I don't disagree with you. My point is what is the cost of this action Google has been trying to impliment? Here we have a site that is #1 for a phrase (with and AS account) openly explaining how you can cheat the system. This shows (to me) that the algo isn't cutting it. It can't be a good that I searched for 'google black hat' and find #1 site (most relevant-agree) telling me how I can fraudulently cheat AS, can it? After we just witnessed one of the greatest spam tactics ever (bad data push). Where is this suppposed to be going? It seems to me all the good guys (ecom sites) are being punished while the spam guys are taking over the net. H
It is most definitely grey hat. But I see no reason not to use it as long as the benefits exist lol. </greed> IT
I'd say gey hat. It's class things like hidden text and redirects as exclusivly black hat as they actually present different data to the search engines than they do to the visitors. Co-op is grey hat, not liked by the search engines, but lets be honest, if Google wanted to they've had more than enough time to ban every site in the co-op. I'm pretty sure that co-op links in Google are devalued and I'm sure they're happy with that situation, hence no bannings.
In that case most major sites are grey-hat. 1. The co-op doesn't redirect anything. 2. Displaying things like JavaScript or other things (like impression tracking) only to end user browsers that can understand/use it is pretty normal. Check Google's cache of any vBulletin forum. It looks different because the drop-down DHTML menus are only displayed to user agents that can utilize them. google.com does it as well (showing a message to download the Google toolbar if you are using IE and don't have it installed already). The ad network never hides anything from search spiders, rather only displays some extra stuff if your web browser can utilize it.
Yes I agree, I don't think many sites at all can possably rank well following Googles guidelines to the letter. Technically even on-page optimisation could be called writing for the search engines rather than the visitors. Sorry, that was my typing, I wasn't insinuating Co-op did redirect anything, it should have read,
I agree with you Matt. This is why Google (I know I've said it 1M times) created a defining line between goody webmasters (white) and bad a$$ webmasters (black). The truth is in your statement. If you follow G's guidelines to a "T" then you'll likely not rank well. My guess is most, if not all webmasters have experimented with BH (as defined by Google) at some point. Out of that group my bet is more that half of them didn't even know they were crossing this line. There is no doubt that the line between black and white has just become a whole lot thinner. If Google had it there way they'd be telling me what hand to wipe with . Cheers H
Well it was atleast promoted for backlinks. Shawn runned an Adsense campaign for it in which he had the slogan
Uh, no he didn't. Shawn doesn't use AdWords (for anything), and has never promoted anything within digitalpoint.com with AdWords (ever).
Just out of curiousity, this may sound dumb, But with the nofollow option on the DP coop, Would it still be considered Grey hat? because you wouldent be using it for anything besides traffic?
I agree with 1EightT. It's all subjective. All you are doing is automating your link building process! Now if you are unhappy with the quality of the sites showing your ads you can remove yourself from the network, but simply trading links with easy, there's nothing to be ashamed of. Google ain't your daddy!