Sphinn - Disguising Text Links: Passing Manual Reviews the Grayhat Way

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Disguising Text Links: Passing Manual Reviews the Grayhat Way

Went Hot: March 21, 2008 - 10:19 am
Posted By: SlightlyShadySEO 471 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://seoroi.com)
Category: Google SEO

Gab shares an incredibly sneaky method for disguising text links. With the recent leak of the Manual Review guidelines, it became obvious that perhaps Google's reviews are not as advanced and omnipotent as it was once thought. This trick seems like it could quite easily get around many of them! While I have not tested this myself, I would say there's some promise here.

17 Comments

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from neyne 471 days ago #

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very sneaky. although I am not sure about the cost(effort)/benefit factor here, since it seems like a huge hassle to do just so you can hide a link. On the other hand the hassle factor ensures it will not get abused.

from BrettFromTibet 471 days ago #

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slightly shady, but good to know about :)

from Wiep 471 days ago #

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See, Google will end up owning all text link ads :)

from Gab 471 days ago #

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@ wiep - u had me lol there :).
@ brett - it's slightly shady, and submitted here by same (thanks xmcp!) but written by yours truly.

neyne - glad you like it. as to the huge hassle, depends where you're buying the link from. also, if you're a big content network advertiser, you can probably template the images and have a batch/variety to dispense around, thus simplifying things. You could also template in the most popular color schemes...

from PocketSEO 469 days ago #

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Clever idea, but there is are ways to immediately see through this. Once Google reads that post, trying it would be dangerous.

from SlightlyShadySEO 469 days ago #

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Heh have you read the manual review guidelines? I think in many cases we've been overestimating them.

from tshears 469 days ago #

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Great writeup Gab.. I promise I'm getting back to you on that interview, just swamped!

from Gab 469 days ago #

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Pocket, glad you like the idea. Also, it might not be immediately clear, but the main point of this is to defeat competitors trying to review your site. Naturally Google can check who's advertising where and use its in house data to see if it's true. But that would mean giving cheaply paid human reviewers access to loooots of proprietary data. Not sure they'd do that with contractors. But bottom line I agree that if Matt Cutts wants to manually review an AdSense unit, he'll be able to discern between the two. But there's only so many Matt Cuttses around ;).

from SlightlyShadySEO 469 days ago #

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@Gab: You're obviously forgetting about GoogleClone, their insurance for when he retires.

from mbeharry 469 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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its not that shady considering....

ever play monolopy with a spoiled kid who, wants to change the rules of the game in his favor, while he is currently playing, and he was winning to begin with.

i can only pray that GoogleBush squanders that trillion dollar market cap

from Gab 469 days ago #

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@ Tyler - thanks :). Look forward to chatting more bud :).

@ Shady - That's why Google's been making all those mvoes in the health market, eh??

from SlightlyShadySEO 468 days ago #

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@Gab: Yup! That and so they can show items with higher prices and such to people on anti-anxiety meds.

from Gab 468 days ago #

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lol :)

from iBrian 467 days ago #

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It's an interesting idea, but I have to say, as a big fan of trying to build a user experience around links, if there isn't a natural way to make a link sit on a page, then is it really a good idea to try and insert links in a hidden format?

from SlightlyShadySEO 466 days ago #

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@iBrian: note the "grayhat" ;-)

from Gab 466 days ago #

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Brian, if you think these links don't sit naturally on the page, then I guess you feel the same about adsense? And no one's hiding the links - they're out there in plain view. These aren't 1x1 pixel ads...