September 2, 2009

Smells like linkbait for whomever is behind the whiteknight campaign.

Honestly I think we should just let the search engines do their job. If you find something dodgy, just report the listing as spam.

But hey, Im interested in giving you guys a hand with the web design, ping me on the details above :)

I agree with John, plus its odd for me to see this and at the same time see some of the "respected" seo/marketers heavily involved with ringtones and casino advertising.

As for me the biggest crime on the Internet is ringtones, as poor kids are tricked into signing up for ringtones and then billed money they don't have.

Followed up by casino's, gambling is controlled and online gambling illegal in the US for a reason, not to mention that the sites that are being advertised have built in system to ensure them higher than normal profits.

Gets worse when you look at the social impact ringtone and gambling have on family's and kids, abusive parents taking it out on the kid who didn't know he would be billed so much month after month and kids spending most if not all thier disposable income on these things. People losing their money to online gambling and then losing the family/jobs they've worked so hard at.

I all for having the internet free of scams, but John is right this is not the issue to focus on and this solution clearly comes with a non-pure intent to try and solve it.

Google itself is working at stopping these ads, the algorithm is at work to stop the sites, just need facebook and other sites to catch up.

My comment to the people in the business, if you promote ringtones* or gambling sites then you are no worse than a drug dealer or a pimp and deserve no respect and should be treated like a criminal.

*my comment on ringtones are based on those ringtone offers which charge monthly fee's after the first download/free offer. There are legit ringtone sites, so while my initial reaction to those are sceptical they are legit and offer a good service.

As Matt Cutts has said in his Gadgets, Google and SEO Blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-linkbait-and-linkbaiting/), "On a meta-level, I think of 'linkbait' as something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing." So, what the White Knight SEO campaign is doing fits that description. Cutts goes on to say in his post, "Linkbaiting sounds like a bad thing, but especially if it’s interesting information or fun, it doesn’t have to have negative connotations. I hereby claim that content can be both white-hat and yet still be wonderful 'bait' for links....And generating information or ideas that people talk about is a surefire way to generate links." To that I say, "Amen, brother."

I know Jonah and he is really doing a service - he does not need to do a link bait effort. This is a genuine effort to stop novice web marketers from getting ripped off.

I am interested in this White Knight SEO. I, and a few others, have been actively reporting these fake blog sites as they appear, on sites such as scam.com and raief.com. Any more information updates will be read.

Google has guidelines you can read to figure out what is Black Hat SEO and what is White Knight SEO. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

All these sites are scams. This includes sites that claim to tell you the "truth" about the product or "expose" the product. And includes sites that "warn" that Google Cash is a crook, and then try to sell another scam. Do not be suckered by one of these sites, merchants will lie and say anything to generate a sale.

There is a lot of debate, and some of is downright ugly, on several forums and sites, about Google's inaction toward the fake blogs and scam sites, that use Google's logo. And the sites that do not use their logo, but are using the same format and similar splash pages, to promote scams that have as their main purpose, recurring billing charges that are if not impossible to see, then so well camouflaged that they might as well not be there.
My point is that Google is a publicly owned company, and has to listen to the stock holders.
It is also an advertising script. It may be the largest and most complex script on the internet but it is still a script and has the ability to have written into it ways to seek out and discover these types of scam sites. Maybe not all of them, but the apparent ones could easily be identified, and differentiated, from sites that are legitimate, affiliate sites and websites, that are not solely promoting a single scam product.
The only problem would be in making the software detect the obvious scams and not penalize other sites that were similar in nature, but promoting an Ebook, or program, on Adsense or Adwords.
If carefully constructed and monitored this could easily be achieved and it could be a deterent to these scam sites and fake blogs.

If you wont follow the rules google may ban on site.
Black hat SEO is not permitted in any search engine. If you are doing Black hat or Brown hat SEO your site may not be visible after sometime. Do ethical SEO activity.

Hi,
There are many who think that SEO is illegal.But this article shows us genuine reason why the SEOs are their to help the sites.

I'm not sure if many think SEO is "illegal," but there are a significant percentage who think it is unethical. So, yes, efforts like the White Knight SEO campaign help demonstrate that SEOs help the industry as well as help sites.

The only problem would be in making the software detect the obvious scams and not penalize other sites that were similar in nature, but promoting an Ebook, or program, on Adsense or Adwords.

Cool Blog, oddly enough I had read a newspaper article
from september fourth two thousand and four that was oddly similar to your post.

your post is excellent i learn allot from it. please keep updating
http://www.seochampion.com

@NastyJen, comment spam can only hurt you: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/11/hard-facts-about-comment-spam.html

And back to the topic, Google finally is talking action against Google Cash Scam: http://searchengineland.com/google-sues-to-stop-online-scams-using-its-name-31440

You know what? There are just so many scams out there right now. They play on the fact that many people don't really look at what they actually signed up for. Acai Berry, Teeth whitening, weight loss, etc. I hope that the FTC will start cracking down and stop these rebills from continuing.

Chris, you have some too