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Search Spam: Hidden Counter Links  (View post)

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

Monday, February 12, 2007
17 years ago6,397 views

So simple, it makes you wonder why this was not widespread years ago!

André Scholten [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I also know a spammer who uses the noscript on all his clients to interlink to each other with relevant keywords. It's so simple to detect, Google, adjust your algorithm and ban those sites en spammers.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

André, I'd be interested to hear more about this <info[put at-character here]outer-court.com>

vipsticks [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Hey guys, there's another English person about, :)
I'm a new on google-hacking.pl
looking forward to speaking to you guys soon

JohnMu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

You'd be surprised what kind of hidden links are out there ....

The strange thing is that it's usually a clean link-circle that can be traced all the way back, making it clear that it's not "natural" even from just analyzing the links (without having to look at the "hiddenness" in the document displayed). If you find one, you can find the others by just following the line they lay.

I think it's just sad that they trick naive and mostly innocent people – users, clients – into joining the setup... In the end, they'll get stuck with a penalty that they might not even notice for a long time; the pro can recognize it and jump to a new domain, the average webmaster has no idea that it's even being penalized.

What would the proper penalty for someone who sets something like this up be?

Sandro [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

blogcounter.de does that too

Robert [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

This is probably trendy under counter-services. Sandro had already mentioned that blogcounter.de also makes. For all german readers here, I published a post about blogcounter and this case in past on Visualhype: http://visualhype.de/blogging/aus-fuer-blogcounter/301/

Ian [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

I stopped using Blogcounter a month ago because of a weird hidden link to a joke site. I've just rechecked their code and now the <noscript> part includes this:

<a href="http : //de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Promny">Thomas Promny</a>

This is really odd, since there is no Thomas Promny entry at Wikipedia. Is their any reason for doing this?

Mathias Schindler [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

There used to be an article at de.wp to [[Thomas promny]] for about 10 minutes in September 2006. The "content" was exclusivly libelous, hence the speedy deletion. Same applies to [[Thomas Promny]]

Mathias

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

There are a few "free" counter services that do that.

Johnny Sutherland [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Looking at the site from within Germany it has now got a ranking of 0/10

Knut Nägele [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Inspired by this article, I was wondering about the invisible statcounter code, where the image is just removed. The link and src is still there but the anker text is just emty. Would this be a hidden link?

Mark Barrera [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

So what's the revelation here? I know MANY sites offer a free counter service like ActiveMeter do this same exact thing and have for a long while.

David T [PersonRank 7]

17 years ago #

Is this very bad? Are they not offering a service and getting something from the service they are offering? I am currently using a Bookmarkz javascript (www.bookmarkz.net/) tool to enable social bookmarking easily on my website (www.towers.fr) and they insist you add the link back to bookmarkz.net. I'm interested to learn if you consider this bad practice?

Deepak Gupta [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

It's not this particular site, but many Stat counter services, nowadays wrapping links in the noscript codes.

DG...
http://www.ditii.com

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> Looking at the site from within Germany it has
> now got a ranking of 0/10

I still see a PR6...

> Are they not offering a service and getting
> something from the service they are offering?

If it's supposed to be a fair deal, the terms of the deal need to be visibly disclosed to the users. The users at this time will not realize what they're putting on their site, unless they understand the JavaScript/ HTML snippet, and take the time to read through it. While it might be obvious to all of us here, that knowledge cannot be expected of every customer. So if the site would say, "In exchange for delivering a free counter, you will give us some of your linkjuice," then it's a stupid scheme but it's not unfair, because you can voluntarily agree to the deal or not. But that is not the case here.

Markus Kohlmueller [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Hi Philipp,

i also see a PR6 too on that site.
Just a funny detail: Nearly everyone of us knows the worldwide known desk-lamp "Artemide Tolomeo"
http://images.google.de/images?hl=de&q=artemide%20tolomeo
Why do i not find any artemide lamps on artelight.de?

Greetings, Markus

Michael Martinez [PersonRank 5]

17 years ago #

This trick is as old as the hills. yawn

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