Tag - Content Countermeasures

SEO Content Countermeasures Part. 2 | How Public Safety and Public Trust Are Under Attack

Last week we discussed SEO Countermeasures and Content Countermeasures that are hurting the structure and information flow of the internet; today, we will take the conversation a step further.  The lack of honesty in the reputation and information sharing services is one problem, but what happens when we ask the same questions in regard to political and legal questions. Political and Anti-Science  SEO Content Countermeasures Anyone who has a family member on the Newsmax Spam List knows all too well the problems with misinformation and dishonest content promotions.  For years, false information, fed to the masses has been the hallmark of political propaganda.  Both right and left are equally guilty of this dishonest practice, and it seems both will turn blue in the face complaining about how dishonest the other is. Pushed articles are common place for the purpose of having multiple sites replicate the same false story, over and over, and then link to each other to offer a seemingly relevant citation. Again, this requires an audience that is predisposed to believe that a specific viewpoint is possible or likely. Sites like Politifact, Snopes, Hoax-Slayer, FactChecker, and many others have become the bane of the political fringes who WANT their preconceived ideals to be realized in the most obvious of dishonest rallies. The proliferation of the political scams is two fold; the first goal being to direct public opinion by preaching to a choir, the second being to drive traffic to sites filled with products aligned with the content itself.  Many of the Natural News (and its affiliates site's) articles are solely produced to push traffic to their product affiliate sites for purchasing books or 'natural remedies".  The traffic for survivalists will take them to sites promoting solar water heaters and wood-burning stoves (sold at ridiculously expensive prices at that). The scam site method is fairly simple, it only requires having a bunch of sheep ready to repost network stories for ad and clickbaited traffic.  Often, most of the reproduction sites will be owned by the same group as the originating site. The SEO methods used by reposting false information include medical info as well. In spite of medical science, the proliferation of false claims on medical needs is growing by the day.  People, convinced in spite of science, that medical needs like vaccinations and treatments are some form of evil scam to make people sick (irony being that they avoiding the vaccines increases sickness) are increasingly promoting false narratives at the behest of their blogger overlords.  Often, this information will be completely void of even the most basic scientific study. Again, Natural News is a notorious for the use of down-line blogging to perpetuate its SEO Content Countermeasures to recognized science. You may ask, "why would they do this to sell a few books?", and in doing so you will be asking a legitimate question. The answer is simple, they make millions off of affiliate book sales, vitamin sales, and training/event sales associated with the topics they push.  In the end, the irony is that they claim the motivation for medical science to promote medical cures is money, while in the end, it is their own primary purpose. Obviously, Natural News and its many clone sites is an easy target, but it certainly isn't the only one.  Often the hoax stories used on its network are dusted off months or years later to replicate the same affiliate gains. Even after pointed out to be the obvious lies they are, the dedicated who desire it to be true will promote the false stories without question. Ultimately, public safety is put into jeopardy by these groups because of the purposeful direction of the public to act in a manner that is contrary to their health or basic common sense. Yes, the people who fall for and repromote this misinformation are guilty of being naive, gullible and ignorant, but those leading them by the snout are doing so in a way that is blatantly irresponsible and places large populations in danger... all to make a buck and push agendas. Using SEO and Content Countermeasures to Hide Criminal and Legal Data Someone will always be trying to invent a better mousetrap, but what happens when the mousetrap itself is under attack?  People entrust their futures, businesses and family welfare to background and identity checks; what happens when the information gained from them is bogus?  The answer is simple, the system fails those who deserve to know enough to protect themselves, their businesses and their families. People of ill repute and those with a past worth hiding use SEO Countermeasures and Content Manipulation to promote a fictitious form of themselves so that their past, present and future victims are blind to the actual threats the individual can hold.  We ran into a typical scammer recently who had an intricate manner of hiding reports of his previous scams. He produced so many member and blog accounts in his own name that even articles about his scams from Ripoff Report and NY Times were pushed to page 10. Many are getting in on this option; from legal offenders to financial swindlers, the option allows them at least one more hustle and a crowd of people unable to find the sourced information about the scammer's history.  The scammer mentioned above even went so far as to seek legal orders to force google to hide search results mentioning his name (since he apparently trademarked himself).   As a result, attempts to find accurate information on this person who has scammed and stolen from so many are often in vain. The "push down" effect of Content Countermeasures and SEO Tactics used for these dishonest means are likely to persist.  Google has given no indication that is has a real solution to counter the SEO Countermeasures being deployed.  Google attempted to kill the duplicate content and spun material game, but only so much can be done when some of these scammers are running hundreds of accounts and sites to keep a clean image. They're wolves and their fake wool consists of the SEO Content and descriptors of themselves used to promote the false narrative. We can hope that they will finally be curtailed, but they appear to be a constant from generation to generation. These are the same sad sacks that would be selling snake oil and 'miracle cures" in the 1800's.  The unfortunate reality is that Content Countermeasures are only the latest tool of those who wish to defraud their fellows.  That they have learned how to manipulate SEO techniques for these scams is only the latest step in a long walk.  We can only assume that their growth online will continue, marking less honesty and more skepticism.
Read more...

How SEO and Reputation Content Countermeasures Are Ruining The Internet Part 1

Marketing has always consisted of presenting a narrative of your product, service, or even ideas and crafting them in a manner more pleasing to the audience.  With the increase in data sharing and interactions online, this has only grown.  The problem with this growth is that it comes with an increasing rate of growth for Content Countermeasures that are intended to stifle, erase, or completely distort the truth about specific content online. Content Countermeasures are nothing more than the attempt to deceive the public with exaggerated, inflated and, in some cases, invented information. In some cases, this serves a very legitimate purpose, like incentivizing positive reviews and ratings from clients to overcome someone who griped about not getting his water and hot bread fast enough when entering a restaurant.  There are certainly legitimate cases like this for businesses to present a positive image of themselves to the public. There is a duality of this topic as there are those who purposefully mislead the public with positive or negative spam of business content, causing a countermeasure to any possible chance of receiving accurate information.  While this might seem like a trifle act, it damages the ability to have a reasonable expectation of receiving correct and verifiable data in search results. "Reputation Management Scams" When it comes to the dirtier uses of Content Countermeasures, the "reputation managers" of the world are almost always going to be one of the top offenders.  The ads heard on talk radio and pushed for local companies are usually nothing short of bragging on how they can spam the public with disinformation about your company or yourself.  Sure, it's sold as "restoring your good name", but if you are going to go through extreme steps(and reputation management often requires extreme steps) to garner enough faked or duplicated content to push down the negative reviews and ratings, then the entire concept of public relation is in shambles. Again, this isn't being critical of those who have a solid and honest goal of ensuring honest content about their business (because we will talk below of the content assassins below).  Let's be clear, if you have to market your company or yourself with false or spammed information, then you or your product simply aren't worth what you are trying to present them as. Scam Spam The same holds true for people who want to push down legitimate information to hide their concerning content from the public.  Content writers are notorious for this one. We get a different one filling our spam folders every week with messages bragging about how they can spam the highest ranking blogs on the internet ... for a price of course.  This is a two-pronged version of Content Countermeasure SEO.  First, they are spamming mass content about themselves on the front end of the conversation, then, they have to do something to remove data from all of the people who are complaining about the unsolicited content.  There will be the guys who have dozens, sometimes hundreds of wordpress.com, blogger, webly, Tumbler...etc, sites with several variations of their own name and all with content claiming to be the most relevant.  We've found the same thing done lately with people who have warrants and want to confuse police (from identifiable IP addresses though, so not sure how well that works).  Additionally, they will play the game of buying any and all variations of ones name in domain format, and again, spamming the internet with redundant and often obscure data to attempt to divide relevancy on the person's identity.  We ran into one of these guys recently who had over 200 variations of his own name out there, all to push down the 40-50 ripoff reports filed about his poor business practices. The spam data traces act as a SEO Countermeasure to prevent people from finding about his actual business practices, and instead focus on a false narrative that is completely opposite to reality. No, I am not coming down on narratives themselves.  As I said in the intro to this post, narratives are shaped by the marketer, but as soon as they are completely falsified narratives, then nothing is left but a dishonest scam being perpetrated on the reader.   The petty marketers who believe that there is a magical line of lies they can hover on and still have their integrity intact are some of the most genuine and shining examples of cognitive dissonance available. SEO Assassins These are the lowest bottom-feeders of he internet. They include "Yelpers", "Competing Reviewers", and all the others willing to destroy.  Content Assassins, or SEO Assassins are often written off as competitors or disgruntled employees, but we've found more instances lately of little to no association being the culprit. The internet gives strength to those who wish to do damage to others with impunity. A restaurant client of ours apparently slighted a patron by serving his therapist.  The individual saw this as a slight against him, and went on to commit a fake review and spam campaign to destroy the restaurant's reputation. Using a photoshopped comment image, the spammer made it appear that the restaurant (run by a gay man) had made anti-gay statements to him on Facebook. This one fake image, posted in several LGBT social media groups, caused over 500 negative reviews in one night. By the time the  restaurant came to us, we had over 900 review accounts to send individual requests and explanations to.    
Read more...