Scamming Clients - Nasty Host Practices for Search Rankings
Obnoxious cloaking scam
The scam is perpetrated by a hosting company on its hosting clients. When a search engine spider, such as Googlebot, requests a client's page, the host adds a bunch of links to the page that is returned. The client has no idea that it happens. The links are mostly to the host site's pages, and are added for the link text benefit.
Also, new pages are added to the clients' sites, including a new sub-directory. Links to the new stuff are added to normal pages. The links point to new URLs within the client's site. The returned pages from those URLs simply contain links, with targeted link text, to the host's pages and sites. The new URLs are not static and don't exist in the client's site, so the client can't see them with FTP. Requests for the URLs are simply intercepted and the links page is returned to search engines, while people get a 302 to the site's home page.
Nasty. I can think of a lot of possible answers but none of them are great.
I admire PhilC's take on this...
...but I think it won't work that way. It's gonna take some subtle algo coding on Google's part to only hit the host and not the innocent clients. I fear they prefer the baby/bathwater approach...
Unless they do a manual hit
If they were agreeable to this, they could just ban the host's domain without making any algorithmic changes.
GoogleGuy sighted!
it's a miracle
So when a host ads links to s
So when a host ads links to site it’s scam, but for google it's ok ;) (joke)
NFFC's post in that thread
Subtle :)
NFFC
The man has a way with words. :)
I wish I'd thought of that. Y
I wish I'd thought of that. You could do it legitimately if you offer free hosting with clear terms and conditions. Like Angelfire or geocities with a twist :)
It isn't new but it sure is h
It isn't new but it sure is hard to detect algorithmically because so many free hosts legitimately add content to your pages for offering no cost hosting.