Illegl refers to being out of law. As I know, their is no law against black hat seo. Maybe the question should be : Is black hat seo not ethical as per search engines (read google) ?
they call it black hat for reasons, its black art. illegal means you are doing something that is not legal or permited and will pay a price for it. just like they say, if you do the crime, you gotta do the time. you will probably not go to jail for black hat SEO, but if caught, your site will be banned from google and other search engines
Yes it is illegial. We donot optimize website using blackhat seo technique. I prefer white hat and want to see the website that deserve for the position in search engines.
Obviously? really? As I said it depends how you define illegal to be, There are no laws to prevent black hat SEO, but it is against search engine guidelines. It would help if the OP actually defined what illegal was.
Thread title: Is Black Hat SEO Legal Poll? Poll question: Is Black Hat SEO Illegal? Black Hat SEO is about as illegal as cheating at sports. You'll get disqualified, and possibly punished - but you're not going to end up in the back of a police car.
yes Illegal. see your poll. all are telling black hat seo is not good any site and e-web. E-marketing is big industry and there are two big method. First is: 1) White hat seo 2) Black hat seo Now result is clear. Most of seo experts use wite hat seo.
Nothing is illegal until you get caught. White, black, or gray; they are not illegal but a violation of search engines guidelines. They are no laws governing our industry, we only have guidelines. I would suggest you to abstain from using techniques that defy search engines guidelines, you may make merry for some time but when spotted you would lose it all.
I know that 'Illegal' is a very subject term and and does not entirely fit in here. Illegal is something forbidden by law and we don't have laws here, we just have guidelines. So the use of this term may be inappropriate but it conveys the message, that is people should abstain from doing things that violate guidelines laid by search engine to avoid being deindexed, sandboxed, etc etc. What do to think Matt??
I think it is totally legal. It's the search engines responsibility to remove it - its just violating ToS. The bots dont HAVE to search and index the site. Who's stopping anyone from the right to create whatever they want.
In the eyes of the law it's completely legal In the eyes of search engine guidelines it's illegal As I said, legal/illegal needs to be defined before we can even have this debate.
Anybody who offers a service has the right to set terms and ban from that service anyone who has broken those terms - but that's got nothing to do with legality. Google setting terms for inclusion is the same as DP bannng posters for having more than one account, or someone running their own Britney Spears forum banning users for being rude about Britney Spears. As Kerosene said - the Police aren't going to take you away for any of those things.
Point taken Matt and maybe you or maybe me could start a thread and take this discussion to the next level. I have read and written so many times that our industry lacks benchmarks/standards which can separate what is legal from what is not. I am sure we would have as many definitions as the posts itself.
Lets define whitehat/blackhat first of all? Many of the people in DP consider whitehat as directory submissions, blog and forum posting... or such things connected with artificially created links. So when you create 10 links to your own site it is whitehat but if you manage to think of a way to create thousands at once - then it is blackhat. Why? Most people are against blackhat because they don't know how to do it but in fact are trying to find out. To the quostion - Is Black Hat SEO Illegal? I vote with "no"
"Black hat SEO" is illegal? ha ha ha ha! Give me a friggin' break. I think the real question is "What is black hat SEO?"
It's not illegal per se, since it may violate google policies, but google terms and conditions aren't the law, it's just rules some company made for their searchengine. Not more and not less. There are some techniques, e.g. link injection via XSS, that are probably considered illegal in some countries, but I'd tend to say 98% of all blackhat techniques are fine by the law. Don't mix up the law, webmaster guidelines or moral and ethical ideas.