pageoneresults - 6:25 pm on Jun 21, 2008 (gmt 0)

I hope that Google has a dedicated sub-team for researching the footprints of the latest trends. I know that many tricks that worked last year have been neutered this year.

I believe much of that stuff from the past is just the "upper layer" of it all. Those are the "visible footprints".

Let me see if I can get some heated discussion going. Let's paint a picture and you tell me what the end result would be. Hey, if you are worried about what I'm going to share, then you shouldn't read any further. This is rated #*$! for SEO. Don't worry, I won't go into details but I'll throw some theories out there...

301 Cloaking
302 Cloaking
DNS Hijacking
Garbitrage

And I won't even start the discussion as to what is happening within the "domainers" space. Whew! Those guys are making money hand over fist in some instances. Big, BIG, bucks passing hands.

Tell me, for those of you who fully understand this, would the bulk of what is really happening out there today be easily detected? And, what percentage of it is "truly cloaked". I mean, I'm aware of strategies that utilize groups of throwaway domains, all via some sort of proxy, etc... I've tried backtracking some of this stuff and it takes time. And I'm literally clueless in some instances and have to bring others in to explain to me what I'm finding. But, I'm finding "some" of it.

I would imagine those who are "in tune" with their logfiles by the second have a clear picture of what might be happening out there. They of course have made the changes to combat that which they have control over. The rest of the stuff is a continual battle in finding out ways to stay ahead of whatever sabotage efforts are at play. If you read the Google Webmaster Guidelines, they clearly state this...

Your rank and your inclusion are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including content choices and site design.

I'll say it again. That part of the guidelines negates this part of the guidelines...

There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we suggest contacting the webmaster of the site in question. Google aggregates and organizes information published on the web; we don't control the content of these pages.

For me, the above two statements paint a very clear picture. If your platform is open to various exploits outlined in multiple topics here and abroad, you are open to sabotage and Google really can't do much about it other than their normal routine of finding it and developing an algorithmical solution to combat it. But, at that point, it may be too late, the damage has probably already been done for who knows how many thousands (or millions) of websites. The recovery periods may be far too long for many to stay afloat and they will shut their doors.

That was the intended goal of the original sabotage campaign.

Ting, ting, ting...

And, the more data Google make available publicly, the easier it is for those performing the sabotage...

Google Trends
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