Black hat vs. white hat

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zoomer94

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Apr 18, 2012
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Is Black Hat referring to things that are illegal? I saw on another forum that black hatters have their own set of guidelines but if it's just illegal activity are they any guidelines?

I'm not looking for tips on how to be a Black Hat--just clarification.
 


zoomer94 said:
Is Black Hat referring to things that are illegal? I saw on another forum that black hatters have their own set of guidelines but if it's just illegal activity are they any guidelines?

I'm not looking for tips on how to be a Black Hat--just clarification.
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I'm still a noob but to me there really is no "White" or "Black" hat - any manipulation of your sites ranking be it back linking (white) or using a program to put your website over the web (Xrummer i think, which is "black") is against googles T&C's.

I don't think black hat is illegal in that you can be prosecuted, you can have your site banned from google for life though.
 
people usually consider for fast growth they like being black hatters but being a white hatter is no harm and its a safe way to ride on
 
What do you mean by "illegal"? There is nothing "illegal" about getting links. Now, is there something against Google's TOS, well yes. But you can get traffic from several avenues besides Google. So if you want to be included in Google's index, you "have" to "play" by their "guidelines", but "illegal", no, no-one is going to throw you in jail for creating backlinks, or things against certain "search engine's" terms of services.
 
This is a very ill defined area, Some people define blackhat differently from others.

Commonly there are 3 hats, White hat, Gray hat, and Blackhat


Googles definition:
White hat: This means that you create a website and you let it sit, and once in a while a visitor will come across your website and think that its interesting. they will then repost the link to your website elsewhere ( Not very likely and very inconsistent if your first starting out) this is why many if not almost all people resort to building links manually.

Google defines any type of artificially link building (You building links yourself or paying other people to build links for you ) as BLACKHAT.

However, it is extremely unavoidable, because the chances that your going to have people reposting your link everywhere on the web naturally is quite slim so that is why most people resort to link building.

The internet marketing blackhat term:
This refers to any type of unethical type of business of work. cloaking, bait n switch, etc.
 
zoomer94 said:
Is Black Hat referring to things that are illegal? I saw on another forum that black hatters have their own set of guidelines but if it's just illegal activity are they any guidelines?

I'm not looking for tips on how to be a Black Hat--just clarification.
Click to expand...

It's a worthless and meaningless distinction drawn up by gurus to try and make people feel better for themselves. For most people it means nothing. You build links, period. Whether those links come from link exchanges or guest blogs, you're goal is to build content people like and links that will let them see it.

Don't get caught up in bullshit like "white hat" vs "black hat" vs "blue hat" vs "Goatse hat"
 
zoomer94 said:
Is Black Hat referring to things that are illegal? I saw on another forum that black hatters have their own set of guidelines but if it's just illegal activity are they any guidelines?

I'm not looking for tips on how to be a Black Hat--just clarification.
Click to expand...

Google uses an algorithm to determine who ranks where. The goal of this algorithm is to rank higher quality sites higher.

Whitehat: Build a higher quality site. Since Google's algorithm is intended to rank higher sites better than means that your site will (ideally) start to rank better since it is a quality site.

Blackhat: Figure out what indicators Google uses to decide whether a site is high quality or not, and make sure your site has those indicators. Don't actually bother making a high quality site.
 
cardine said:
Google uses an algorithm to determine who ranks where. The goal of this algorithm is to rank higher quality sites higher.

Whitehat: Build a higher quality site. Since Google's algorithm is intended to rank higher sites better than means that your site will (ideally) start to rank better since it is a quality site.

Blackhat: Figure out what indicators Google uses to decide whether a site is high quality or not, and make sure your site has those indicators. Don't actually bother making a high quality site.
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This is pretty much my definition of a black hat vs. white hat site too, cardine. I think this is a relative term that people of course define for themselves, but what matters in the end is how Google views your site if your site mainly depends on traffic from search engines.
 
Thanks guys. Maybe I was thinking of hacking when I mentioned illegality. Isn't there two types of hackers?

I see what you mean about backlinks--getting them white hat would take too long and probably wouldn't pay off in the long run.
 
I pretty much consider doing things that are against Search Engine's TOS and to manipulate your search engine rankings as black hat. It seems like pretty much everyone uses some form of Black Hat techniques though.
 
What Google says goes, and people take it as the law. It will come back to bite them if more people start to use Bing.
 
I think the OP is asking if using blackhat linkbuilding tools are illegal. To my best knowledge the only trouble you can get into is if you break TOS on a website, and they decide it's worth it for their business to go after you.
 
JDIZM said:
What Google says goes, and people take it as the law. It will come back to bite them if more people start to use Bing.
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This is where things get really murky. What Google says goes ONLY if you are looking or Google traffic. There are millions of ways to get traffic outside of Google people. Concentrating on one source of traffic generator is bad business. Imagin if a brick and mortar store got 80% of their business from one client, they would be forever at that client's mercy. That's why they diversify, otherwise someone else's decision could put them out of business. Google is not the entire internet, there are millions of other ways to get traffic, The SEO mentality has to be broken, and we have to become real INTERNET marketers. You guys hae tunnel vision man, trust me, look outside the SEO world and you will see people doing some crazy but effective techniques.
 
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