Is using Mechanical Turk to increase our number of Google +1's Black Hat?
-
Or will it affect our ranking positively or negatively at all?
-
And it's not allowed by Mechanical Turk, either.
https://www.mturk.com/mturk/help?helpPage=policies
<a name="#violation_examples">What are some specific examples of HITs that violate Amazon Mechanical Turk policies? [excerpted]</a>
- HITs that directly or indirectly promote a site, service, or opinion
- HITs that violate the terms and conditions of an activity or website (for instance asking Workers to vote for something)
- HITs that generate "referred" site visits or click-through traffic
- HITs that ask Workers to take action to manipulate a website's behavior or results
-
Black hat in my book....be interested to hear how you get on if you do try this strategy though.
-
Um, short answer... yes. A darker shade of gray.
-
Better to produce great content on the site so that people +1 you naturally.... If the site isn't up to scratch then you won't get many conversions anyway.
-
If black hat is defined as using techniques to fool the search engines, then yes. If not, it's at least grey.
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
-
HELP!! We are losing search visibility fast and I don't know why?
We have recently moved from http to https - could this be a problem? https://www.thepresentfinder.co.uk As far as I'm aware we are doing everything by SEO best practice and have no manual penalties, all content is unique and we are not doing any link farming etc...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | The-Present-Finder0 -
HOW!??! Homepage Ranking Dropped Completely out of Top 100 on Google....
So I'm competing for a very competitive keyword, and I've been on the bottom of page 2 for a while now, ranking for my homepage, which is very content rich and has GREAT links pointing to it. Out of nowhere, last week I dropped completely out of the top 100 or so, yet one of my article posts now ranks on page 6 or so for the same keyword. I have great authoritative links, my on-page is spot on, all of my articles are super super high quality, I don't understand how my homepage, which has ranked for the main keyword for months on page 2, can just completely drop out of the top 100 or so.... Can anyone help provide some insight?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | juicyresults0 -
Is there a problem with google?
I have one or two competitors (in the UK) in my field who buy expired 1 - 8 year old domains on random subjects (SEO, travel, health you name it) and they are in the printing business and they stick 1 - 2 articles (unrelated to what was on there before) on these and that's it. I think they stick with PA and DA above 30 and most have 10 – 100 links so well used expired domains, hosted in the USA and most have different Ip’s although they now have that many (over 70% of their backlink profile) that some have the same ip. On further investigation none of the blogs have any contact details but it does look like they have been a little smart here and added content to the about us (similar to I use to run xxx but now do xxx) also they have one or two tabs with content on (article length) that is on the same subject they use to do and the titles are all the same content. So basically they are finding expired 1 – 10 year old domains that have only been expired (from what I can see) 6 months max and putting 1 – 2 articles on the home page in relation with print (maybe adding a third on the subject the blog use to cover), add 1 – 3 articles via tabs at the top on subjects the sites use to cover, registering the details via xbybssgcf@whoisprivacyprotect.com and that’s it. They have been ranking via this method for the last couple of years (through all the Google updates). Does Google not have any way to combat link networks other than the stupid stuff such as public link networks, it just seems that if you know what you are doing you get away, if your big enough you get away with it but the middle of the ground (mum and pop sites) get F*** over with spam pointing to there site that no spammer would dream of doing anyway?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Is bad English detected by Google
Hi, I am based in the UK and in a very competitive market - van leasing - and I am thinking about using an Indian SEO company for my ongoing SEO. They have sent me some sample artilces that they have written for link building and the English is not good. Do you think that google can tell the difference between a well written article and a poorly written article? Will the fact that articles are poorly writtem mean we will lose potential value from the link? Any input would be much appreciated. Regards John J
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnnyh0 -
Does Anybody Know Who Interflora's SEO Company Is (Or Was)?
In light of the recent penalty put on the Interflora site, does anybody know who their SEO company is or was (or if they were doing it in house)? Also, do you think SEO companies that are responsible for things like this should be named and shamed?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jasarrow0 -
Can our white hat links get a bad rap when they're alongside junk links busted by Panda?
My firm has been creating content for a client for years - video, blog posts and other references. This client's web vendor has been using bad links and link farms to bolster rank for key phrases - successfully. Until last week when Google slapped them. They have been officially warned on WMT for possibly using artificial or unnatural links to build PageRank. They went from page one of the most popular term in Chicago for their industry where they had been for over a year - to page 8 - overnight. Other less generic terms that we were working on felt the sting as well. I was aware of and had warned the client of the possibility of repercussions from these black hat tactics (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-google-makes-liars-out-of-the-good-guys-in-seo#jtc170969), but didn't go as far as to recommend they abandon them. Now I'm wondering if one of our legitimate sites (YoChicago.com), which has more than its share of the links into the client site is being considered a bad link. All of our links are legitimate, i.e., anchor text equals description of destination, video links describe the entity that is linked to. Our we vulnerable? Any insight would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikescotty0 -
How many times should one submit the same article to various websites? 1 time? 10 times? What is okay to do with the most recent Panda update?'
For link-building purposes, seemingly it was okay to post the same article to multiple sites for links in the past. However, after the most recent Panda update our thought is that this may not be a good practice. So the question is, how many times is okay to submit an article for link building purposes. Should you always only submit to one site? Is it okay to do more than once? What is the right way to submit for link-building in Google's eyes? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Robertnweil10 -
Google rankings dropped like a stone
I've heard of this happening many times, but never to me. My client was Page 1 or 2 for 20 phrases, and they ALL dropped like a rock overnight. The site hasn't been banned by Google, as it's still indexed and the company name is returning results.There were no major changes done to tags or the code, and nothing black hat has been done. The only phrases that didn't drop contain the company name, and the results in Bing and Yahoo either stayed the same or moved up slightly since last week for all the terms. There's also no threat of spam, and it's very search engine friendly. The URL is http://www.universalaccounting.com. Help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JamesBSEO0