Payday Loans Results

Ashton · May 22, 2012

The results for "payday loans" have been properly skewed by black hats over the past week, take a look at them at the moment and you should see a couple of sites on the first page which are totally out of place.

http://www.sigma-cetl.ac.uk/

http://www.froginawell.net/

My view is that both of these were hacked and 301d to the number 1 site to get it up there, weird how they are staying in the results now that they are now longer compromised.

Unless of course the server is displaying a different view for google. Take a look at the frog cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...b&fp=a083a0480db8ea0d&ix=h9&biw=2133&bih=1065

Interesting non-the-less.

grantw · May 22, 2012

It's been messed up for ages, 301's going everywhere, usually most of the top 10 domains have been reg'd in the last 2 months and see a lot of polish and romanian addresses in the whois!

Grant

AuthorityDomain · May 22, 2012

Lol nice one google, not sure its a 301 redirect though, only thing I can see is 2 recent links from some random unrelated blog type sites.

No reference of keyword anywhere on the site, not in the domain name, the title or heading tags, just 2 links using payday loans in the anchor text.

Doubt it will stay there long, but very odd. Bet they are getting some nice traffic now!

Ashton · May 22, 2012

grantw said:
It's been messed up for ages, 301's going everywhere, usually most of the top 10 domains have been reg'd in the last 2 months and see a lot of polish and romanian addresses in the whois!

Grant

I know that ^^ However, this is even more messed up than that.

Blossom · May 22, 2012

Looks like froginawell ranks for various drugs terms as well.

Agreed on the hacking but not sure if it's the 301s that did it, although there don't seem to be traces of injected links.

AuthorityDomain · May 22, 2012

I think someone is doing an seo experiment with those domains. I might even do my own

info:froginawell.net shows what could be happening!

dashu1 · May 22, 2012

It's very much the same for the "make money online" market.

The same guy had workonlineathome.co.uk at no.1 in no time, then when it vanished it was quickly replaced by makemoneydotcom.co.uk, which has vanished to be replaced (at no 5 currently) makemoneonline.com, and he also has trenchdoc.com on page 1 for the same term.

Wouldn't be surprised if he's behind the ranking of the payday loans sites too, because it's all very similar - various domains on different hosts registered in a variety of names, all 301'd all over the place, links out to 301'd domains that point back, and inbound links galore to all of them.

Obviously the short term gain is great, but in the long term it's a loophole that will be closed.

Surely.

But then again it is Google.

Hey ho, make hay while the sun shines I guess.

Good luck to them.

lethal0r · May 23, 2012

Ashton said:
My view is that both of these were hacked and 301d to the number 1 site to get it up there, weird how they are staying in the results now that they are now longer compromised.

i'd agree, good sleuthing!

froginawell at least is on wordpress, currently the most recent version but it could easily have been an old one and been hacked.

look how recent payday-4vip.co.uk was registered - 9th may. even if it just lasts a month that is a few thousand £££ for the lucky recipient, provided t3leads.com payout!

Ashton · May 23, 2012

Yep its an interesting scenario and very very bad for google should it continue. Whilst the wordpress is up to date, perhaps it was a plugin or part of their theme that was vulnerable. There was a zero-day vulnerability in a file called timthumb.php which turned images into thumbnails a while back. It compromised every wootheme and hundreds of thousands of websites.

I guess good coders could make a search engine to find the old timthumb footprint and then hack the highest DA site that came up (for example, I doubt this is how they did it though)

I'm still curious about why frog, stigma and payday4vip are still in the SERPs though. If the 301s have stopped, why are they still remaining. For pd4vip perhaps they have hacked other sites and they are forwarding, but what is making the other 2 stay.

Maybe someone has discovered away of looping flow or similar - As in each of the sites are buffering each other up.

lethal0r · May 23, 2012

Ashton said:
For pd4vip perhaps they have hacked other sites and they are forwarding, but what is making the other 2 stay.

Maybe someone has discovered away of looping flow or similar - As in each of the sites are buffering each other up.

that would make sense wouldnt it? if you only 301 one site to another, the redirecting site does not rank, so that would suggest this involves a chain of 2 or more 301s. perhaps the frog site is, or was, in the middle of the chain. maybe they used some 302 redirects too?

this morning the paydayvip site was about 7th and now it doesn't appear to be anywhere.

Ashton · May 23, 2012

Hah yup, looks like its been killed. However, looking down the domain authority of the SERPs, I think that the next 2 to go up are:

paydayloansltv.co.uk
paydayloanslkc.co.uk

Currently on p2 for the term. The registrant has a Russian name, and we all know hacking and Russia go together pretty well.

Backorder · May 23, 2012

the parrot loans is interesting, 0pr, registered earlier this month and is position 1

Ashton · May 23, 2012

Parrot is more legit:

paydayloans.org.uk
payday-loans.co.uk

ratboy · May 23, 2012

If it is owned by paydayloans.org.uk (didn't they get burned badly by a penguin/panda) then it's a 301 ploy using the new fresh untarnished parrot domain.

ratboy · May 23, 2012

You have to admire the bloke mind you, 1 month later and he is #1

Ashton · May 23, 2012

ratboy said:
If it is owned by paydayloans.org.uk (didn't they get burned badly by a penguin/panda) then it's a 301 ploy using the new fresh untarnished parrot domain.

From my understanding, they were top with paydayloans.org.uk for quite a while, then moved to octopusloans.co.uk (probably to build a sort of brand or improve conversions) then that got hit by penguin so they moved to parrot which is doing well.

Either way, they are definitely the number 1 player for that term.

Its also a former member of these forums who quit a while back.

chippyb · May 23, 2012

I say fair play to the guy if its working for him, shame he couldnt put the effort into something long term instead but im guessing if is making some money from this otherwise what would be the point

dashu1 · May 23, 2012

Hey, how many long term businesses got clobbered by Google and put out of business this time around?

While me and the payday loans guy had some fallings out, fair play to him if he can keep getting throw-away domains to no.1 and then replace them with another.

Google have made it more attractive to do that than try to build a long term business, because look what can happen when you do.

If he can make some serious dosh while that method works then he'd be an idiot not to.

Ashton · May 23, 2012

To be honest, I think this is a long term business for him. He has been up there for months and whilst he's occasionally dipped for a few days he always seems to go back up.

I think the only potential issue for him is if they reweigh 301s power. However I think he's investing into building a really clean link profile to Parrot now.

@Chippy, I wouldn't have put it as "Fair play" for the hackers! It's pretty illegal and can really disrupt other sites.