No AD revenue = No spammy websites

Fight against Spam
In our fight against spam, there are bound to be innocent casualties. TreasureJewelry.com is one such casualty of business sabotage in the world of Black Hat SEO.

Panda & Penguin search algorithm updates by Google in past one year have been hailed as a step in the right direction. I partially agree. There is a lot more that needs to be done to rectify issues.

 

Open question to Google
If Google has a list of spammy websites, why do they still allow them to run Google Adsense banners? Most spammy websites run on advertising dollars. Crack down on Adsense accounts, and spammy websites will dwindle down automatically. am I missing something here?

 

Purpose of this case study

  • Bring awareness to businesses and other SEO service providers to watch out and be vigilant about their BackLinks.
  • We need YOUR help in spreading the word, so we can figure out who hired EarnConcern.com – a company out of Pakistan – to put TreasureJewelry.com links on spammy website.

 

Basic steps to Bring down the competition thru Penguin type update

Idea is simple.
step 1: Add “Bad” backlinks on the internet for your competitor’s website.
step 2: Do it slowly for 6 months, so the targeted competitor won’t notice foul play.
step 3: Google will catch up with your competitor’s website and label it as spammy. their traffic is cut by 80%.
step 4: That traffic is distributed amongst other websites. repeat for other competitors?

 

The case study – TreasureJewelry.com

the company

TreasureJewelry.com has been in wholesale fashion jewelry business for quite some time. they started their online business in 2005. they are known for their quality wholesale jewelry products, quick shipping and customer service.

 

Traffic
Over the years, traffic for TreasureJewelry.com steadily grew from a few hundred to thousands of visitors per month.

 

November 2011 thru April 2012
Each month, someone started placing links to TreasureJewelry.com on spammy websites. By April 2012, there were 200 spammy websites linking to TreasureJewelry.com

 

April 24th 2012 – Google Penguin update
Doomsday for TreasureJewelry.com. the traffic from Google search results dropped 85% overnight. At first, RockinTech.com – people who handle SEO for TreasureJewelry – figured it was a mistake by Google algorithm. Not realizing the sabotage, another week passed by. Reconsideration requests were sent immediately thru the Webmaster tools as well as the specific URLs for Penguin update.

By May 20th 2012, another update email was sent thru Penguin reconsideration URL explaining how sabotage had occurred. no response from Google nor an upward traffic momentum till now – June 2012.

 

How did it happen – exactly

After much research into 200-300 backlinks put into spammy classified websites, we found the following.

1. Spammy Classified websites network – postings by earnconcern.com

Sabotage!? – SOMEONE bought one of the packages from EarnConcern.com to put TreasureJewelry.com links on spammy classified websites.

Example of links on spammy website:
http://neonads.com/detail.php?id=5846
http://classifiedsbelgium.com/viewad.asp?id=1210997606177343
http://classifiedsbulgaria.com/viewad.asp?id=1210997606177343
http://classifiedspakistan.com/viewad.asp?id=1210997606177343
http://classifiedsrussia.com/viewad.asp?id=1210997606177343

Above websites are useless to any business search optimization. You can find at the bottom in images a list of these spammy classified websites.

2. Link directories network – Blackmailing by cctradepoint.com

Now charging $20 per link per website to delete your links from their websites. YES, spammy websites charging you to take off your link from their websites is blackmailing.

Example URLs:
http://www.eatmylinks.net
http://www.visionsubmit.net
http://www.linkprune.com

Complete list of spammy Link directories from cctradepoint.com

This was a deliberate attempt to bring down TreasureJewelry.com and they succeeded.

 

 

Cost to sabotage another business
it’s inexpensive. Hire services from fools calling themselves part of the Search Engine Optimization revolution. This can be done under $200.

 

Steps to help TreasureJewelry

1. Pay cctradepoint.com to take off TreasureJewelry.com links from their spammy network of sites. TreasureJewelry.com will be paying $400 to get this taken care of.

2. Send a request to spammy classified sites network and inform them of the issues. We have not heard back from them. We do not own the accounts on Classified Ads network websites so we can not take off those links ourselves.

 

Solutions – New Tool:

WatchBackLinks.org in the works – coming July 2012

You will be able to:

  • Test your backlinks against our Blacklist.
  • Add spam websites to this list to help others and keep this tool/website updated.
  • We will moderate the sites submitted to be marked as spam sites in our database.

Google needs to do more on their part in bringing down the spammy websites themselves.

 

Here is a partial list of spammy websites we found TreasureJewelry was put backlinks on: