarely link spam. I have other methods of indexing; ones that are more effective. And if I have to annoy people for that method, it’s an unfortunate reality(I try and avoid this). However, I will not be dropping hundreds of links on any given software set or any given site simply for benefit. The annoyance level is kept to a minimum.Is it a dick move, in general? Yeah.But don’t 100% associate blackhat tactics with link spam. It is a very small, optional component of it. Things like fanto’s cloaking mechanism do NOT deserve the kind of criticism it has gotten here.Oh yeah, also, I have absolutely no issue with hitting up guestbooks and such that have been abandoned for years and years. No one is hurt by that. Why the hell would I want to drop a link where it will piss people off obviously? My sites get investigated more, the link doesn’t stick, and really, no purpose is served whatsoever.Those were kind of jumbled points, but hopefully they suffice. I’d be interested in chatting more about this though, but perhaps in private. It may even be constructive. If you feel like it, yahoo nick:xmcp123.Fanto’s submission is no place for this debate though.
True, fanto’s thread went off the deep end so back to discussing the evils of BH cloaking ;)
RE: "Did you seriously just compare the two? Blackhat SEO is a part of SEO, like it or not."That’s a cop out. Blackhat SEO is no more part of the SEO industry than cheating at playing cards is part of card playing.It’s no wonder the SEO has 2 black-eyes.