Cloaking -> yes, they do get banned... Options

[Ruud]

First time I hear about it so openly and direct, but here it is.

http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5212479.html?tag=st.lh

Yahoo and Google have disabled links to controversial adware maker WhenU after the company was accused of engaging in unauthorized practices aimed at boosting its search rankings, WhenU's top executive confirmed Thursday. 

The practices came to light following an investigation by antispyware crusader Ben Edelman, a Harvard student who found that the company used a technique known as \"cloaking\" to dupe search engines into favorably listing decoy Web pages that direct people to other destinations, once they click on the link.

A search Thursday on the term WhenU returned a broken link to a WhenU page on Yahoo and no links to WhenU's pages on Google.

Ruud

[bragadocchio]

I'm impressed by Ben Edelman, who has produced a lot of research that has had a major amount of impact.

His past research covered such things as cybersquatting and typosquatting, fake whois information, filtering of pages in Saudi Arabia and China, censoring of pages in google.de and google.fr and the spyware article pointed to in the news.com link.

He has some information on whenu.com's lawsuit against the State of Utah and their new laws against spyware. His latest blog post, Research on WhenU Search Engine Spamming, and Its Consequences points to a new piece of research which apparently prompted Google's actions:

WhenU Spams Google, Breaks Google "No Cloaking" Rules

Make sure that you scroll down to the bottom of the article and read the section:

Responses by Search Engines, Registrars, and WhenU

Interesting stuff. It looks like the sites have also disappeared from MSN.

[bwelford]

I trust this will be a landmark case and act as a beacon for action on other blatant users of these techniques. This is certainly the Topic of the Day for me so it goes on my BPWgr8threads List. I'll be watching this thread with interest.

[gravelsack]

Oh dear - thats a real can of worms they have opened there.

Google et al have long turned a blind eye to cloaking by some of the major big-name sites.

Wonder how they will react to the flood of spam-reports that ensue.

[bwelford]

Having a Total Quality Management program always costs more. You've got to hire people and put the processes in place to check for defects. However the result is greater customer satisfaction and you beat the competition. Google et al have just got to see this as their TQM program.

[Black_Knight]

Also on May 13, Avi Naider, CEO of WhenU, wrote to me to request that I include the following statement: 

\"WhenU hired an outside Search Engine Optimization firm to legitimately enhance our search engine rankings. The issues raised by Mr. Edelman were brought to our attention today, and we immediately addressed them and instructed the outside firm to reverse their actions pending further investigation.\"

Mr. Nader seems remarkably reluctant to name the SEO firm that resulted in the complete banning of their site(s) in all the major search engines, doesn't he? I'd be screaming their names from the rooftops if I were in the position he claims to be. Perhaps he's keeping their name quiet to avoid prejudicing a legal case, in which case we'd surely expect to hear details about such a case, wouldn't we?

[bragadocchio]

Funny that they would do such things without bothering to Tell WhenU what they were doing.

[gravelsack]

Customer satisfaction is obviously important, but TQM often crashes on the rocks of shareholder needs and management self interest.

Cloaking does not always equate to customer unhappiness, its just a technique and as such can be applied in different ways, and to meet different ends.

Assuming we are 'after IPO'

Q1. Do you think that Google will ban a cloaked site if it has better quality than the competing sites and is a major adwords spender?

Q2. If they did, how would their shareholders react?

Removing cloaked sites is not necessarily a TQM approach - removing 'most' cloaked sites might be, sure, but if they removed all cloaked sites their results could end up worse.

Sure, cloaking is against their guidelines, but they chose to turn a blind eye to cloaking in many cases, and it could be argued that this was based on a TQM approach. Quality of SERPs first, compliance with guidelines second.


FWIW I don't practice cloaking - but I did cloak one throw-away site and spam reported it myself - its still there.

[gravelsack]

Wonder of the real reason was that their cloaked pages used content from other sites - far worse crime, no?

[Black_Knight]

Exactly so, gravelsack, and opened them up to something far more costly than a search engine ban that could be circumvented as cheaply as registering a few new domains.

[glyn]

and changing server locations....

[Black_Knight]

Clickz has covered the story as well, and confirms that the SEO company, (alledged to be responsible against the instruction of WhenU), has not been named
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3354171

[peter_d]

Wonder of the real reason was that their cloaked pages used content from other sites - far worse crime, no?

Think P(ublic)R(elations) benefit.

Take out one cloaked site in a high profile way and they're scaring off thousands of would be cloakers and their clients.

A cheap and effective way of neutralising a technical threat.

[projectphp]

Do you think that Google will ban a cloaked site if it has better quality than the competing sites and is a major adwords spender?

I don't get this question. Cloaking and bans help AdWords spending. Can you imagine a company losing Organic resutls and going "Lets pull out AdWords budget as well"?

Do you think that Google will ban a cloaked site if it has better quality than the competing sites and is a major adwords spender?

An SEO, I think, has to accept that occasionally they are paid to be a sacraficial lamb. We employed an outside security firm, The intelligence agency didn't tell us (The aussies will get that one) etc etc litter popular justifications for failed endeavours. Politics and business is full of sacraficial lambs that willing played the role, and are probably paid handsomely for the role. That is probably why teh firm wasn't named. If tehy were, they would probably defend themselves by saying "We told tehm the risks, and they still wanted to proceed".

So, how about a thread on the ethics of falling on your sword after using black hat techniques

[rustybrick]

Well it looks like Ben Edelman feels like who knows who the SEO company is. He said in a comment at the Search Engine Roundtable that it was Synergy6.

[bedelman]

Sorry not to have posted here too. For some reason the registration system wasn't working the first time I tried to register (was just giving me timeouts), so I wasn't immediately able to post.

Incidentally, Black_Knight, it was your post above that gave me my primary inspiration to try to figure out which SEO WhenU had hired for the cloaking work I documented last week.

And now getting to the point --

I've just posted "Which SEO Did WhenU Use? The Best Inference: Synergy6", at http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/whenu-spam/seo.html.

Sharing the same web servers (i.e. same IP addresses) that provided WhenU's cloaking, there are domains that use the same cloaking format, and redirect to destination URLs that show clear signs of being Synergy6 tracking URLs. Conceivably some other SEO could agree with its client that its traffic is to use URLs that include the string "synergy6". But why they would do that I cannot imagine, and it's certainly standard industry practice to use SEO name (or abbreviation, or some such) in tracking URLs. Plus, Synergy6 fits the profile described within Avi Naider's comments ("an outside search engine optimization firm based in New York"). On these bases, I'm comfortable with the inference that Synergy6 did performed cloaking for WhenU.

I actually hadn't heard of Synergy6 before, but it turns out they've been accused of some serious stuff, like major spamming, by Microsoft and the attorney general of New York. News coverage and case documents are linked from my site. You all may already know about this already.

[rustybrick]

Thank you for your hard work.

[gravelsack]

I don't get this question. Cloaking and bans help AdWords spending.

The point I was making is that they are not motivated to ban cloaking just because it improves SERPS.

I have a contact who is a major Adwords spender - BIG spender. He gets 'special treatment' - his advertising budget can be allocated in different areas, and they make sure they keep him onside.

[Black_Knight]

Incidentally, Black_Knight, it was your post above that gave me my primary inspiration to try to figure out which SEO WhenU had hired for the cloaking work I documented last week.

Glad to have inspired some good detective work, Ben. Welcome to Cre8asite

I have to confess that what bugs me the most about the case isn't that the SEO company used cloaking, but that they used it so poorly, and with such bad end results. If a site is going to use cloaking, it should (and can) be done in such a way that it is virtually undetectable. Disabling the cache on Google is as simple as including one simple meta tag and is one of the most basic rules of cloaking. :roll:

Of course, worse still are the companies who use simple javascript redirection, and you'd be amazed at some of the companies who've been suckered into having that spam on their sites.

[projectphp]

I have a contact who is a major Adwords spender - BIG spender. He gets 'special treatment' - his advertising budget can be allocated in different areas, and they make sure they keep him onside.

I have seen the special treatment Google gives advertisers, and it aint all that special. There is, quite simply, a reason why third party PPC media buyers and SEMs exist, and the SEs appalling job of managing clients is part of the reason. It is the same reason TV stations don't make TV ads.

Welcome to Cre8asite Ben. I guess the moral of this story is that if you live in a house with a bulls eye on it (WhenU is bound to have detractors), then you need to be super duper careful about every little thing you do.