So you’ve been a good little white hat. Working hard over the last several years building your site. Then you woke up this morning and realized that Google Changed the Rules. Your site has been banned without any warning. From threadwatch I went to this Webmaster world topic and read about a hundred comments like this:
andrea99:
Well I am totally off the index… I had ONE google referral about an hour ago, but it must have been some kind of a fluke. Compared with yesterday when I had several thousand by this time of day. I feel like the last four years of my life have just drained away.
JKMitchell:
My main site contains about 180 pages of content and then has a directory. As of some point this morning the complete site has vanished from Google ( even the site:www.domain.com command shows no pages).
Yesterday I was a PR6 today nothing. Needless to say the traffic has slowed to a trickle - so much for the past 8 years
alwaysthinking:
Now after all their years of growth and most always featuring my “stuff” near the tops of appropriate search results, they completely delete my information from their data base.
As Ian Cunningham pointed out, many of the sites in this DMOZ list don’t have any page rank any more – they’ve been completely delisted.
I can only imagine how crushed those folks on the Webmaster World thread felt after trying to play “by the rules” for all these years. For me, I have several irons in the fire: adult sites, Full on Black Hat Search Engine Spam Sites, completely legit sites and consulting services. If the rules change, I’m prepared: In fact I love rules changes. For me, it just makes the game more interesting and creates more opportunities to find profitable exploits.
As I posted earlier, there will be a convergence where the search engine game will evolve to where the SEO Black Hats will be forced to deliver EXACTLY what the end user wants.
Until that time, the difference between White Hat and Black Hat will be the difference between hoping that things go well and money in the bank.
In the end, how can you argue with money in the bank?
5 Responses to “White Hats Get Wiped By Google Rule Changes”
> In the end, how can you argue with money in the bank?
Depends if you get booted and had another 5 years of income left? Seems to me as if this site is a representation of what *you* think is black hat. We ALL know real black hat is OFF the radar 
LOL. I was one of those white hats, but thank god for only 8 mos. My big “white hat shining hope” took a friggin’ nose dive on G and that was IT. I followed the rules and found out the hard way. Now, anything goes. I guess you can say that Google made me a black hatter. Thanks G!
BTW to Xenith’s comment above me: ummmmmm, yeah. This is HIS BLOG. Whose opinion of black hat did you think he was going to give?
Interesting thread, I just found this website. As white hat for over six years, I have to say that some of this “black hat” stuff really is not that black hat at all. As a long time Webmaster member, I can say I have never reported a huge drop in traffic due to an algo change at GG. In fact, particularly several years back, whenever a serious algo change dropped sites like crazy, I actually saw an increase in traffic. Therefore, with all due respect, white hat also works. White hat techniques do not always result in being dropped due to some algo change.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to bash black hat, in fact I respect your choice. White hat is a lot of work, takes time to build momentum, and ultimately make money. With this said, I appreciate the drive to be successful quickly. I can also understand the challenge to win.
So, why am I here, reading this black hat stuff? To learn… As I have already said, not all of this is black hat stuff here. Sometime we have to look on the dark side to best understand the white hat techniques.
Great resource!
The worst combination is the marketing guy/whitehat webmaster rolled up to form super elite white guy from america that is clean cut and does not drink beer (at least not when anyone can see).
Marketing people forget that they are black hat by nature. Grey at least. They make their money by exploiting/persuading to someone’s weakest point.
Yet, they will thumb their noses at “search engine spam.” How the heck is there even such a phrase? Last I checked all major engines are trading on the street and owned mainly by investment bankers that do black hat stuff all day long.
Oh, well, like you said, money in the bank. Cigar anyone?
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Great stuff. Really loving your honest and open perspective and 100% agree with you. Keep it coming!