chatmasta

Hey,

I've always found the Blackhat vs. Whitehat saga to be pretty fascinating. People have very heated opinions on it, and often times it turns into an ethical debate. The thing that makes it tough is that everyone has a differing opinion of where the line between blackhat and whitehat is actually drawn. So I've devised this survey. It not only asks you what you think blackhat is, but delves into specific examples.

To have both a sufficient sample size as well as varying groups of people, I'm posting this same survey at three different forums.

Sitepoint: here
Digitalpoint: here
Wickedfire: here

It would be cool if you filled this out, and the results will definitely be very interesting to look at.

SURVEY CODE: general pastebin - Anonymous - post number 671823

Thanks for filling it out, and be sure to check out what people are saying at other forums too!

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productionhead

too much work

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John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the ad, the click, and the conversion: no affiliate cometh unto the Offer, but by me.

breen

Very few people who discuss blackhat actually know how to do it.

productionhead

haha i know many names but might get banned if i say so

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John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the ad, the click, and the conversion: no affiliate cometh unto the Offer, but by me.

chatmasta

laaaaaaaaaaaazyyy

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ImagesAndWords

Interesting survey, chatmasta.
Btw..when will you change your avatar? It makes my monitor cry, lol.

BH is not for everyone. But certainly profitable when done right and thoroughly.

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MrCat

BH + get caught = BANNED!

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droplister

1. What do you see as the line (however blurry) that seperates BH and WH? Try to give some examples.
I'm not down with spam or cloaking.

2. Do you practice BH?
Somewhat, but just as hard as it is to define either bh or wh it is to know if I am doing bh or wh.

3. Why or why not?


4. If yes, do you own both BH sites and WH sites? Which do you focus more time on?
WH

5. How do you feel about people who practice what you consider blackhat?
either a) jealous of their listings b) mad because of how their sites reflect on the industry as a whole. Like, I am a domainer also, and many people think we all just register typos to try to send kids to porn sites because people do that, but not all.

6. Check all that you CONSIDER blackhat with an X. Check twice if you've done it, are doing it, or plan to do it. Check three times if you simply consider it stepping WAY out of line.

[] Mass site generation
Comments:

[x] Content scrapers (possibly markoved)
Comments: While I don't use a scraper I certainly have copied my fair share of content. Laziness more than blackhat.

[x] Trackback spamming
Comments: I turn off trackbacks on my blogs.

[xx] Comment spamming
Comments: I used commenthut for a while. I would actually read post and reply with related comments. So not large scale or automated.

[] Blogfarms on your own domains
Comments: Not familiar with this enough.

[x] Mass generating parasite hosting accounts (e.g. blogger.com, wordpress.org) for the purpose of building links (blogfarms fall under this category)
Comments: Meh.

[x] Mass generating those accounts for the purpose of gaining many links to them in a short time, and redirecting traffic to another site
Comments: MSN is full of ringtone blogs that do this. Those are the people I'm jealous of. (See question 5)

[] Automating directory submission, including topsites
Comments: I see no problem with this, your just making a tedious process faster.

[x] Breaking CAPTCHAs, or otherwise bypassing them
Comments: Breaking and entering :P

[] Exploiting social news sites (digg, reddit, etc) to gain traffic MANUALLY
Comments: Everyone else does it.

[x] Exploiting those sites in an automated fashion to gain traffic OR links. Specify which
Comments: Not so sure about this one.

[x] Using social networks in an automated fashion to gain traffic
Comments: Same feeling as comment spam.

[] Digg rings/exchanges, stumble exchanges, or anything of the sort
Comments: Not sure, I think this is grey?

[x] Keyword stuffing (including tricks to hide blocks of text)
Comments:

[] Referral Spamming
Comments:

[x] Cloaking - showing relevant but highly "SEO"ed pages to the search engines (this includes things like scraped markoved content - please specifiy in the comments), and more friendly content to the user
Comments: If you mean redirect them to an affiliate offer by friendly content than x otherwise it's more grey.

[] Reciprocal Linking
Comments: Sure

[] Buying/selling Links
Comments: Fuck google.

[] Exploiting Widespread XSS Vulnerabilities to gain Links
Comments: Not familiar, but it sounds bad.

7. Any additional comments?
Eh, Im not a blackhat after all.

wie08e54

Ok, I printed the survey and I'm now writing down my answer that, I hope, will be as accurate as I can.

rubixcrubeman

I agree to much work to even read, the fedz are watchin at least thats what the guy at the mental hospital said to me.

Jay

1. What do you see as the line (however blurry) that seperates BH and WH? Try to give some examples.
The fine line between whitehat and blackhat is divided by what you use to edit your site. If your site is developed with Frontpage, then your site is whitehat, provided you use no blackhat SEO techniques such as keyword optimization (using a single keyword more than 3 times on a page).

2. Do you practice BH?
Sometimes, when I use Dreamweaver.

3. Why or why not?
Because I enjoy being a rebel.

4. If yes, do you own both BH sites and WH sites? Which do you focus more time on?
Yes, I own both. I focus an equal amount on my sites. I spend about 1/16th of my time working on my websites, and another 1/16th on Facebook.

I spend 7/8ths of my online time downloading movies,
3/4ths of which is porn.
1/8th featuring Jenna Haze.

5. How do you feel about people who practice what you consider blackhat?
They should be BANNED from the internet! THEY DISRUPT THE SANCTITY OF REAL WEBSITES!

6. Check all that you CONSIDER blackhat with an X. Check twice if you've done it, are doing it, or plan to do it. Check three times if you simply consider it stepping WAY out of line.

[X] Mass site generation
Comments: I don't believe anybody should own more than 3 websites, period.

[X] Content scrapers (possibly markoved)
Comments: Scraping can damage the integrity of server hard drives.

[X] Trackback spamming
Comments: Trackback sounds racist. Illegal.

[X] Comment spamming
Comments: This should be illegal

[X] Blogfarms on your own domains
Comments: If by blogfarms, you mean crabs and by domains you mean penis, then hell no!

[X] Automating directory submission, including topsites
Comments: This should be illegal, unless it could cause pain to a DMOZ editor, in which case, its all good.

[X] Breaking CAPTCHAs, or otherwise bypassing them
Comments: Any CAPTCHA that can be solved by a human on the first intent needs to be redone!

[X] Using social networks in an automated fashion to gain traffic
Comments: I don't know why anybody would want to do this. I use Myspace to chat with my girlz.

[X] Digg rings/exchanges, stumble exchanges, or anything of the sort
Comments: Is a Digg ring like a cock ring or more like a circlejerk?

[X] Keyword stuffing (including tricks to hide blocks of text)
Comments: I'm all about stuffin' the shit out of keywords.

[X] Cloaking - showing relevant but highly "SEO"ed pages to the search engines (this includes things like scraped markoved content - please specifiy in the comments), and more friendly content to the user
Comments:

[X] Buying/selling Links
Comments: Buying and selling links is like selling hoes, the page eventually gets worn out.

[X] Exploiting Widespread XSS Vulnerabilities to gain Links
Comments: Is XSS some sort of new ecstasy pill?

7. Any additional comments?

SEO is the root of all evil and therefore qualifies as blackhat. It hurts the REAL site owners who take the time to choose their site colors in Frontpage.

breen

BH VS. WH is so stupid we'd all do BH if we knew how to

georgiecas1y

1. What do you see as the line (however blurry) that seperates BH and WH? Try to give some examples.
WH seo is when you create a website for the long term, you genuinely feel it offers value to users, so you create a pleasing design and don't annoy users with ads for the quick sale. An example is my main WH site which users enjoy and I get a lot of return visitors. BH is when you just want the quick sale so your site is full of scraped crap and aff links or adsense.

In the methods used to promote sites, nearly everythings BH. I use everything I can on my WH site to increase ranking and get more visitors without doing stuff that I know I will get banned for. Like PM spamming users of rival forums, buying links and scraping content without getting into duplicate. Most of the time I outrank the people I scarped off, lol. WH methods I'd say is more marketing, creating link bait, convincing authorities to link to you. WH seo's seem like they don't have the technical knowledge to do BH. I'm amazed that people with no programming knowledge can make decent money online apart from PPC.

2. Do you practice BH?
I dabbled in pure BH but it's getting harder and harder
3. Why or why not?
WH is handy that you can get lazy for a few months and still make bank. BH you need to be working the whole time.
4. If yes, do you own both BH sites and WH sites? Which do you focus more time on?
WH but with BH methods mostly
5. How do you feel about people who practice what you consider blackhat?
Fair play to them, I wish I had more time to delve more into it.
6. Check all that you CONSIDER blackhat with an X. Check twice if you've done it, are doing it, or plan to do it. Check three times if you simply consider it stepping WAY out of line.

[xx] Mass site generation
Comments: very basic

[xx] Content scrapers (possibly markoved)
Comments: lol, all the time

[x] Trackback spamming
Comments:

[x] Comment spamming
Comments:

[x] Blogfarms on your own domains
Comments:

[x] Mass generating parasite hosting accounts (e.g. blogger.com, wordpress.org) for the purpose of building links (blogfarms fall under this category)
Comments:

[x] Mass generating those accounts for the purpose of gaining many links to them in a short time, and redirecting traffic to another site
Comments:

[xx] Automating directory submission, including topsites
Comments: didnt write my own scripts, just use xrumer

[xx] Breaking CAPTCHAs, or otherwise bypassing them
Comments: doing this for a social netowork im spamming

[] Exploiting social news sites (digg, reddit, etc) to gain traffic MANUALLY
Comments: i'd say this is wh.

[x] Exploiting those sites in an automated fashion to gain traffic OR links. Specify which
Comments:

[x] Using social networks in an automated fashion to gain traffic
Comments:

[x] Digg rings/exchanges, stumble exchanges, or anything of the sort
Comments:

[x] Keyword stuffing (including tricks to hide blocks of text)
Comments:

[x] Referral Spamming
Comments:

[xx] Cloaking - showing relevant but highly "SEO"ed pages to the search engines (this includes things like scraped markoved content - please specifiy in the comments), and more friendly content to the user
Comments:

[] Reciprocal Linking
Comments: this is wh, has to be

[] Buying/selling Links
Comments: wh because you buy off relevant sites, buying off non-relevant doesnt work for me

[xx] Exploiting Widespread XSS Vulnerabilities to gain Links
Comments: not really working anymore

7. Any additional comments?

you mentioned nothing about social network spamming, which is what i do a lot.

Jon

Your mom is Blackhat SEO.

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georgiecas1y

profound

indicas

it's easy, BH have balls, WH have none.

chatmasta

Yeah I did, george: "Using social networks in an automated fashion to gain traffic"

Lol Jay that was a very well thought out reply.

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DaveEMG

1. 1. What do you see as the line (however blurry) that seperates BH and WH? Try to give some examples.
2. Whenever an exploit exists that is obviously not in the best interests of the user.
3. 2. Do you practice BH?
4. No.
5. 3. Why or why not?
6. There's ample money to be made while making the web a better place / less cluttered / more useful.
7. 4. If yes, do you own both BH sites and WH sites? Which do you focus more time on?
8. 5. How do you feel about people who practice what you consider blackhat?
9. Generally poorly. Blackhatters aren't adding to the richness of the medium. Blackhatters are essentially website-based spammers.
10. 6. Check all that you CONSIDER blackhat with an X. Check twice if you've done it, are doing it, or plan to do it. Check three times if you simply consider it stepping WAY out of line.
11. [x] Mass site generation
12. Comments:
13. [x] Content scrapers (possibly markoved)
14. Comments: Probably the worst. This is outright copyright theft.
    
15. [x] Trackback spamming
16. Comments:
17. [x] Comment spamming
18. Comments:
19. [x] Blogfarms on your own domains
20. Comments:
21. [x] Mass generating parasite hosting accounts (e.g. blogger.com, wordpress.org) for the purpose of building links (blogfarms fall under this category)
22. Comments:
23. [x] Mass generating those accounts for the purpose of gaining many links to them in a short time, and redirecting traffic to another site
24. Comments:
25. [] Automating directory submission, including topsites
26. Comments: Directories should be automated; it should be straightforward to get a site listed on the web.
    
27. [x] Breaking CAPTCHAs, or otherwise bypassing them
28. Comments: Captchas only exist because spammers & blackhatters exist.
    
29. [] Exploiting social news sites (digg, reddit, etc) to gain traffic MANUALLY
30. Comments: Depends on the exploit.
    
31. [x] Exploiting those sites in an automated fashion to gain traffic OR links. Specify which
32. Comments:
33. [x] Using social networks in an automated fashion to gain traffic
34. Comments: Again, social networks work much better when there is trust between users that there is an actual person on the other end of the transaction.
    
35. [] Digg rings/exchanges, stumble exchanges, or anything of the sort
36. Comments:
    
37. [] Keyword stuffing (including tricks to hide blocks of text)
38. Comments: Up to the SE's to understand the pages.
    
39. [] Referral Spamming
40. Comments:
41. [x] Cloaking - showing relevant but highly "SEO"ed pages to the search engines (this includes things like scraped markoved content - please specifiy in the comments), and more friendly content to the user
42. Comments:
43. [] Reciprocal Linking
44. Comments: The web has always been based on the quality of reciprocal linking.
    
45. [] Buying/selling Links
46. Comments: No, again, the web is all about linking, free or commercially.
    
47. [] Exploiting Widespread XSS Vulnerabilities to gain Links
48. Comments: I dunno what XSS is, but I'm guessing probably bad.
    

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Vapor

hey dumbass, post this on a BLACKHAT FORUM not on digitalpoint ya fucking moron.

sorry i'm in an angry mood right now.



excuse me while i have light up this fatty

Vapor

No, she isn't blackhat SEO. She just invented it. but, okay. if you must...