Would you knowingly use search engine optimization techniques on your web site that could get your web site banned from the major search engines if reported or discovered? Are you willing to ditch your domain and start all over again? I am curious - please post your thoughts on this.

Many popular search engine optimizers use techniques such as invisible links and text, dozens of "doorway pages" (it does not matter what you call them - they are against the search engine terms of service). Are you aware if your optimizer is using these techniques? Did you know that you are taking a great risk when these techniques are used on your site?

Would you attempt to sue the optimizer if your site were to be banned as a result of using techniques known to result in banning?

Please respond with your thoughts on this.

Very good points.

I've been in the optimizing business since 1997 and seen techniques come and go. There were tactics people did early in the game that looked clever and they actually made a profitable run at it. Until the engines caught up and zapped them.

The optimizers stayed a step ahead with tactics, though. For some, domains are expendable; they just move on with new domains after some get banned.

For example, there's this one guy who made millions of dollars in less than one year through clever SEO, running as an affiliate of viagra, early in the game. And he used many, many domains. There's a view that if you get one banned, you move on to your hundreds of other domains.

But, of course, that's not good in today's SEO (although there are people still doing stuff) and certainly not practical for real estate.

Myself, I don't believe in being too "clever". I think optimizing straight-up according to the rules is better for your business in the long-term. Better with the engines, too, because you keep your placements a lot longer.

I wouldn't optimize using shady tactics for myself, and I certainly wouldn't do it for a client. If an optimizer did get a client banned, though, I can see there being grounds for liabilty. In other professions, practitioners are held accountable by their clients. But because this is the Net, I'm not sure if there's precedent in the courts.

Just my .02.

[This message has been edited by Ruperto (edited 07-17-2003).]

Thanks for your input Ruperto. I am very curious as to whether agents actually know their optimizer (SEO) is using spam techniques and if so are they willing to chance being banned. Or, do they just hire an optimizer based on recommendations of others without being fully aware of how positions are achieved? Any agents out there willing to share their experiences?

Right, I hear ya'! The thing about getting your domain banned in real estate, it's pretty serious. Because you invest so much in trying to brand the domain. Like, if your name is Joe Q. Doe and you get your domain www.JoeQDoe.com banned, that's pretty serious damage.

Those spammer/optimizer take chances with throw-away, expendable domains. But if they treat your domain as expendable, it's not easy to sacrifice your entire brand.

Exactly right! I think it would be pretty hard to successfully sue after the fact though. How could you prove you were penalized? No search engine would admit to that because it would open the floodgates for their own lawsuites.

Remember when SearchKing sued Google over being penalized? Google won - claiming there was no penalty just an opinion that the site was of little value (if I remember correctly). A SEO could defend using the same defense - the search engines just decided the site was of low value and did not penalize.

The poor agent is left with no remedy other than starting over from scratch. And it is not a question of "IF it will happen" but "WHEN it will happen" - because it will happen sooner or later. Google has stated they are working on filters to catch exactly the tactics these SEOs are using.

Recently used INEEDHITS.COM an Inktomi reseller the day they submitted me I dropped of MSN entirely or perhas it was the seond or third time they sbmitted me I don't know but I ranked #24 and added some content and moved up to 21# and them complained they had not submitted me and BAM I'm not listed at all!

A little history to shed some light....
Inktomi started paid spidering a few years ago as a solution to a problem they had created.

In those days, if your site was listed in Inktomi it would disappear after 5 or 6 weeks. If you waited until it was found by their spider that was following links on other web sites - it would soon reappear near the same position it had when it was dropped. If you resubmitted it - it would go to the bottom of the list and not be found for keyword searches for weeks.

It would eventually start to rise again and just when it would reach an acceptable position - it would disappear again. And so on and so on.

Inktomi introduced paid spidering to solve the problem of sites disappearing and having to resubmit. People flocked to pay as in those days Inktomi was a big player - providing listings for Yahoo.

Amazingly, the problem of listings dissappearing seemed to stop. The problem of a listing dropping to the bottom of the heap once resubmitted did not.

I used to pay for Inktomi spidering but found exactly what you have found - that listings tended to drop and disappear. I stopped paying and after a while my listings are all at the top of the heap again - and they stay there. I manually submit new sites and after a while they too rise and seem to stick in the index.

My advice is to never ever resubmit a listing that is already in the index - of any search engine. 9 times out of ten it will cause the positions to drop.

Incidentally, AltaVista worked in a similar fashion and probably still does - just that nobody cares anymore because the traffic from AV is not worth worrying about anymore. Just submit once manually and forget about it. Don't pay either Inktomi or AltaVista - it is a waste of money

Problem in most people are not savvy enough to know when an SEO firm is using blackhat strategies. I mean, many realtors don't even know about PPC so how are they to know the difference between good SEO and bad SEO?

It is unfortunate but real estate is an industry that attracts to make snake oil salesmen looking to part the hard working realtor with his earned commissions.

Doug, I saw this post and it is interesting that when you look at the latest update, Jagger, for Google going on many people think that their pages are doing poorly or doing well but it seems that the people that are focussed on content are doing a lot better in the update than the peole using tricks. Content is always the biggest factor, incoming links may be the second biggest factor but losts of people are looking for shortcuts in building sites are not that interested in the content.

"Black Hat SEO" is always bad in my opinion as it degrades the quality of the internet in the very least.

Hi Doug, I never submit my sites, but sometimes I wonder if other people may be submitting my sites to get me lowered in the rankings or if they submitted it over and over even get my site banned.

Clint

Agreed billnad.

Clint, I don't think oversubmission would get you banned. I doubt that it would cause your positions to drop either (it used to in Altavista but I don't think it would in today's search engines). Submitting just doesn't do any good but I doubt that it hurts you.

Thanks Doug, That makes sense, because it wouldn't be fair to lose your site because of something you didn't have control over. I have heard that linking to a site that has been de-listed can have a negative impact on your site. I guess you would have control over that, but it would be very hard to check something like that.

Clint

I link to lots of sites that have been penalized (a PR 0 penalty in Google) and it has never hurt me. It is true that linking to the wrong sites can hurt you - that is generally called a "bad neighborhood". If you link with sites involved in a linking scheme that is caught by Google you can be penalized along with them. If you have a real estate site and link to porn and gambling sites or affiliate programs it can hurt you too.

No, of course not. But most are at the mercy of those who claim to be the experts in the seo field. If only one thing can be accurately determined from jagger and the confusion caused in seo forums around the web as jagger was/is happening, is that a majority of search engine optimizers are learning as they go as well. Seems to me there is a lot of follow the leader going on in the seo field and we all know that sometimes the leader we choose is not the good type.

I do my own seo work. If my site drops off the face of the internet world, then I have only myself to blame but If I rank number 1 on google for my selected keywords, I'm confident I did it within the accepted guidelines.