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Incredibly good resource - thanks a heap.
Must've cost you a man month or so to research and set up, wow!
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.
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.
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.
In defense of Eric (not that he needs it from me), I'd like to point out that there's a potential misunderstanding at work here: "Truthful responses" to Wiep's questionnaire doesn't necessarily imply "helpful answers" let alone "link building tips".
Yes, Eric's responses may seem to be vague to the point of uselessness - but are they in any meaning of the word "wrong"? Not to me. True, I'd have loved to get some more hands-on tips from him, too. But criticize his way of responding to a set of questions worded in a way I didn't always agree with myself, I cannot.
In Asian martial arts, it's quite common to hear the master advise his or her students in words like: "Always fight in a manner that will ensure your victory." Is this wrong? No. Is it helpful? Yes, provided you're part and parcel of that specific master's teaching system. And, more importantly, how advanced you are. Whereas the beginner will typically call for specific, actionable how-to tips and guidance, advanced martial artists will be able to further develop their skills from just such advice considered "vague" or "fuzzy" or even "useless" by the tyro.
All campaigns are different, true. Yet, link building factors are anything but arbitrary. What might have been more helpful on Eric's part perhaps is give some practical examples including his manifest reasoning, as in "this strategy may work for this type of site provided etc. etc., whereas that type of site may find it detrimental if etc. etc. and because etc. etc." However, that wasn't really the kind of response this survey particularly encouraged.
Also, as Michael Martinez points out on MadHat's blog, the selection and wording of the questions proper could easily be criticized in its own right - no mechanism for this type of feedback was implemented, however.
"It has been brought to my attention that some or all of this information may not be completely accurate." LOL
I always thought that "PaidRank" was identical to AdWords? :)
Kool-Aid it certainly is, but lots of big company CEOs and their agencies are relying on it massively to assign their advertising budgets, so high Alexa rankings can translate into some pretty serious money.
But then, so does Kool-Aid itself. :)
Story: Why Digg is Blocked
Looks like another rather whacky linkbait job to me. Not that they are entirely wrong in terms of Digg and most others, but blanket statements (and measures) like that do reek of attention whoring.
Nice piece. Personally, I'd add "The Bots' Bot" - a 100% automated social network that doesn't even require human input anymore, essentially building an entire shadow reality of android interaction of theoretically unlimited scalability.
But perhaps that's merely some weird, distorted fantasy? Then again, perhaps it isn't - how would you ever know? :)
Story: Time to Throw Away the Hat?
Apart from the fact that this is neither White nor Black but only Old Hat (dated 10 Aug 2007, duh, and it wasn't even too new then - Greg Boser's been putting it in a similar manner and wording for a year or so before), it's as valid a consideration now as it was then: Discussing colors of hat is simply inane and diversive. SEO was always about risk assessment, ever since the first sites got punished for invisible text and meta tag keyword stuffing in the mid 90s.
As for link infusion, there's plenty of that around even without having to crack someone's server illegally. In terms of riskiness, well, it depends entirely on what you want to achieve with it and how you go about it - a trivial observation, sure, but there's no other set rule to it.
Well said. Would this prevailing myth that "white hat means safe" would finally go away. Then again, what would all those whiners' forums have to blare about all day? :)
"If it ain't automated, it ain't black hat" is the going adage - and yes, lots of self-declared bhs simply fall off on that score. If all people care about is the mystique, they'll either have loads of fun sans profits, or they'll suffer really badly if they happen to pump tons of money into an approach they don't really understand in all its intricacy and complexity.
Because at the end of the day, black hat is about strategized automation, which obviously requires quite a bit more than a smattering of vague knowledge about what SEO is or should be about.
As for "spam" - that's another inflationary term the search engines and their webmaster lackeys have blown up beyond proportion to make it essentially meaningless. By way of an illustration, look at all those parked domains Google favors so much, featuring lots of AdSense links and no other content, certainly nothing of informational value except ads - if a black hat operator uploads them, they're "spam", if registrars and bigtime AdSense publishers like major domainers do the same, it's "organic", haha. Old carrot.
Not so sure about that marijuana bit, though - I know quite a few bhs who won't touch the stuff (or, at the very least: no longer, maybe having gone for it bigtime earlier in life), same as myself, preferring a clear mind. So this may actually be an age and/or generation thing.
Story: Expose Yourself… Publicly!
Yeah, seeing his graphics my first reaction was: "Oh, has he finally caught me out?" LOL
Meet Available Christians? Are you serious? Yikes, guess the secret lies in your wording here, LOL. No matter their boiler plate list of "offenses" - they probably thought it was innuendo but were too hampered by their own "spam fighter" tech crap to express it properly.
Of course it's utterly inane, but how about having a go at "Meet Devout Christians" or "Meet Friendly Christians"? (Not that I'd expect them to convert any better on FB, but that's another story, of course.)
So ok, if boner pills will work, how about leveraging a combination of both, maybe "Xtian Boners", "Da Lord's Boners" or something? :)
Cripes, what a prime waste of attention economy resources this entire FB outfit is. Most of the time, anyway...
Anyway, funny story, thanks.
Found it very instructive myself - didn't know about the re-submission trick, for instance.
Sometimes we get big traffic surges from Reddit, but through little or no making of our own. This piece goes to explain a bit of that.
It's a simple equation, really, isn't it? If people don't credit you with being "trusted" by nofollowing their links, why shouldn't you return the favor?
And while I personally find Wikipedia mildly useful (though certainly no more than that) for some quick and dirty trivial lookups, if all they're capable of doing by way of spam prevention is using this silly nofollow tag, so be it, no linklove from my blogs. Not that they need any more of that in the first place, seeing how Google's opted for the cheapest way out by pushing them above the fold left, right and center.
And considering Rand's recent post on their "dark side", who knows: you might actually catch yourself a "bad neighborhood" penalty if you don't use a link condom when pointing to them LOL.
"It's a company that has to pretend to care about you and many of you really believe it does because it provides an opportunity for the godless to feel as if they belong to something much larger and much better than themselves."
Priceless! LOL
Hilarious, esp. the bit about having to ramp up the costs of the hosting.
Not too funny when you're in the middle of it, to be sure, but obviously a very efficient way to get rid of excessive blog lard. :)
Story: Is Google The New Terrorist?
Nicely written and an admirable attitude. And yes, the shift in trust and sympathy is quite tangible all over the place now. And about time, too.
Some confusion here - he doesn't seem to have hinted that TBPR will go away: This is merely Igor and Jonathan in exegesis mode...
Another Alex gem: "Linkbaiting is easy in the sense that winning the Tour de France is easy if your name is Lance Armstrong." :)
Well, trust Jason to pull off this stunt of SEO alchemy, transmuting s*** into gold, LOL. "Serial entrepreneur" really says it all, doesn't it?
Yeah, that's certainly one "search engine" that could do with plenty of optimization...
Cool trick - guess it takes some thinking through and careful crafting to make that not just any but fairly targeted traffic, preferable converting into sales.
Story: 500+ Social Bookmarking Sites