Search Engine Tricks

Jun 29, 2004
by

Search engine spam was a hot topic at the AffiliateSummit this year and it seems that search engines are taking a hard glance at what affiliates are doing. Bad behavior could draw penalties not only for the affiliate site, but the merchant who allows the behavior to go on.

An affiliate received this letter from a merchant:


Please be advised that any publisher that is found to contain webpages that spam/trick/cloak/redirect to [merchant] will be removed.

We have been contacted by Yahoo informing us that our affiliates is creating a problem with our status with Yahoo. They actually gave us links to many websites, which when verified are known to be [network] publishers.

We asked that you purge or edit any asp, cgi, html, etc.. files that contain any method to trick search engines to achieve higher ranking. Edit any files that do not point to the proper products. For example, do not advertise on your site [product] then redirect to our [unrelated product] page.

It was to our surprise that Yahoo contacted us and it is to our goal to comply with any/all Yahoo demands. We do not wish to endanger any publisher who has set up a virtual domain with our company.

This act is effective immediately.

About Wayne Porter

Wayne Porter is one of the original founders of ReveNews.com, and served as the CEO and founder of XBlock Systems a specialized research firm on greynets and malware research before being acquired by unified communications security leader, Factime Security Labs. His work includes serving as a panlist at the Federal Trade Commission to shape legislation on software and the creation of two patent-pending technologies for corporate networks. Wayne is a frequent speaker at e-commerce & business events including CJU, ASW and RSA and frequently cited in the press. He has been designated a Microsoft Security MVP three times and is recognized on Google’s Responsible Security Disclosure page- in addition to receiving the first Summit Legend Award. Wayne currently works as a Security Consultant on Social Media and operates a consultancy on digital worlds. His hobbies include reading science fiction, playing chess, fishing, writing, collecting shiny digital gadgets, playing racquetball and studying memetic engineering. He maintains a personal weblog at WaynePorter.com detailing his explorations in security, web 2.0, and virtual worlds.
You can follow Wayne on Twitter: @wporter.

Filed under: Search Engine Marketing

Comments are closed.