Microsoft Teaches Black Hat SEO

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News Source: http://www.saadkamal.com
Published: Nov 21, 2008 - 03:01 am
Story Found By: saadkamal 1645 Days ago
Category: SEM

Sr. Product Manager of Microsoft, Skip Chilcott openly endorsed that webmasters should participate in Link Exchange schemes as it helps to boost the rankings in search engines.

18 Comments

Comments

from streko 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 0

imo this has to be the worst title of a sphinn that I have seen in a while. If you actually read the damn article besides saying "holy crap microsoft is blackhat! i can post this and get on the front page of sphinn & then i’d be awesome!" - you would see all he is talking about is getting links and different means to get links. granted not all are the most doug heil way of link building, but its far from blackaht.from his article...-----It’s a pretty simple concept. Say I have a veterinary practice and you run a pet store. I ask you to put a link to my vet business site on your pet store site and, in exchange, offer to put a link to your pet store site on my vet business site. This works well because we have complementary, noncompetitive businesses that target the same audience: pet owners. These reciprocal links help drive traffic from my site to your site and vice versa. They also help us boost our rankings in search engines. This is because — generally speaking — search engines look at the number of links to your site from other sites when listing sites in search results. ----- ZOMG THAT IS SO BLACKHAT!!!!! holy crap! then he talks about programs that have been around since the dawn of the interweb!-----You have several ways to set up link exchanges. Do it manually. The upside of this method is that it’s free and you can be assured that your links reside only on sites you deem worthy. The downside is that it takes a lot of work. It typically goes like this: You search the Web to find good sites that are complementary to yours, and then place a link to the site on your site. Next, you send a personalized e-mail to the site’s owner or webmaster asking them to reciprocate. You might also suggest where you think your link should reside on their site, and provide some wording that they could use.Use link-management software. To avoid the drudgery of reviewing sites to find potential link partners, you can purchase software that does that — and more. iBusinessPromoter is one example, and has a free trial version you can download.Join an automated link-exchange program. You can pay to have your site automatically included on all the Web sites of program members. A filtering option is typically available to exclude your site from link exchanges you don’t want. Check out LinksMaster.com for an example of this type of program.Pay someone else to create your links. A number of companies specialize in finding and managing linking services, dramatically minimizing your involvement. LinkStrategy.com is one such service. ------Wow so he talks about 4 techniques, lets say 2 of them could be considered grayhat at best. Now when I think blackhat i think of spamblog farms, automatic comment spamming & a bunch of other tricks. So this dude was not saying to register 10k domains, slap them all on different class C’s have them scrape content jumble words and then insert links into each post for "buy viagra" and point them at one domain. I am just not seeing the blackhat here at all... sorry.

from saadkamal 1644 Days ago #

Votes: -1

@streko -- When someone writes a 101 guide about a subject, its wise to only "list" the best practices rather than including things that are dangerous to play with. So if there is an article which teaches you How to "fire" a gun, it should only include the basics rather than info on ’bullet spinning’ (like in the movie - "Wanted"). The author has no idea about the best practices as he has openly recommended people to participate in link exchange scheme, use softwares and stuff. He failed to put a disclaimer there saying that getting involved in these kind of link exchange scheme will actually do more harm then good. And because of these kind of endorsements, many webmasters still receive a lot of spam emails about link exchange (e.g. a viagra site wanting to link from a School’s website..) and also the newcomers in this industry thinks that they can "SPAM" there way up to the top.. So when someone openly endorses "automated Link exchange program" or other related link exchange methods as a way to increase Search rankings....I call it BLACK HAT. Don’t like my title? Sue me ;)

from streko 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 0

nah, i just desphinn

from saadkamal 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 0

@streko -- I’m glad that you "desphunn" as it represents your honest opinion on the subject matter. I personally feel that "link exchange" that doesn’t give any value to the user or doesnt help the webmaster ’with any sort of traffic’ is "BAD".Link exchange that are meant for only SE ranking is also "BAD".Now from a position where Microsoft comes in, if they "start recommanding" people to do Link exchange for gaining SE ranking....then no matter which shade of gray /black hat you put that under....I’d always call it Black Hat (as it is something that shouldn’t be recommanded to the public by a Search Engine who wants to keep their results clean and free of Spam).

from streko 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 0

see i would be more amp’d to sphinn this and agree with you if the title was more like "one dooshbag employee talks about shady shit" can’t condem the whole company for one dudes views or advice.

from dannysullivan 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 2

<font face="Verdana" size="2">I think it’s important to note we’re talking about a product person from Microsoft Office Small Business Live (what a mouthful) area talking here, rather than from Microsoft’s search team. It’s a big company, though it’s still kind of embarrassing.I both agree and disagree with @streko. When he says at the top, "This works well because we have complementary, noncompetitive businesses that target the same audience: pet owners," it’s pretty clear he’s not talking about trying to get off-topic or spammy links. And "link exchange," one of the terms he uses, isn’t necessarily bad. People do exchange links all the time.Where it falls down is when he talks about using LinksMaster. When I head over there, the first sentence says:"</font><font face="Verdana" size="2">Are you tired of wasting hours and hours of valuable time each week exchanging links the old-fashioned way? Are you looking for a convenient and economical way to get new links to your website from thousands of quality websites without wasting all of your valuable time and money? Well look no further. LinksMaster.com is the original automated link exchange service."No, I don’t think any of the major search engines are fond of automated services. I also think it’s an exceptionally bad idea to point newbies (who this article is meant for) toward one. Used right, perhaps it would save them time if they filter to appropriate sites. But I suspect most won’t use it right.</font>

from streko 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 0

""I think it’s important to note we’re talking about a product person from Microsoft Office Small Business Live (what a mouthful) area talking here, rather than from Microsoft’s search team. It’s a big company, though it’s still kind of embarrassing.""exactly

from saadkamal 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 0

I agree that he may not be from the Search Team of Microsoft but he is a Sr. Product Manager and as Danny mentioned its still kind of embarrassing for Microsoft! That was exactly the whole point of bringing this in front of everyone. When they are teaching Small Business Owners how to get ’high search rankings’ they should not point them towards the ’shady practices’ that are unquestionably "Bad" in the eyes of all major search engines (Including Microsoft’s own Live Search).

from JohnHGohde 1644 Days ago #

Votes: 1

Great attention getting title!We will, also, be able to see if anybody from MSN is actually following Sphinn.

from saadkamal 1643 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Well even if they dont follow Sphinn (Which they should..), I’m sure the news will go in their radar

from ANOnym 1643 Days ago #

Votes: 1

Well, it appears the guy did get some feedback and now doesn’t often recommend software:http://myofficelivecommunity.com/discuss/blogs/officelivecommunity/archive/2008/11/20/more-thoughts-on-link-exchanges.aspx

from saadkamal 1643 Days ago #

Votes: 0

@ANOnym - Thanks for the link. So it looks like he has identified the issue as he writes:"....But by my listing some of the link-exchange software and services you may come across out there, I implied that these are good options too. That’s often NOT the case. Using these services could actually get you into trouble with search engines, especially if you try to “game” the system with excessive links. So I apologize for the confusion. To set the record straight, I’ve asked a colleague over at Live Search to share some expert advice on linking best practices. Please stay tuned; I’ll post that as soon as possible.........."I would be interested to see what the Live Search experts suggests when it comes to building links.

from tamarisk83 1643 Days ago #

Votes: 0

So if Microsoft and Google, contradict each other, as a webmaster, who should we follow?

from Chewie 1643 Days ago #

Votes: 0

So yeah, when did link exchanges become "blackhat"? The word gets plastered about the place in completely the wrong context far to often. Just because Google says something that was once fine now violates the webmaster guidlines does not automatically make it blackhat.@Tamarisk: Google obviously, they have the biggest marketshare by a country mile.

from designmeme 1643 Days ago #

Votes: 0

With all these "Blackhat" SEO is ok articles it really seems like people are playing fast an loose with terms.Because...Pet store + Vet exchanging links= okand you claim...Pet store + Vet exchanging links = "Blackhat"it must mean..."Blackhat" = okand since...Spamdexing = "Blackhat"therefore...Spamdexing = okExcept that makes no sense. It’s a logical fallacy.

from saadkamal 1643 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Guys pls don’t jump to the conclusion without reading the article and also going through the discussion that has already taken place in this thread. Because it gives no value just to repeat the same thing over and over again. Link Exchange is ok as long as its done the "right way". In the article Sr. Product Manager of Microsoft Office Live has recommanded using automated link exchange schemes and softwares that is blackhat. Moreover he did not put any disclaimer about the implications of doing link exchange in the ’wrong way’. @DannySullivan pointed out that he is not from the Live Search team....So his opinion has less ’value’ on the subject matter...but its still very embarrasing for Microsoft. @ANOnym later figured that the author has figured out the problem after getting some massive criticism, so he has put up another post (Update: The link is in the article now) and he has invited an expert from Live Search to further talk about this particular topic.

from jeastha 1639 Days ago #

Votes: 0

black hat tactics the unethical, the illegal,and those that merely violate a website’s TOS or search engine’s guidelines. the SEO blogosphere has a number of places where this material is discussed, from forums and blogs to wikis and articles, but my stance has historically been to never suppress this type of content on SEOmoz, and in fact to encourage discovery and discussion.---------------JeasthaDirect Social Bookmarking

from streko 1409 Days ago #

Votes: 0

misleading title my mother’s blog is more blackhat then these techniques

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