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
-
EMD still works?
Hello guys! i´m wondering what is your opinion about EMD, they still working like they did in the past?? Thanks in advance 🙂 Br
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ofw123870 -
Got dropped on Google rank - Tips to discover why please
Hi guys originally my website was poor ranked on Google. So, after sign in on Moz and follow their tips I achieved the 4th position for one of my keywords (amazing!). But a few days ago my page dropped to bellow the first 50th pages for this same keyword, but I didn't make any changes on it. Anybody has some tips of how can I discover/repair what happened? Thank you all in advance. Best regards Paulo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | phlcastro0 -
Can i 301 redirect a website that does not have manual penalty - but definetly affected by google
ok, i have a website (website A) which has been running since 2008, done very nicely in search results, until january of this year... it dropped siginificantly, losing about two thirds of visitors etc... then in may basically lost the rest... i was pulling my hair out for months trying to figure out why, i "think" it was something to do with links and anchor text, i got rid of old SEO company, got a new SEO company, they have done link analysis, trying to remove lots of links, have dissavowed about 500 domains... put in a reconsideration request... got a reply saying there is no manual penalty... so new seo company says all they can do is carry on removing links, and wait for penguin to update and hopefully that will fix it... this will take as along as it takes penguin to update again... obviously i can not wait indefinetely, so they have advised i start a new website (website B)... which is a complete duplicate of website A. Now as we do not know whats wrong with website A - (we think its links - and will get them removed) my seo company said we cant do a 301 redirect, as we will just cause what ever is wrong to pass over to website B... so we need to create a blank page for every single page at website A, saying we have moved and put a NO FOLLOW link to the new page on website B.... Personally i think the above will look terrible, and not be a very user friendly experience - but my seo company says it is the only way to do it... before i do it, i just wanted to check with some experts here, if this is right? please advise if 301 redirects are NOT correct way to do this. thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | isntworkdull
James0 -
Keywords in Google Local results
We have a client in the moving business and I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the "local" results and the number of them that are not following Google's guidelines for Google Local accounts. 3 of them are using exact match keyword strings as their company names. I've reported all 3, every week for the last 2 months and have not seen a single dip in the rankings. Meanwhile our client has a duplicate listing we've verified and "suspended" and it hasn't changed for 4 months! Any tips? I've attached a photo of the listings as well. xwWZWyT.gif
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros0 -
SERP dropping along with competitors - Google algorithm mix up?
I am hoping someone will have some insight as our recent ranking drop has been driving me crazy trying to figure out what happened. Our site is www.dgrlegal.com. We've been building links by creating quality content and getting others to link to it. We've seen our rankings rise to 3 for a number of keywords. Suddenly around March we saw a pretty drastic drop but only for certain keywords (maybe a Penguin hit?). For example, "new jersey process service" still has us ranked 3rd but "new jersey process server" sees us much lower around 19. I've noticed several competitors have dropped while one has risen so is this negative SEO? Probably not as our backlink profile doesn't seem suspicious but it has me very confused. We've received no warnings or notices from Google. The only thing I see is that our indexed pages went from 13 to 98 in January and have been now steadily increasing to 129, although I thought this would be a positive. Any suggestions or thoughts? I thought maybe things would shake out but it hasn't happened as of yet - we just keep dropping.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | amandadgr0 -
Some pages of my website http://goo.gl/1vGZv stopped crawling in Google
hi , i have 5 years old website and some page of my website http://goo.gl/1vGZv stopped indexing in Google . I have asked Google webmaster to remove low quality link via disavow tool . What to do ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | unitedworld0 -
Backlinks According to Google
Good Morning, Google has just recognized some links going to my site. I used a seo toolbar downloaded from firefox that informed me of the Links according to Google. My question is that them links have been there for ages and Google has only just recognized them. Is there a reason for this? Does Google only show links quarterly or half yearly? Thanks SEO_123
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TWPLC_seo0 -
Instability on the server - punishment in Google?
My site has about 50k pages indexed in Google. We are well respected, and we believe our stories add much value to the user. However, we are having serious problems with my hosting service and the site is unavailable for more than 15 hours. Unfortunately we also have no provision for him to return to work. I wonder if this kind of instability can cause some punishment on Google, if so, I wonder if there is anything we can do to tell Google that we are aware and working to resolve the problem.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lucastudio0