Totally agree with Ray that this isn't a legitimate tactic, nor would I expect it to work. Google's got a lot of defenses and checks to prevent manipulation of this kind, so while it could have an impact briefly and in some SERPs, I'd expect it to be mostly a waste of time and money.

The only part I'll disagree with is Google's disclosure that they do (or rather "might") use pogo-sticking. I believe this was mentioned at a conference last year or in 2013, though I can't find the reference now. There's also lots of test evidence, including the experiment I ran live at Mozcon, this one from my blog: http://moz.com/rand/queries-clicks-influence-googles-results/ (which I did repeat with success), and some mixed results from Darren Shaw here: http://www.slideshare.net/darrenshaw1/darren-shaw-user-behavior-and-local-search-dallas-state-of-search-2014.

Queries and clicks are most certainly impacting rankings, though how directly and with what caveats/other influences we don't yet know (and may never).

It depends on the definition and intent of the word. In this case, I believe KevinBP wants to know whether those links will impact rankings in the same way that normal, followed links from other websites will/do. I believe we'd all agree that social media links with nofollow attributes do not contribute in those ways.

I'd also say, more broadly, that while many types of links will show up in Google's Webmaster Tools, this criteria alone does not indicate rank-boosting ability from those links or that Google is even counting them.

Hi Andy - never heard that one before... Very odd. I just looked in your account using my Chrome browser and your data looks fine to me, so my guess is that there's a setting in Chrome or possibly an extension that's causing the visibility problems. Unfortunately, browser troubleshooting isn't my specialty, but you might try installing Firefox or even Internet Explorer and seeing if you can see the data that way temporarily. In Chrome, you could try disabling extensions and/or doing an uninstall/reinstall (make sure you have another browser installed before you uninstall Chrome though or it will be a pain to re-download it).

Good luck!

FYI - Rank Tracker appears to be back up and working for me. Not sure if we have the "all clear" from engineering, but you might want to give it another spin. I was able to successfully get the right rankings back on my queries just now.

Well, here's the complex thing - every time we share anything about the DDoS - on Twitter for example, or in the press (including when that NYTimes article was published), the DDoS crew hits us again. This weekend was insanely hard. Our tech ops team are staying up 30 hours in a row, missing meals, missing their families. It's pretty horrifying, and it's been going on for months.

It was only the first time they wanted a few hundred, then they emailed for thousands, now they don't even email anymore - they're clearly just out for revenge because we've been helping other companies to stop them using what we've learned.

My bias was to want to share that stuff, too. Unfortunately, if we do, not only do we risk more attacks, but we risk the attackers finding new vulnerabilities based on what we say we've done. It's an all around very sucky situation, and one of those times when we simply can't be as transparent as we'd like.

It's weird that the bot is accepting cookies, but with a bounce rate that high, I agree it's probably something automated (though it could be people who were looking for something else or were directed there by an email or an app accidentally). You can look through your logs to see IP addresses and then do as Atakala says and block the traffic if you're worried about bandwidth. You can also just filter it out in GA by excluding US traffic (if your'e worried about analytics being messed up).

We only measured rankings on the pages inside the guide, but didn't look broadly across the entire moz.com domain. I think that would have been much harder to observe since there's so many things that can affect it.

Thanks for the nudge on the WB Friday - will consider that for the future!

UPDATE: I filmed a Whiteboard Friday video specifically on this topic, with a few examples, that's likely worth checking out.

Hi James - I would still strongly urge folks to keep all content on a single subdomain. We recently were able to test this using a subdomain on Moz itself (when moving our beginner's guide to SEO from guides.moz.com to the current URL http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo). The results were astounding - rankings rose dramatically across the board for every keyword we tracked to the pages.

I've had the opportunity to see many dozens of other sites do the same, almost always with similarly positive results (assuming they're moving from a subdomain without much other content/link signals to the subdomain that has those signals).

I think the important word you used in describing Matt's video is "implied." He's very careful not to speak in specifics, and often, I think the truth is buried in that non-specific language, rather than in the broader implied phrasing. That said, I do agree with you that after all these years, it seems odd that Google is still behaving in this fashion and that moving from one subdomain to another can have such a dramaticly positive impact on rankings.

p.s. Yes, for devblog, we put it there due to technical limitations. We plan to eventually get it moved to the main site.

You might also check out http://flippa.com. Just be careful with buying expired domains, presuming that PA/DA may still be preserved. Google is actually taking a lot of steps to reset a site's authority/link profile on change of ownership to prevent manipulation through expired/sold domains.

Lee - I believe the best way to think about this is to ask whether, if you worked on Google's search quality team, you'd want those guest post links to help the site rank better. Nothing you're describing sounds awful (although posting on sites that don't have much editorial filtering/discretion could be more dangerous), but it also doesn't strike me as the type of practice that I'd want to reward if I were Google.

I liked what Patrick McKenzie said:

Google will eventually define any tactic which scalably allows ranking for arbitrary keywords as "black hat."

That strikes me as being correct. If there's a singular tactic you're using to get rankings (like link building through repeated guest blogging) that is exclusively or primarily for that purpose (manipulating the rankings), then it's probably in the danger zone, if not today, then at some point in the future.

This begs the question - what tactics should you be doing for clients to help move the needle on their SEO? I'm going to try to tackle that in an upcoming Whiteboard Friday, but for now, I'd think about things that help build their brand, get publicity, drive traffic, and show value that also happen to earn links. For example, hosting events, creating viral content, becoming a resource for data that others cite in their work, creating partnerships with others in your field or geography, earning press, etc. http://moz.com/blog/category/link-building has tons more good stuff, but all of them take serious elbow grease and are bigger than just "getting a link" (which is the whole point).

Hi Virginia - happy to give my $0.02. Basically, on SquareSpace 6 (the active version out now), I think they've done a solid job with SEO features and functionality. I actually consulted a bit (informally - not paid, just helping out because I want folks to provide good SEO, especially popular CMS') with the SquareSpace team, and reviewed some of their implementations. It's good stuff, and SquareSpace is a good company (good customer service, honorable folks, good about refunds, excellent with uptime, etc).

That said, you can certainly get more flexibility by hosting your own system. Wordpress enables a lot of this, especially if you have a good developer making changes to it. Out of the box, SquareSpace is friendlier on many aspects of SEO than Wordpress, but with customizations, the latter can exceed the former.

One last word of advice - be cautious about trusting all the forum chatter, especially the stuff that comes from SquareSpace v6 and earlier (which wasn't very SEO friendly). I don't mean to be a pure advocate/defendent of SquareSpace (and I have no financial or other interest in the company), but do want to be fair to the strides they've made.

Hope that helps!