Category Archives: Internet Alerts

Anything to do with security, viruses, or malicious practices online.

Golden Bullet backlinks – How to Kill a website in 100 backlinks

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I was enjoying the A4uexpo in Amsterdam, the people, the events and sessions (and the bar of course) but there was one specific thing I was concerned about and it was the mention of the “Golden Bullet” back links.

It was made perfectly clear in the expo from all the SEO guys there that the best and most effective way of driving traffic to a website is via back links. Lets repeat that, get BACK LINKS… still not clicking? JUST GET BACK LINKS. (though of course adding good content is a natural generator of back links as well and makes life a little easier).

But, bearing in mind that the internet is pretty vast, and also that im currently trying to help a client deal with a rather unscrupulous rip off merchant based on the other side of the planet, the question arouse about using back links and generating back links to your competitors.

eh? give my competitors back links?  Are you mental?

nope. But I wish I was.

Who said they had to be good back links?

Golden Bullet backlinks How to Kill a website in 100 backlinks

Let me clarify.  Simply put the Google algorithm likes high quality sites (lets say for example, the BBC.co.uk). As far as Google are concerned the BBC can basically do no wrong, its respected, established and considered an authority. Hence its always pretty nice to get a back link from them to you by being news worthy in some form or other. Also it would be high on impossible to pull them down with the Golden Bullet Backlink due to this already established authority.

Hence we all work hard at generating back links, a mention, and editorial, or advertorial to include a link from these respected authority sites to your own.

Reverse Engineering Backlinks

But what if you decided to reverse engineer the back linking protocol?  How about targeting all your competitors and generating back links to them from the dirtiest,  scummiest,  spammy websites around all the bad neighbourhoods on the internet… god its scary, but it seems that these “services” are currently on offer.  Its also been a concern of mine for some time and a reason I hate the requirement of back links as they are simply beyond your control.

Now you add all these back links to your competitors and there rankings begin to drop, their respect and authority is reduced and you climb the rankings to fill the void.  Result.  Also how do you think they will remove these back links?

Think about this for a second.

Thought about it? Any ideas?… me either.

It would be a manual, long winded process of sending emails and requests if not downright begging letters to these bad neighbourhoods to try and convince them to remove this god forsaken link that’s hurting your site.  Do you think they would care? Now imagine you had 1000 of these links pointing at you from 1000 different sites.

That has got to be a scary, scary situation to be in.

The Golden Bullet

The way it stands now is that you can actually employ services to utilise this tactic on your behalf.  I’m not clear on the numbers, the effectiveness, or how Google (never mind LIVE and Yahoo) actually reacts to this or what processes are in place to address it, but will certainly be looking into it.

If any of you guys know anything about it, please do drop me a comment  but in the meantime, please dont think about walking down this road!

Youtube.co.uk remove Music Videos

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Youtube UK in Deadlock with Performing Rights Society for Music

Youtube.co.uk remove Music VideosYoutube seem to have hit a deadlock with the Performing Rights Society for Music in the United Kingdom with the result that they are being forced to remove videos for artists covered under the Society.

“We value the creativity of musicians and song writers and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright,” said parent company Google in a statement.

“But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before. The costs are simply prohibitive for us – under PRS’s proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback.”

This means that groups such as EMI, Universal, Warner and Sony BMG will all have artists assigned to them removed for UK viewers.

Guess why?

Yep.  Money.

What they say

According to the report in the Guardian Newspaper :

Patrick Walker, YouTube’s director of video partnerships, said he couldn’t give a figure for the proportion of site traffic generated by music videos, but that music videos are some of the most popular content on the site and generate a lot of activity including remixes and on music blogs.

“This is about long-term viability,” he said. “If the next Arctic Monkeys is going to surface we need to get this to work. It’s in the interest of the music industry – we’re not just doing this for us. The record industry needs a new business models so it’s kind of a shame that this has happened. But sometimes you have to step back to step forwards.”

even though this has been rebutted by Steve Porter of the PRS:

“We were shocked and disappointed to receive a call late this afternoon informing us of Google’s drastic action,” said PRS chief executive Steve Porter. “… which we believe only punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent.”

Clearly pre-empting the fury of YouTube users, PRS emphasised that it did not ask YouTube to remove the videos and “urges them to reconsider their decision as a matter of urgency”.

But even if PRS is completely squeaky clean in this episode, it comes soon after the closing days of the Pirate Bay trial and for web-savvy consumers it will confirm the gulf between the traditional music industry and the technology they love.

It also follows some bad press for PRS over licence chasing; PRS has allegedly been pestering small businesses demanding licences if, for example, they have more than two staff and listen to the radio.

So where does that leave the artists and the UK viewer YouTube user. Up the creek it seems. It amazes me the short sightedness of some groups who fail to realise the significance of technology in their industries today and the potential resulting backlash from the public and artists alike.

If this isnt rectified quickly it could mean serious implications for Youtube UK and artisits as other mediums are imployed to view their preferred content.

Watching with interest… (or not watching with interest if it happens to be a music video :P)

Canonical URL Plugin for WordPress

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Canonical URL Plugin for WordpressI think  bloggers will be very interested to read about the new canonical tag and the plugin developed by Joost de Valk now available to download and installable ahead of time!

As per usual Joost has been on the ball and ahead of the game in explaining the reasons for and the solution to canonical issues and again provides us with this cool little plugin so instead of waffling on about it I will pass you over to him so you can read and download his new Canonical Plugin for Woordpress.

Also by doing this it means I can get back to installing it…stop reading this and go get it. (And while your there make sure and leave him a nice comment, he gets all giddy over things like that.)