PR Fraud! Hidden links in high PR .edu pages

The following situation has been puzzling me for the past few hours.
Could somebody please try to get to the bottom of this "fraud???"

Site: theoscommercestore DOT com
( #9 on G for keyword: "oscommerce" )

...has a hidden backlink on of all these .edu sites:

http://sg.uchicago.edu/ [PR7]
http://atc.atccu.chula.ac.th/atc_student.html
http://www.ucsf.edu/snpha/
http://www.siuc.edu/~nsbe/
http://grove.ufl.edu/~gasa/gasahome.html
http://www.latech.edu/tech/afrotc/home.html
http://www.unm.edu/~fll/Symposium/sponsors.html
http://dennislearningcenter.osu.edu/FIPSE/home.htm

... and probably more.

Note the similiar design patterns on some of these sites.
(top navigation, header, solid colors)

Ok so, how does he pull this off?
I find it hard to believe that he is associated with every school.

 

This is weird! There are links without anchors and hidden links! And the site is making use of that? I thought google keeps an eye on educational and authority sites!

 

most probably they are his friends and linking to his website on his request.

 

Even if Google finds it, the OS Commerce site will not get affected ...only the edu sites will.. which I don't think belong to these guys. The owners of the .edu sites should be informed to take action against people adding hidden links to their personal pages.

 

or he has hacked into the server and has put his hidden links there hoping that no one would notice. I would suggest you all submit this to google complaints.

 

They have dodge search engines using black hat SEO techniques to boost their ranking and PR.

However, you can report it to Google using their spam report service: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

http://www(dot)google(dot)com/contact/spamreport.html

 

Wow! It would be a shame if they have been hacked and are penalised because of something that someone else did - but it's more likely that he has made some sort of dodgy deal with them.

 

May be exchange links.

 

few guys contract university students and use there edu pages like this

 

My educated guess is due to the fact he designes OS templates, he's done design work for all these pages and slipped his link in.

I'd say he hasn't built these pages from scratch, but has done page updates or modifications etc after the were built thus not really being entitles to a "Designed by" footer link which is sometimes agreed upon between customers & designers.

Good find to by the way.

 

hmm... very interesting one.

 

I think --link exchange is really possible with some .edu sites. I have done so with one of the sites. So without concrete proof that --that site is in illegal practice --it is really unwise to make allegations against someone.

I have also been offered a personal BLOG on a .edu site for some $$$. Let me see how it goes.

I just want to say that --with lots of research -it is possible to get .edu links.

 

Doing these hidden backlinks will help other sites witout anchor links on getting high PR ?

 

All these sites seem to be designed by the same person IMO

Look at the similiar design patterns:

Look at these 2:
http://www.unm.edu/~fll/Symposium/sponsors.html
http://dennislearningcenter.osu.edu/FIPSE/home.htm

Then this one:
http://atc.atccu.chula.ac.th/atc_student.html


What is the chance that almost all these pages use a | separator for top navigation? Left side navigation, site colors are similiar too. Black and red.

Conclusion:
This is the same guy but how did spread his crappy pages throughout half a dozen .edu sites.

His main boost is coming from that PR7 http://sg.uchicago.edu/, no doubt.

 

...and if that's the case, why are all these different .edu's allowing the same (maybe) webmaster to do this ... something is soo fishy here.

 

agreed.


doesnt have to be him all the time - he/she might have hired someone to do the job

 

Links are "Hidden" & thats illegal for sure.

 

I've seen a similar trick where a designer has 20 different links hidden on the bottom on all the pages that we has done for his clients.

 

I highly doubt that all these servers have been hacked...

3 more .edu sites which carry his hidden backlink are:

http://www.montana.edu/wwwpy/Block/lab/bl_photos.htm
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~nll24/My Works.htm
http://www.utdallas.edu/orgs/dst/Links.html


Anymore comments?

 

Guys, wtf, he built that damn template already!

Quit freaking out! Damn! lol!

You want a bunch of higher powered sites to link to you like that? Go build a bunch of templates and get people to use them. He didn't hide the links, the schools did. They didn't want the links to his store showing up to people... that's their choice.

Go to his site... it has templates on it. That's what he does. Period. End of story.

Mystery solved. Give me a damn Scooby snack now, I earned it.

-Michael