SEO Spam Case Study

ShopFactory.com (by Steffan Klein & Michael Veith, according to the About page) is a system to help you create online shops.

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Wait, isn’t the “h2” element used for headers? Yeah, that, and trying to fool Google into believing this backlink is very important (the link is additionally given a CSS style – “A:link {text-decoration: none}” – that makes it look like normal text). It seems to work, too: I get around 86,600 pages for the Google search [Michiel, who sent me this, says “I hope Matt Cutts will read this, since I lost my faith in the Google Spam Reports.”

*Well, unless they carefully read through the last couple of sentences of the long terms of service, which include this statement: “3D3.COM [maker of ShopFactory] has the right to access website data and website content to use for promotional purposes and the supply of other services.”