Being an SEO I am always searching for clever new ways to get new links for free from strangers who have no reason to do me any favors. Generally this doesn't work to well, as everyone always wants something in return. Maybe its because I'm not sleazy and I don't enjoy taking advantage of people, that I don't try techniques like Squashmybills.com. The idea is perfectly simple and genius. Clog up all the top serp results and all the PPC ads on Google, Yahoo, and MSN with multiply copies of your free website counter script site for any counter related search. Get people to generate counters for their websites, auctions, ads, etc..... Hide text links in the code to insurance and debt websites and hope the poor schmucks that are copying and pasting the code onto their websites don't notice. Sadly, the thousands of websites that have copied links to health insurance, auto insurance, and dozens of debt related keywords didn't notice the little hidden links. Now squashmybills.com has thousands of backlinks, most of them from homepages. What does this do for you rankings for keywords such as "car insurance" on Google? It gets you to #5 in a matter of a couple weeks. Beautiful spam technique involving tricking people. Nicely done, whoever the SEO guy is behind it should get a nice pat on the back.
Very clever idea, but is it legal since the webmasters dont know about the hidden links unless they check the code? Good way to earn a lot of backlinks
I would assume this will end up in a penalty. However I will agree that since they are copying and pasting the code, they are agreeing to post the links on their website. Technically, this would be considered perfectly legit. However, since the links have absolutely nothing to do with counters or web development, and since they are for some of the most highly spammed keywords on the internet, I would assume Google, Yahoo, and Live will view them as spam. There is no way that these can be viewed as anything other then spam links with the pure intention of hoping the webmasters that are using them don't notice.
This makes most black hat techniques look like child's play. These guys really went out of their way and are paying quite a bit of money in PPC to build and maintain their spam technique. I imagine this new style and probably this forum post itself will lend to even more people trying out this new system.
Very good idea, I noticed links within counters a while back, however I never thought of applying the idea.
I actually saw about 10 similar cases from different jokers offering free counters when I went through several Internet niches doing research. I reported all those spammers to Google, but no action was taken so far. This sure looks bad, but there might be some loophole that allows sites using this technique stay in the index.
This is actually a good thing. If this gets a lot of publicity this can be eradicated with a mandane algorithm change. So, rant on.
Thats what I'm hoping. I didn't point this out because I liked what they are dong and want everyone to join in. I wanted to point out what I think is unethical link building. It could be a simple algo update for google, but the counter codes are all different, the text links rotate each time you generate a counter as well. Not just a simple cut and dry change for them to catch all the sites.
The point is that the counter doesn't point back to their site or any of the two dozen mirror sites they are using to push these counters. Plus each counter comes with 2 SEO links... One is the image of the counter itself and the other is a text link that sits below the counter with anchor text such a: health insurance, car insurance...etc.. Statcounter.com is promoting their business and these guys aren't even linking to or referencing their counter company anywhere. Also, the alt and title tag on the link don't mention their counter company either. Statcounter.com does and that why they deserve their nice PR 10 ranking.
Old tactics, i am usually enjoying to remove the links or put nofollow links if i don't o anything or ehmm mostly try to avoid another free counter who try to cheat me.