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July 22nd, 2009 
QuadsZilla After being in the industry for years, we often forget that not everyone is familiar with every term we use. We take lots of knowledge for granted. This is not unique to SEO: it happens in every specialty field.
Here was one of the questions from last week’s Link Pyramid© post:
I have a question… is it possible to bring down a competitor’s site by building a totally obvious link farm, totally interlinked and then linking all of the sites to the competitors site?
If so how many sites would you need in the farm? would the result be dependant upon the competitors original strength. Say a page rank five site, with 5000 existing links of which five are .edu and a page rank spread of mostly PR1’s and rising to about 60 Pr 4’s and 5’s’s. What kind of link farm would destroy a site like this?
I am not asking for any moral judgement of whether any one should actually do this but simply would it work, could a site ever be murdered by malicious linkfarm spamming? – if that is the correct phrase.
The industry phrase is “Google Bowling”: Manipulating the external ranking factors that Google uses to penalize a site against your competitors (or someone you just don’t like or want to appear in the SERPs).
On the most basic level, it’s exactly what was described in the comment: A really bad / obvious link farm pointed at a competitors site. There is not enough information from the “example” question to give a good “how many bad links would it take” answer. Everything is really on a case by case basis. If you have a site of the target’s strength, how much spamming can you do before you get a penalty?
There are plenty of other ways to get a competitors site banned or totally screwed in Google. Imagine the example where someone leaves a comment on a site with a link. That link is later redirected to a virus. The site is then reported to stopbadware: then everyone who goes to the site from Google is told that the site is potentially harmful for at least a month while they struggle with customer (no)service. There are other, even more malicious ways of taking down sites that I’d rather have as few people know about as possible.
For the Aspiring Google Bowler the question you have to ask yourself is: what are the ranking / banning / penalty factors that Google looks at for the target site / page that YOU have some control over. Add in some social engineering and a mind for mischief and it’s easy to see how Google bowling works.
For the Corporate Customer that really wants to Protect their brand: don’t try to tackle this on your own. If you brand is worth in the millions or billions of dollars: pay the money to have someone manage ALL the SERPs for your brand related queries. While this will be impossible for some brands (Viagra springs to mind), for the vast majority of companies and brands, the SERPs can be sanitized to include only things you want your customers to see: by hook or by crook.
The price for this type of service usually starts at $100k per year and goes up from there (for the people that can actually deliver what they promise). I know a few of the best in the Industry that do this and let me put it this way: it’s worth it for companies that do billions in sales to spend a few million a year on Search Engine Reputation Management over and above what they spend on PPC, links and rankings.
Posted in 
The Most Cutting Edge SEO Exploits No One is Publishing
You know that the best SEO Black Hats are doing something more than scraping, using a site generator, comment spamming, and pinging to be raking in more than $100k per month.
But what is it?
Right now, there is way too much good stuff that I simply can’t publish on the SEO Black Hat blog. If I posted these tactics and exploits they would immediately get all the wrong kind of attention. The detailed conversations about how exactly to abuse search engine algorithms, generate massive traffic, and what other Black Hats are doing must remain underground to retain their effectiveness.
But what if I told you that you could discuss these exploits with me without paying my $500 an hour consulting fee? What if I told you there was a way to join in on the private, cutting edge discussions with some of the best Black Hats and web entrepreneurs in the world?
Would you be interested?
Because now you can . . .
Today is the official launch of the resource you’ve looked everywhere for but never found:
The Private SEO Black Hat Forum
Normally what you get on forums are people who don’t know anything talking with people who don’t want to say anything. You can occasionally find amazing tips on some forums: but you have to dig through 400 crappy posts just to find one post that is useful. That becomes a huge time sink.
How are the SEO Black Hat forums different?
Quality: We’re not going to have any contests to see who can make the most posts. That just creates tons of crap that no one wants to read. Our focus is on quality over quantity. Our primary concern is with succinctly answering one question: “What works?”
Sophisticated: Many of the topics we discuss are very advanced and require a high level of technical or business acumen to appreciate.
Expert Discussions: The SEO Black Hat forums are not for everyone and they may not be right for you. If you are relatively new to SEO or building websites, then do not join the SEO Black Hat Forums: you will be in way over your head. There are plenty of newbie forums out there for you – this is not one of them. Our forums are for successful web entrepreneurs to develop strategies that drive more traffic and generate more revenues.
Forum Membership Benefits
Access to Expert Advice and Discussions
We have both White Hat and Black Hat Experts that are already benefiting from new tool development, techniques, scripts and the sharing of ideas.
Some members you may already be familiar with include:
* CountZero from blackhat-seo.com (Black Hat)
* RSnake from ha.ckers.org (Web Security Expert)
* Dan Kramer from Kloakit (Cloaking Expert)
* Jaimie Sirovich from seoegghead.com (Token White Hat / SEO Geek)
There are several other members that you are certainly familiar with who are using handles for anonymity. We have others who are more focused on security, vulnerabilities, and coding. There are still more that you are likely unfamiliar with but are nevertheless web millionaires.
Databases – Large Datasets
If you want your sites to have massive amounts of unique content you need large data sets. The trading, discussion and posting of large data sets is going on right now on our forums.
Expired / Deleted Domain Tools
Want to use to use the same domain Tool that I used to get a Page Rank 6 site in the Gambling Space for just $8? This domain tool is available for members to use for free.
50% off on Kloakit – The Professional Cloaking Software
Scripts – Several useful scripts have already been posted – interesting thing you may not have thought of before are being discussed and developed.
Exploits and Case Studies: The really good stuff I can’t talk about on the SEO Blackhat Blog is being discussed on the SEO Black Hat Forums. Right now, some of the conversations include beating captchas, domain kiting, data mining, hoax marketing, XSS vulnerabilities as they relate to SEO, and much more.
Pricing: $100 per month.
The price will soon be rising significantly as more databases, hosted tools, scripts and exploits are added. However, once you lock in a membership rate it will never go up and you will continue to have access to everything.
So, if you think you’re ready for the most intense Black Hat SEO discussions anywhere, then here’s what you need to do:
1. Register at the SEO Black Hat Forums.
2. Go to the User CP and select Paid Subscription.
I’ll see you on the inside!