Adult Industry

This is a story of Hot Sex, Brazil, Spam Bots, and 90,000,000 Youtube Views.

Can a true story get any more perfect for seoblackhat.com?

Here’s the deal. Probably about 18 months ago, a fellow spammer said to me “If you know anyone who will pay to get something to the top of the most viewed in Youtube, let me know. It’s easy, we tested it and it works.” YouTube allows a mere HEAD requests count as page views. With several persistent connections (or a BotNet or however you want to slice it), you can give someone hundreds of views a second without using a lot of bandwidth. Spamming Youtube works, it’s easy, it’s been done.

But no one has spammed views on the scale done for this clip, Brazilian Rock band Cansei de Ser’s “Music is my Hot Sex”. The spambots were working overtime on this one and have helped this video rack up more than 96,000,000 views.

That makes “Music is my Hot Sex” the most watched clip ever, ever, ever (like in forever ever).

How do we know it’s a spambot network? Well, they didn’t follow up their view-count spam with a review, comment spam or recommend spam campaign. That means that while the average number of viewers-to-user-ratings for the other top 10 videos of all time is around 600:1, this Brazilian video has about a 13,700:1 ratio. It had been at a 22,000:1 ratio before it got all this publicity.

If we use that ratio to back out how many people actually viewed this video, we see that it still has about 4.2 Million or so legitimate viewings. All the fake views created publicity that drove real views. It’s like a fake crowd (and nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd).

Meanwhile, Google (youtube’s owner) had this to say:

“We don’t condone efforts to affect the integrity of our video rankings or view counts. We are looking into this matter and will take appropriate action when we resolve the investigation.”

 

As with many other forms of spam, like the subdomain spam from a couple years back, blog-rolling around 2003 and meta-tag spamming before it, when you’re one of the first to truely abuse a ranking mechanic the windfalls can be enormous.

The only reason to believe that it has this many hits are two words, “Hot Sex.” It’s possible a record number of people were disappointed after searching for “hot sex” and getting this music video. They quickly carried on in their search for porn without bothering to comment.

After all, tons of people do search for Hot Sex.

Tagged none | 2 Comments »

For Internext, we started our tradition of not bothering at all with show badges. The show room floor is for sales agents and the last thing I need is to sit through another panel of people who don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about trying to sell me some of their bullshit.

Let’s face it, all the meetings you want to take are at the bar, private dinners, private parties, or (as was the highlight of this Internext) something like the TGP / MGP VIP dinner. Getting upgraded to the Entourage Suite was cool, as were the parties in the Playboy suite and in that one suite with a bowling alley. The Porn Poker Tour had cool show schwag but that VIP Dinner was certainly the highlight event.

Call me a snob, but I like it when parties, dinners or events are exclusive. At this one, they did a good job of keeping out the riffraff. The sponsor presidents were around talking about their programs and the TGP owners were there for trades. The food was great and so was the company.

At one point I looked around the room and thought about the immense collective reach of the people present. It must have been in the hundreds of millions daily.

A couple of the more interesting conversations centered around the recent Penthouse Acquisition of Adult Friend Finder for $500 million. I asked “Legendary Lars” about the buyout for 5X earnings, and he said he wouldn’t have gone through with it if Penthouse wasn’t going to go Public. It’s interesting that most of the adult industry can’t privately sell for more than 5X earnings (and usually less than that) but a public company like Playboy is currently trading for 29 times earnings. Lars is a soft-spoken, highly intelligent guy who’s a shining example of some of the good peeps in our industry.

Then I met and spoke with Marc Bell who’s the CEO of Penthouse. His background is not in the adult space but rather in taking companies from late stage to going public. When I asked where Penthouse got the money to buy Adult Friend Finder, he said he used his own money. He does run a private equity fund. It sounds like an exciting position to be in; taking companies public and providing the bridge financing yourself.

Later, the guys from Penthouse hooked us up at their strip club in Vegas with free drinks, VIP tables and stripper bucks – which are like Toys ‘R Us Gift Certificates only they’re for lap dances.

Anyway, look for Penthouse to be a publicly traded company inside of 2 years.

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The war on Paid links is in full gear. Buying and selling links without the nofollow tag is now officially a black hat SEO practice that is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Google has and will continue to penalize sites that flagrantly buy and sell links. If you are buying or selling links: do it covertly & do it under the radar.

However, in many instances there may be a better option that trying to buy a link from a site: buy the site outright. While this won’t work for a large newspaper site, those links have long been void of link juice anyway. In fact, anyone who is openly selling may already have their link juice passing privileges revoked.

So who does that leave? Generally, the sites you can still buy links from that can pass link juice (help you site rank in the SERPs) will be small to medium sites with a single owner or decision maker. In those instances, where you’ve already gone through the bother of finding out who owns the site and getting in contact with them, why offer to buy a link for a few thousand a year? Wouldn’t you be better served by just making an offer on the entire site?

If you bought the site you’d get any revenue it was producing, any potential appreciation from the domain name, and total editorial control (you could link to some or all of your other sites). Sites aren’t as cheap as they were a few years ago, but you’d be surprised how many people will jump at $10 or $15k. Hell, even monsters like Adult Friend Finder are only selling for only 3X EBITDA.

So if you are going to ask someone to buy a link, perhaps the first question you ask them shouldn’t be “Would you sell me a link on this page for X/year?” but rather “Can I buy your site ____ from you for $XYZ?”.

If you buy the entire site then you’re no longer violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by changing where it links. It’s not like we actually give a shit, but . . . ya know . . .

Tagged none | 11 Comments »

Xbiz has the scoop:

The FBI has not purposefully inspected any secondary producers to date, and will not start inspections of secondary producers until proposed revisions to the 2257 record-keeping regulations have been finalized, according to the agent in charge of the FBI’s 2257 inspection effort.

“We do not inspect secondary producers,” Special Agent Chuck Joyner told XBIZ.

 

If you’re in adult and in the states, you really want to pay attention to this 2257 stuff.

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Looking to jumpstart your career as a web entrepreneur or SEO Consultant? Aching to see how the pros really do it? Want to work alongside me, QuadsZilla?

Well then today just may be your lucky day.

SEO Black Hat will be taking on an unpaid intern to work on various projects in Search, Mainstream Web Projects, and porn Adult (and no, we’re not shooting content).

The Hours will be long (about 25 per week), the pay sucks (nothing), you have to put up with my shit (yay fun!) and you will be doing mostly white and grey hat projects (read “somewhat boring”).

I can be a demanding hard ass who doesn’t have time for people who can come up with “great excuses” for not getting things dong.

If you’re not responsive and reliable or there just isn’t a personality fit, I’ll fire your ass from this unpaying job faster than a [see here].

However, you will get hands on experience and training on how to:

• run extremely profitable web businesses
• build sites from scratch to profitability
• grow web communities
• network and develop a digital rolodex of successful web entrepreneurs

Most Good SEOs are taking home more than $350k per year and doing it on their own terms. Look at me – I basically work when I want, where I want, and with whom I want.

My ideal candidate is a sexy English major senior at an Ivy league University who has worked summers as a successful sales rep even though she’s a trust fund baby. . . but I might just settle for you.

Think you should get the job?

Convince me.

Tagged future of search | 7 Comments »

On September 27th, or a little before then, I’ll be traveling to Amsterdam for the Webmaster Access Show with my wife.

Being the cheap bastard that I am, I would really prefer not to pay the $150 each to get into the show. So, if someone would like to pick up the tab ($300), or can get comp tickets, I’ll set aside a dinner meeting for you in Amsterdam. At the dinner, we can discuss web strategies, SEO, link baiting, making money online, or whatever else you want to talk about.

Additionally, I want to make sure I’m invited to all the best industry parties while I’m there; so if you’re having an industry party, make sure you contact me, send me an invite and put me on the guest list.

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If you Google for porn today, you may not find it.

That’s because this past weekend saw a huge shake up in the online porn world. A change in the Google algorithm caused almost all TGPs to fall out of the top results for single-word porn search phrases.

If you Google for any of the following words (as of this writing), you won’t find much free porn in the top ten:

Last Monday:

The last 10 days:

Yesterday (after the weekend update):

The lesson for everyone here is this: Don’t focus on just a few competitive keywords for your long term sites: if you have plenty of Long tail combinations, Google Twitches that look like they could kill you may actually increase your traffic.

Update: The “Porn Free” filters in Google seem to have reverted partially to where they were.

Tagged best posts | 36 Comments »

Today, the US Department of Commerce has blocked the ICANN application for the .xxx extension. This is fantastic news for both:
1. People who own adult websites and
2. People who like to masturbate
So, basically it’s great news for a full 90% of us (the other 10% are, of course, lying).

The .xxx TLD would certainly have been the first step towards segregating sex on the Internet so that governments could eventually force the ISPs and search engines to block it. Eventually, we’d be lucky if we could even catch a Jessica Alba Nipple shot.

Fortunately, there are signs that our government still works (for those of us who can afford to buy it). The day that these self-righteous, censoring, “I’m-gonna-tell-you-and everyone-else-how-to-live-their-lives” asshats win out over our slimey, check-wielding, pocket greasing, lobbyists will be a sad, sad day indeed.

What would the Internet be today without porn? Nothing. It wouldn’t even exist!

ARPNET was only invented so some pocket-protector-wearing, sexually frustrated, tech geeks at the DOD could figure could figure out how to send ASCII babes like this back and forth to each other. Before that, there was just no interest in the project.

Why did the early adopters first start using the Net? Porn

What is the only plausible explanation for mainstream adoption of the Web? Porn.

Why will one day everyone in the world have Internet access? To get Porn!

Just last century, without Internet porn we had 2 World Wars, a Holocaust, and Missile Crisis that threatened to destroy the whole planet. Do you really want to return to a messed up world like that?!? The .XXX extension was certainly the first step towards our society coming apart at the seams and destroying itself.

What the hell do we have to worry about today? Global freaking warming? they should call it Global Yawning. The only strife and trouble in this world is coming from countries that do not yet have enough people looking at Internet Porn. In those countries, we see attempts at terrorism, Jihads and genocide. Why? Because they’re so damn sexually frustrated!

Today, I’m proud to be an American. By slapping ICANN back into its place, today our government has protected our porn, protected our freedom, and made the world a safer place.

Digg This Story!

Tagged Funny | 7 Comments »

Ynot is repoting that Senators Baucus and Pryor Author Bill to Create Mandatory Adult .XXX TLD. There is a press release on Pryor’s website regarding the bill.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mark Pryor (D-AR) introduced new legislation today that would serve to require websites that contain “material that is harmful to minors” to operate from a new Top-Level Domain.

 

“The term ‘material that is harmful to minors’ means any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing or other matter of any kind that is obscene, or that a reasonable person would find –

(A) taking the material as a whole and with respect to minors, is designed to appeal to, or is designed to pander to, the prurient interest;
(B) depicts, describes or represents, in a manner patently offensive with respect to minors
(i) an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual conduct;
(ii) an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act; or
(iii) in a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast; and
(C) taking the material as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.”

 

Pretty broad definition.

My guess is that the bill will pass and then be thrown out in court. But if it does stick, it would mean that all the .com and other TLD adult website owners would have to move their operations outside of the US.

Then maybe the US will take a page out of China’s Government handbook and hire 50,000 people to monitor the Internet traffic and sites in the US. Ya gotta love where the US is headed. Maybe they’ll just enforce the law through ICAN (a US entity). Sorry all you international TLD owners; the US is going to destroy your property and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Apparently there’s a race in the US to see which of the two political parties can legislate with their heads furthest up theirs asses. Score one for the Dems today. But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of Republicans jumping on board this bill too. I hate both of our two main political parties. I want to vote for someone like John Locke or Thomas Jefferson - not have to guess which party is going to expand the roll of government LESS in their next term.

Obviously, if the goal is to protect children, the simple answer is to create a .kids TLD and only allow content suitable for children on those domains.

Problem solved.

If you’re in favor of this bill, please leave a comment. I want to know how you justify this kind of government intrusion in the Land of the Free and the Economic Capital of the World.

Tagged politics | 9 Comments »

This Post relates to the inquiry:

“The search traffic that we have converts very well – we want more. Will you do SEO for [our Adult Affiliate program]? Do you have any information about Adult SEO on SEO blackhat?”

 

Targeted Adult Search Traffic is the most desirable traffic you can send to your adult sites for 3 reasons:

1. When MSN, Yahoo, or Google Search traffic converts, you don’t have to pay an affiliate or a Webmaster referral - you keep 100% of the money from search traffic sales.

2. This search traffic continues month after month - long after you’ve factored in the cost of your investment in Search Engine Optimization.

3. Unlike TGPs (Thumbnail Gallery Posts), where your conversion ratio is often 1 in 1500, a high-ranking, targeted-search-term converts better than 1 in 100.

Because it so competitive, Adult & Sex Site owners need to employ a portfolio of “SEO best practices.”

Unfortunately for Adult site owners, many of the more reputable SEOs will not do Adult SEO (Search Engine Optimization for Adult Sites). Porn is considered one of the “Evil Trio” of Sex, Drugs (rX), and Gambling. Most of the better SEOs who do consulting don’t want to risk tarnishing their image by working in these fields (there’s just too much money in “clean” SEO).

As a successful Black Hat SEO, I don’t really need to do any consulting work. However, there are some cases where it just makes sense for me to do SEO consulting for a client who owns an adult affiliate program. When contacted to do Adult SEO, I look at all the numbers (searches, affiliates, revenue . . . etc.) and sites to decide if there is a good fit.

I know what SEO techniques work. Some of the techniques I discuss on seoblackhat are too risky for affiliate program owners (and as such, I don’t use them with clients).

I’m one of only a few SEOs confident enough to work on a success basis. For qualifying programs, we can work out a pay-for-results contract. These agreements amount to what the other Search Engine Optimization firms and SEO consultants don’t offer - an SEO guarantee.

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