Sphinn - Widgetbait Gone Wild

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Widgetbait Gone Wild

Went Hot: April 14, 2008 - 10:03 pm
Posted By: DoshDosh 445 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.seomoz.org)
Category: Link Building

Here's the deal: I build links. I build a lot of them - tens of thousands every month. How do I do this? I create fun online quizzes and then provide HTML code with quiz scores that bloggers and website owners can embed on their own sites.

9 Comments

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Comments

from BrettFromTibet 445 days ago #

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Great insight into the ups and downs of a very creative link bait campaign, and to how Google may act if your SEO efforts are too successful or get reported by competitors.

from incrediblehelp 445 days ago #

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Pretty crappy of Google to demote then the second go around.

from Jeeb90 445 days ago #

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This is where Google becomes a bit unfair. Other people voluntarily building links for you can hurt you. This is not the same as wordpress footer links, where a clueless webmaster might not realize your link is there. If you use one of these link-laudering techniques (ask anyone in the myspace resource niche, they're the experts) even if you have in GIANT letters "By using this Quiz you agree to have a link back to me" right above the place where the html of the Quiz is, you can still be punished. This is logical how? People knowingly and voluntarily building links for you?

So the argument of Google is, even if people choose to build links for you w/out a cash bribe or any sort of incentive, you can get punished.

from incrediblehelp 445 days ago #

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I agree Jeeb. I can understand why they were punished the first time around, no idea why they are being the second time around.

We see countless website spamming through WP themes and hit counters and nothing is ever done. We have someone offering as fun widget and clearly disclosing the link with it and he gets demoted. Dumb.

from NickWilsdon 445 days ago #

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Best three comments from that whole thread:

Jeremy Luebke: "Google is determined to make any scalable link building process blackhat."

Jim Boykin: "Don't try to rank high on purpose....if you do then you've broken a google guideline"

MadHat: "They like to keep it as vauge as possible...that way when they find someone knocking out links left and right like Matt was, then they can go back and call it bad."

Google is a business. They will do whatever it takes to protect their business model. That means not allowing anyone to manipulate their results. If scalable methods for ranking in organic searches exist (think paid links/networks) Google will move to stop them. Organic placement has a much greater ROI so successful, scalable methods divert budgets away from paid advertising. Those are the only rules. It's all about staying under the radar.

from sza 445 days ago #

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The SEOmoz thread is truly great. I also love Jeremy Luebke's comment.

Matt Cutts is at his best again, doing his tried and true strawman argument, deliberately missing the main point, all the usual demagogy he excels at.

(The whole issue is beautifully explained by a several months old John Andrews article I've only recently read, but which should really be at the top of Greatest Hits with those 314 Sphinns and required reading for every SEO - http://www.johnon.com/399/google-las-vegas.html / SEOS: The Card Counters of the Internet)

from discuit 445 days ago #

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Thats a brilliant article.

from EliFeldblum 445 days ago #

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An unfortunate way to learn a valuable--if unfair--lesson. Google doesn't want our jobs to be easy. Once any method begins to work, it usually gets relegated to being a "trick" and Google nips it. The trick, it seems, is diversity, or--to bemore pessimistic--planning for failure.