Black Hat & Gray Hat Tactics: Is It Really Worth It?

Bad guys have been finding ways to beat search engine spiders since Yahoo launched the first SE in 1994. Called "black hats," their goal is to undermine, subvert or circumvent SE rating factors and indexing protocols.

A site is spidered. Keywords are counted up, title tags are scanned, links qualified and, using a formula, called an algorithm, sites are assessed for purpose and ranked according to queries made by search engine users. Simple, right?

So, if a consumer Google's "snow globes," links to sites that sell snow globes appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs) based on each site's relevance to that user's query words, called keywords in the parlance of ecommerce.

The problem is, SE spiders are dumber than dirt. They can only read letter strings without "understanding" whether that body of text is legit or a black hat ploy.

Black Hat Tactics

There are lots of them. For example, invisible text. If you place a block of white text against a white background, it becomes "invisible" to human eyeballs, but bots (another name for spiders) "see" it, scan it and index it back at the home base- the search engine database, sometimes called the SE index.

Using this tactic, black hats can mislead a bot into "thinking" that a site is selling ABC when, in fact, it's selling XYZ.

Another black hat tactic? Redirects. You query a search engine for "cruise information" and get back a million hits on the SERPs. So you click on a promising link offering cruise information and you're immediately bounced to a time share site out of Istanbul. You've been redirected based on the fact that if you've got money for a cruise, you've got money for a week in Turkey every summer.

Spiders As Private Eyes

As black hat tactics spread, search engine results became less and less relevant and, therefore, less useful to users. So, SE algorithms we're made more complex, enabling spiders to not only index sites, but to also serve as private eyes in sniffing out black hat tactics. Yet, for every new algo, black hats develop nefarious, evil means to subvert the new system. It's an on-going battle between search engine programmers and ecommerce outlaws

Google Makes The Rules

Google is by far the most popular search engine. Lose its power to drive visitors to your site and it's time for an unintended career change.

When a Google spider detects something fishy, alarm bells go off back at Google HQ. Black hat tactics simply aren't acceptable and sites that are even suspected of digital shenanigans lose page rank, risk being partially or mis-indexed and even banned (called graybarred) from the Google SE. You might as well close the shutters and put out the closed sign. Graybarred, and you've heard the death knell for your site.

Gray Hat Tactics: Illicit or Just Smart Coding?

If what you're doing is intended to fool visiting bots, it's illicit (black hat) and may well end your ebiz in the blink of a bot's eye.

But what about tactics that are harmless, yet not in total compliance with the rules Google has established to protect the integrity of its SERPs? Gray hat tactics. Do we, as site owners and designers, have a responsibility to play it straighter than Google requires (or is able to detect)?

Here's an example. SE bots follow pages that are linked within a site like an ant follows a crumb trail. Experienced site designers and SEOs know this and, consequently, they link lots of pages to keep the bots attention for as long as possible. Why? Sites are rarely spidered in their entirety and the longer a site is spidered the more of its pages are indexed (stored) in the SE database.

However, these "text links," which we've all come to identify by their blue color, don't appear as links to the human reader. The text is the same color as the text surrounding it. The reason for this is because the links aren't intended for human use. They're hidden links, for bots only.

Does this diminish the user's experience in any way? Does it subvert Google's efforts to deliver the most relevant SERPs? Or, is it just smart coding, pointing spiders down a specific path without distracting the reader with what are, in effect, fake page links- there for the benefit of bots not eyeballs.

Ultimately, it's Google's call and again, bots aren't bright.

Safe SEO Practices

As a new or experienced site owner, the question of safe SEO practices should be an important consideration in the design and administration of your on-line enterprise. Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to the success of your new business. That's true.

However, if your site is gray-barred, you're gone. Therefore, the prudent designer will not engage in anything that might remotely be deemed suspicious by a Google bot. Indeed, you may not see the visitor traffic you would see using ethically ambiguous tactics like those described above. And your conversion rate might not be quite as high.

But the bottom line all comes down to your bottom line. Just because Google bots can't or don't detect it doesn't make it licit- even if the intent is relatively benign like the hidden links example above.

There are lots of perfectly acceptable white hat SEO strategies- licit and safe. And new ones come along almost every day, in part because SE algos are tweaked regularly. Sure, black or gray hat tactics may generate additional foot traffic. For awhile. But eventually, these subversions of the SE's prime directive to assess and index web sites will be detected. Eventually. So ask yourself, when developing your SE optimization strategy, if it's worth risking your on-line business. Because that's what's at stake.

The conclusion? Site owners should hold themselves to the highest SEO standards in the design and optimization of their sites. Not only is it the right thing to do, given the sanctions imposed by Google, it's the smart thing to do.

Always wear a white hat and the Google gods will always smile kindly on your site.