Blackhat SEO – Esrun

XML Feeds link builder

People have been gaining links out of false xml feeds for a long long time but it’s only recently that it has been so publicly discussed on blogs and in forums.

The basic idea is that you generate XML feeds with auto generated content and have each story within the feed link to a site you wish to generate links for. Once the feed has been created and you ping blog search engines like technorati then the idea is that scraper sites will pick up your feed and then link to the site listed as the author within the feed. This is obviously a very simple explanation but there are hundreds of people talking about it right now so I don’t think I need to go into too much detail.

I have updated one of my tools to be a bit prettier looking and put it into the scripts area. So go check the XML Feed link builder out.

Legal action against spam hunters

Every now and then you get a new boy scout who feels it’s their duty to go hunting for spammers and “out” them to the public. They wont do something constructive like come up with a real solution, such as improving captcha systems.. no because that takes brains! They just fixate on certain people and spend all their free time (highlights their sad lives) trying to track down spam and make a big deal about it.

I don’t know if spamhunters are stupid or naive but outing someone as a spammer won’t stop them spamming, at worst they’ll loose a batch of sites. Everyone I know in this business builds sites over different domains, servers and whois details so you would never actually close down someones whole operation.

Sometimes I feel that it is necessary to take legal action against people to protect my reputation, often these people make libel comments online and think they can just get away with this – they cannot. I was speaking to a friend this morning about taking action against someone who has been making comments which I consider defamation of my character and they said they weren’t 100% if the comments would be considered libel…… Okay fair enough I said but the bottom line is most people don’t want to go to court or simple can’t afford it. Even if I loose its going to cost them a reasonable amount of money defending themselves which should teach them a good lesson.

I’m laid back enough to take shots against me, take the piss out of me.. but it goes one step further when people start trying to publish details about you and make you out to be a criminal. Even if the information is already public and known by most, its just the intention made by these people that bugs me.