How is this obvious black hat technique working in Google?
-
Get ready to have your minds blown. Try a search in Google for any of these:
proform tour de france
tour de france trainer
tour de france exercise bike
proform tour de france bike
In each instance you will notice that Proform.com, the maker of the bike, is not #1. In fact, the same guy is #1 every time, and this is the URL:
www.indoorcycleinstructor.com/tour-de-france-indoor-cycling-bike
Here's the fun part. Click on that result and guess where you go? Yup, Proform.com. The exact same page ranking right behind it in fact. Actually, this URL first redirects to an affiliate link and that affiliate link redirects to Proform.com.
I want to know two things. First, how on earth did they do this? They got to #1 ahead of Proform's own page. How was it done? But the second question is, how have they not been caught? Are they cloaking? How does Google rank a double 301 redirect in the top spot whose end destination is the #2 result?
PS- I have a site in this industry and this is how I caught it and why it is of particular interest. Just can't figure out how it was done or why they have not been caught. Not because I plan to copy them, but because I plan to report them to Google but want to have some ammo.
-
The most dangerous competitors are the ones who have yet to arrive.
-
Thing is the page came out of nowhere. Wasn't on the radar and then suddenly a few days ago was #1 for almost every way there is to search for this exercise bike. I've never dealt with black hatters in my own industry, so I wasn't sure how to determine if they are cloaking or what they are doing. They definitely did not get the ranking naturally and once they had it they redirected the page through an affiliate link. I just know something black hat is involved, I am just not sure what.
-
You have broken the #1 rule of forensic seo: you tampered with the crime scene evidence
We are left to wild speculation. I would guess the site ranked for the phrase, then performed the redirect through the affiliate site. I would expect even if you did not get involved Google would have cleaned up the listing.
-
Sorry, I can explain. I informed the affiliate manager (we use the same affiliate links through cmtcr.com) and they suspended the account for deceptive practices. That first URL was redirecting to a cmtcr.com link, which is an affiliate link, which then redirected to the advertiser, proform.com.
Because the account was suspended, the first redirect of the URL to cmtcr.com still works, but the affiliate link is not redirecting to the advertiser because the account is suspended. But it formerly went to proform.com. It should get removed promptly at this point, but the question is how did it get there and why did it take their account and redirect being suspended to get caught?
-
Hi Daniel,
I am trying to follow along and I am not seeing what you shared. I am searching in Google.com for "proform tour de france". The first two results I see are from the www.indoorcycleinstructor.com website. The problems I am having are:
1. When I click on the first result I consistently receive a 404 not found error from a site called cmtcr.com. Clearly this is a redirect and the result will be removed from Google if it is not promptly fixed.
2. When I click the second result the URL is as follows:http://www.indoorcycleinstructor.com/icipro-instructor-resources/certification-continuing-ed/indoor-cycling-bikes/pro-form-tdf-indoor-bike/pro-form-le-tour-de-france-indoor-cycling-bike-with-power/
The web page is on the indoorcycleinstructor.com domain, it appears to be a unique page. The content isn't that great but the page title, header and content support the keyword.
3. This page is clearly not on the proform.com site nor made to appear as it is was on the site.
I tried searching next for "tour de france trainer" and the #1 result again is a 404 error page from cmtcr.com. I do not see proform.com site listed for either query in the top 10 results.
It seems the redirect is not working and I can't offer any other feedback without it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google spider
If someone provide 1 or more cent discount to our customers who put up a link on their site, and wanted to actually show the referral discount in their shopping cart for that customer, can Google see that and realize they are providing a discount for a link? Can Google see what's displayed in our their web application - like in the upload, shopping cart and complete transaction pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | K_Monestel0 -
Google's Related Searches - Optimizing Possible?
Does anyone know how Google determines what suggestions show up at the bottom of SERPs? I've been working with a client to boost his local ranking, but every time we do a branded search for his business his competitors keep popping up in the "Searches related to ______" section.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mtwelves0 -
I have 4012 links from one blog - will Google penalise?
My website (http://www.gardenbeet.com) has 4012 links from http://cocomale.com/blog/ to my home page -a banner advert links from the blog - I also have 3,776 from another website to 6 pages of my website 1,832 from pinterest to 183 pages etc etc overall there are 627 domains linking to my website I have been advised by a SEO company that I was penalised in about may to july 2012 due to a large number of links coming from one domain or two domains is that true? should I ask the blog owner to remove my link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GardenBeet0 -
SEO Hosting and many dummy blog, is it still works ?
Hi, I want to keep update with the latest trend of SEO,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | theconversion
in one side, we know that google now more focus on-page rather than off-page,
the Question is, when we handle a big size of company, that we can't change easily,
the content inside the web, this will become a problem. do you have any suggestion about
this matters ? Second question, I still keep my SEO team to do this, 5 people, 1 people hold 7 .com website,
that hosted all in SEO hosting with different IP Class C, and 7 social network site. Everytime they
are posting a unique article and put link that targetting the money site. My Question is, is it still
work to do all of this ? so at the end of month, we have almost 70links that going to money site,
with composition of link, 50% exact match text, 30 partial match text, and 20% direct www. link today, it is still working, all the site that we optimize, going up to page 1. But I want to know about
the future, or at least in your country that more competitive rather than in my country (Indonesia),
what do you do for backlink that created from your farm. I also heard that, SEO Hosting is not use, the things that works is, when u posting an article, make
sure u post from unique IP address, not from same computer. Please give me enlightment, I truly open for discussion, thanks a lot0 -
Google places VS position one ranking above the places.
Hi Guys, Will creating a new Google places listing for a business have any effect their current position one spot for their major geo location keyword? I.e restaurants perth - say they are ranking no 1 above all the places listings if they set up a places listing would they lose that position and merge with all the other places accounts? Or would they have that listing as well as the places listing? I have been advised it could be detrimental to set up the places account if this is the case does anyone know any ways around this issue as the business really needs a places page for google maps etc. Appreciate some guidance Thanks. BC
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bodie0 -
Someone COPIED my entire site on Google- what should I do?
I purchased a very high ranked and old site a year or so ago. Now it appears that the people I purchased from completely copied the site all graphics and content. They have now built that site up high in rankings and I dont want it to compromise my site. These sites look like mirror images of each other What can I do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TBKO0 -
SEO Experiment with Google Docs
Please check out this doc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/19VS4SnVvq6VJHQAIrB3CX7iL1ivZU4DH6fyfrHLsNFk/edit Any insights will be highly appreciated! Oleksiy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcrfintl0 -
Are there any "legitimate" paid links in Google's eyes?
The news about paid link campaigns is so frequent, that I have to ask the question....does Google allow any paid links? Aside from SEO, paid links can have visibility value. Much like an exit sign on the highway, the paid link says "Get off here"
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bcmull0