Comments on: Recropical Link Cloaking – What you Need to Know

By: Finch

Finch — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:10:54 +0000

It’s sneaky but I’ve seen quite a bit of this in various forms.

I’ve even received an email which I’m pretty sure was employing the same tactic.

It would be easy to blast the guys as deceitful and unethical – but really? You learn more from innovation like this than you do from a 1000 internet marketers doing things by the book. I’d never criticize somebody for getting creative and pushing the envelope. Especially when I mock newbs for showing no creativity and no determination at the other end of the scale.

By: Michael Appleton

Michael Appleton — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:35:07 +0000

Hey Stuart, some really great information here for people who are unaware of this sneaky tactic. I have had this tried on me and my website countless time, just be aware of anything with a referral string or a URL that ends in anything bar your usual extensions.

Great blog by the way, I am sure I will be back

By: John Macclain

John Macclain — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:54:23 +0000

First I would like to thanks for sharing.

We should discourages this kind of emails.

By: Gary Mchale

Gary Mchale — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:07:40 +0000

Another black hat SEO tactic uncovered.
Let’s hope google takes this serious and penalizes anyone found doing it by kicking them to the bottom of the pile.
Leave the top spots for hard working affiliates trying to make an honest living.

By: Bruce Ziebarth

Bruce Ziebarth — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:15:16 +0000

Very interesting scam. I am newer to blogging and was not aware that you could make it look like a link, without it actually being one. Thank you for the article. I now know one more thing to watch out for.

By: Nate

Nate — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:00:03 +0000

There should be penalties for people that do crap like this. I am extremely grateful to have stumbled upon this. Thanks for the heads up!

By: Ian at Daydream Dating

Ian at Daydream Dating — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:23:45 +0000

I’ve also come across a couple of sites hiding their outgoing links from Google but nobody else, i.e. they have code on their site which checks for specific visitors using the user agent string (and maybe also checking the IP address and domain).

As “somebody” mentioned above, the way to check this is to look at the page cache held by the search engine in question and make sure your link is on there. Unfortunately, of course, there is a lag in this page being up to date so you can’t be sure your link is missing until a few weeks after exchanging.

By: Affiliate Marketing Blog

Affiliate Marketing Blog — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:26:17 +0000

Great post it is very sneaky. I get requests all the time too. I am actively looking for people to exchange links with myself. I try and get to know the blogger first and do a good amount of research. I always Google them to find out more, find out what forums they are on etc.

By: Eric Silva

Eric Silva — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:28:44 +0000

I like this, working all together. It reminds me of Traffic through Association.

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:37:39 +0000

Unfortunately this sort of activity discourages legitimate link trading. The lengths some people will go to:(

By: SEO e-Guide

SEO e-Guide — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:43:18 +0000

Sure somebody can do this method to link building but this is not a good idea nowadays since google algorithm is always changing time to time determining rank of a site.

And yes, now many of search engine will de-index a site which was get hundreds links in a short period time, real fast.

By: Adscend Media Affiliate Network

Adscend Media Affiliate Network — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:14:56 +0000

Very sneaky. I’m always impressed with the ingenuity of shady people…

By: Pacc's Adventures

Pacc's Adventures — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:49:50 +0000

Thanks for the heads up; my site’s pretty small at this stage but I’d really like to change that, so it’s nice to know if some people are using ‘iffy’ tactics that i should watch out for.

By: El Magnate De Internet

El Magnate De Internet — Sat, 23 May 2009 22:56:46 +0000

This way hurts the trust rank, if you have thousands of new links in a week, the google staff will flag you page, and if they find you are using blackhat SEO, It will be removed from google.

By: Karl Foxley

Karl Foxley — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:07:49 +0000

I had one of these emails about three weeks ago. I was fortunate enough to get the heads up about this a few days from a friend…

Thanks for sharing and keeping your readers informed.

Regards,

Karl

By: Delta Squadron

Delta Squadron — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:40:06 +0000

Thanks for sharing your ideas. All I know is to cloaking an affiliate link but this ethical. It’s just an effective tactics on how you can gain more buyers unlike with what you are discussing on your post.

By: Jorge Delgado

Jorge Delgado — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:13:52 +0000

thanks for the info… i was not aware of that way of link building..(not acceptable)

Jorge

By: DK

DK — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:28:35 +0000

A very informative post on the unethical ways of link building. Most of us do delve into such link building requests so minutely and end up at the receiving end. Link building is good but these kind of un-ethical ways to do it is totally unacceptable. SEO and link building are not difficult things if you are ready to put in a bit of hard work in the beginning. The decision on which method to follow will depend upon your goals – are you focused on the short term or, are you long term focused.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:53:20 +0000

This kinda thing gives me a hardon, it’s so enterprising / clever.
Shame they didnt come up with a better way to cloak the link you click on.

By: Melody

Melody — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:09:47 +0000

If only these people would realize that they would benefit so much more from truthful/ethical marketing tactics..

By: me

me — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:26:48 +0000

It works if you link exactly to the page that links to you

By: YB

YB — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:15:11 +0000

I think I’m missing something, the email you used as an example is not asking for a reciprocal link. They’re saying that they put a link to your website and are asking if it’s ok and if you want to customize the link title.

How does this hurt you? Did you mean to put a further note in your example that says they will remove the link if you don’t reciprocate? Other than there not really being a link to your site I don’t see how this harvests thousands upon thousands of reciprocal links and scams website owners.

By: data

data — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:28:08 +0000

the way to make money online with reciprocal link? There are a lot of thing they can do to get a lot of way to get money with exchange link… they can try backlinks.com maybe… pay for it and then they get the link…

By: Make Money Online

Make Money Online — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:04:32 +0000

This is a very big shame! Trying to do some link building in order to make money online. What a petty to these cunning individuals who hide themselves under the sheet of deceit. I will never ever use this type of service if someone would offer one to me.

By: somebody

somebody — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:46:47 +0000

you can also check the page cache where the link should appear on…

By: Domains at Retail

Domains at Retail — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:53:44 +0000

Interesting post. I get a large number of link exchange requests for my site and normally ignore them as they are of the spam type. It never amazes me to see how they are thinking of new ways to do this.

I would not employ this on my sites, and would never use a service that offered to do this for me. Great post.