[SPAM?]

March 7th, 2006

Quickest way to be banned from Google: Get caught with keyword stuffed hidden text and then be mentioned on Matt Cutt’s Blog. Unfortunately for coole.co.uk this was the case. Being nice people here I popped them over an e-mail and explained to them (incase they were mislead) the downside to keyword stuffing. I promptly got a very nice e-mail back from them saying they had removed the hidden text, probably just in time I imagine as they are still listed on Google. It made me think about companies which are duped by black hat SEO firms, even if they have the best intentions, it will be them that pays the price. I couldn’t see the credit for the design or marketing anywhere so I imagine it was an inhouse SEO effort - perhaps by someone who remembers the days when Altavista was king. To try and help them in the future, I gave them a link to Google Information for Webmasters which is a down to earth guide for the non-seo wise.

I’ve stumbled over several Black Hat SEO sites recently, the worst being Hypernia.net. Going to the URL will land you on a massive page of keyword stuffed terms, which eventually bounces you to the proper “user” homepage. If you really must use black hat techniques - at least do it properley! For a wanted list of the black hatters - check out the caught spamming blog.