Payday Loans Results

[Backorder]

seems we have a new number 1!

KSKQ Ashland Oregon
kskq .org
KSKQ 89.5 FM. Homegrown Radio for the Rogue Valley.

 

[dashu1]

seems we have a new number 1!

KSKQ Ashland Oregon
kskq .org
KSKQ 89.5 FM. Homegrown Radio for the Rogue Valley.

I'd listed that one yesterday, but when I looked at it it was the proper site.

Looks like he hasn't been able to clean up the hack properly.

 

[Backorder]

I'd listed that one yesterday, but when I looked at it it was the proper site.

Looks like he hasn't been able to clean up the hack properly.

They haven't cleaned the hack up at all, seems this guys responsible again:

Domain name:
myadvanceloan.co.uk

Registrant:
D and D Marketing

A very smart hack.

 

[dashu1]

Like I say the proper site was showing yesterday.

Interestingly if you look at it in Google US (search for KSKQ in Google, then add &gl=us to the url in the search results & hit enter), then it shows the proper site again.

I wonder if he even knows?

 

[Nick11380]

Like I say the proper site was showing yesterday.

Interestingly if you look at it in Google US (search for KSKQ in Google, then add &gl=us to the url in the search results & hit enter), then it shows the proper site again.

I wonder if he even knows?

Judging by what the owner of froginawell.net has said, he's almost certainly receiving 5 or even 6 figure annual payments for his website.

 

[Backorder]

Google "payday loans" using IE and click the result, redirects to myadvanceloan

 

[dashu1]

Judging by what the owner of froginawell.net has said, he's almost certainly receiving 5 or even 6 figure annual payments for his website.

It might just be hacked, I'd imagine that these guys will try and get away with paying nothing first, then start offering money if the owner fixes the hack - otherwise their "hard work" will be for nothing.

 

[Emarketing]

The post on Nummim.net is a great insight into Google SERPs manipulation.

Well done for the owner of Frog in Well for standing his ground.

I do not however understand how his site remains at the top position for this phrase. The site is nothing to do with 'Payday loans'.. If the 301 has been removed... Why does it remain top position..

Is it a chain of 301 redirects, and this site was part of the chain?

Can anyone shine a light?

 

[Blossom]

The post on Nummim.net is a great insight into Google SERPs manipulation.

Well done for the owner of Frog in Well for standing his ground.

I do not however understand how his site remains at the top position for this phrase. The site is nothing to do with 'Payday loans'.. If the 301 has been removed... Why does it remain top position..

Is it a chain of 301 redirects, and this site was part of the chain?

Can anyone shine a light?

I believe it's related to backlink anchor text, although how Google hasn't spotted these hidden links is beyond me: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer/backlinks/subdomains/www.froginawell.net

 

[Nick11380]

The post on Nummim.net is a great insight into Google SERPs manipulation.

Well done for the owner of Frog in Well for standing his ground.

I do not however understand how his site remains at the top position for this phrase. The site is nothing to do with 'Payday loans'.. If the 301 has been removed... Why does it remain top position..

Is it a chain of 301 redirects, and this site was part of the chain?

Can anyone shine a light?

No 301 redirect here. What's happening is called 'cloaking', users will see froginawell.net while Google will see completely different content.

As far as I understand (and I could be totally wrong), the hacker has found a trustworthy site, hacked it, and changed all of the content so that Google sees some highly relevant payday loans stuff. Because the payday loans SERPs were full of spam sites that built terrible links, a trustworthy site (still with terrible links) is able to shoot up the rankings. Penguin has basically devalued every site in that market as they were all ranking from complete spam.

 

[Emarketing]

No 301 redirect here. What's happening is called 'cloaking', users will see froginawell.net while Google will see completely different content.

As far as I understand (and I could be totally wrong), the hacker has found a trustworthy site, hacked it, and changed all of the content so that Google sees some highly relevant payday loans stuff. Because the payday loans SERPs were full of spam sites that built terrible links, a trustworthy site with decent links (although irrelevant) is able to shoot up the rankings. Penguin has basically devalued every site in that market as they were all ranking from complete spam.

OK.. I kind off get this..

And is this hacker then looking to do a 301 redirect on the hacked site to some 'Payday loan' landing page?

 

[Nick11380]

OK.. I kind off get this..

And is this hacker then looking to do a 301 redirect on the hacked site to some 'Payday loan' landing page?

The reason for not doing a catch all 301 is that the owner would spot it - so the hack only redirected users that found the site using Internet Explorer. If the owner spots it then they'd likely shut the site down and remove the hack. By cloaking it, the hack could go undetected for a long time (in this case, the guy was pretty damn savvy).

So perhaps the hacker just took a gamble that the webmaster didn't use IE?

 

[dashu1]

The reason for not doing a catch all 301 is that the owner would spot it - so the hack only redirected users that found the site using Internet Explorer. If the owner spots it then they'd likely shut the site down and remove the hack. By cloaking it, the hack could go undetected for a long time (in this case, the guy was pretty damn savvy).

So perhaps the hacker just took a gamble that the webmaster didn't use IE?

I think it's a bit more subtle than that, I'm using firefox, and for example the radio station gives me a redirect to payday loans site when searching in google UK for payday loans, but not if I search for KSKQ - then I get the real site.

Also not redirected in google US (or Google anything else).

It's very subtly done, very sneaky, but still a load of winkers for doing it.

But can you expect anything else when so much money is at stake?

 

[dashu1]

PS - I guess that what this shows us is that rather than Google having an index of sites, where it decides what a site is about and ranks it accordingly, it has an index of keywords and phrases, where it determines the most appropriate site for each keyword.

Thereby explaining how a site can rank for payday loans, AND also be a seen to be a radio station.

That is to say Google isn't looking at a page and determining that this page is about X, it is looking at keywords and finding sites that match those keywords, and thus the index is fragmented, with site A not being tied to 1 subject, but possibly being indexed against a lot of keywords and phrases almost as a seperate entity.

In other words the keyword indexes are not cross referenced or related, they are seperate and independent of each other.

I think that has to be pretty obvious now?

 

[Nick11380]

I think it's a bit more subtle than that, I'm using firefox, and for example the radio station gives me a redirect to payday loans site when searching in google UK for payday loans, but not if I search for KSKQ - then I get the real site.

Also not redirected in google US (or Google anything else).

It's very subtly done, very sneaky, but still a load of winkers for doing it.

But can you expect anything else when so much money is at stake?

Good point, redirecting based on keyword basically makes the hack unnoticeable to 99% of webmasters.

Interestingly, the sites that have been hacked do not have Google Analytics installed. This may be deliberate targeting as GA might flag up the keyword 'payday loans' to the owner.

 

[dashu1]

Froginawell had webmasters tools instaled, and he noticed it in that.

I guess they go for the sneaky route first, then if it gets spotted and dealt with they go for the lots of money route instead.

The interesting thing is that I think it can't just be that Google sees one thing and other people see something else, since these sites still rank within their niches and for their own domain names (which shouldn't happen if it's 301'd), therefore Google must be crawling by keywords and phrases and showing differeing results because it's shown different content based on the keyword search.

 

[Blossom]

The interesting thing is that I think it can't just be that Google sees one thing and other people see something else, since these sites still rank within their niches and for their own domain names (which shouldn't happen if it's 301'd), therefore Google must be crawling by keywords and phrases and showing differeing results because it's shown different content based on the keyword search.

If you look at the link I posted and check the sites with the anchor text 'payday loans', they are all hidden links that have been injected into the page. Can't see them in a regular browser without viewing the source.

 

[dashu1]

If you look at the link I posted and check the sites with the anchor text 'payday loans', they are all hidden links that have been injected into the page. Can't see them in a regular browser without viewing the source.

Yes I've seen that, but with the exception of hacked sites that are totally 301'd to new sites (usually to a site like froginawell that is then selectively redirected), many of the 301's are dependant upon the keyword you used to arrive at the site.

As these sites are showing high on page 1 of Google for an extremely compeitive search term, but are also showing as themselves, ie, the redirect isn't just applying to the receiving site, and they still show for searches for themselves, and within their niches, what does this tell you?

A site, or rather page, cannot just be indexed as being X or Y in black and white, it must be possible for a site to be independently indexed for various unrelated keywords, thereby suggesting that the index must be more keyword centric than domain or page centric.

It might be a mix of the 2, with higher volume phrases getting a second index, but how to explain a site being seen by Google as being 2 seperate entities, even though to Google Uk for 1 phrase it sees entirely different results to another phrase?

I've always imagined "the index" to be a page related index, but maybe not.

 

[Blossom]

A site, or rather page, cannot just be indexed as being X or Y in black and white, it must be possible for a site to be independently indexed for various unrelated keywords, thereby suggesting that the index must be more keyword centric than domain or page centric.

It might be a mix of the 2, with higher volume phrases getting a second index, but how to explain a site being seen by Google as being 2 seperate entities, even though to Google Uk for 1 phrase it sees entirely different results to another phrase?

I've always imagined "the index" to be a page related index, but maybe not.

I don't know why anyone would think it's domain centric. There are plenty of sites ranking for all kinds of completely unrelated terms. My personal site ranks for both Twitter followers keywords and banoffee pie recipe terms. My domain name is obviously another completely unrelated term.

Google in particular used to be way more domain name focused 6-7 years ago. You could see it in Adsense; my site would display nothing but flower-related ads despite the fact that absolutely none of my content was related to flowers in any way.

If you think about the average person not manipulating content/domains for Google, they don't particularly think 'one/two key phrases per page, and then build related content, words and subheadings around that'. Google has to account for that, and wants to more than manipulated results of any kind. Don't forget that a hell of lot of this payday loans stuff is backlink and anchor text related, beyond the redirects it has nothing to do with on-page.

I feel like I say this constantly, but quality is so much more important than relevancy. Relevancy is so overrated. Google doesn't give a shit if you link to a PR2 bingo site from your PR5 design blog. The bingo site will still get the benefit.

In this payday loans example, I think people are now at the stage where they're trying to get almost too much from it. It would be better to set up tests and experiment with it because you could hypothesise about it until the end of the world whilst everyone else is making the money

 

[Blossom]

Just to clarify by my last post, I didn't mean hacking sites or anything. Just throwing a lot of decent links at a decent unrelated or semi-related domain.