Discovery Channel Selling Hidden links?
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I was working at an old job one day and I remember doing some backlink research on a competitor. I noticed a very strange backlink that just boggled my mind. It seemed that there was a backlink on a powerful site called discovery that was hidden. Recently I decided to pull this up again out of curiosity and I noticed it was still like this.
The site I ran into was Discovery Education which is part of the discovery channel network. I noticed when doing some backlink research a very interesting site which was the discovery channel link and I remembered thinking how the heck did they get this link on this site?
Well after some re-evaluation I noticed some interesting things about this link. Please see below for the url and photo of the site that had an auto link pointing out of it.
As you can see this page has absolutly NOTHING to do with the automotive or car industry at all. Well what was even more strange is that I could not for the life of me find the link pointing to edmumds.com. Where was it? I saw it on the source code here.
You will be happy to know that I have figured out where this link is hidding. Its a link on an image. The image is an arrow in the middle of the page. The fact that this link was hidden so perfectly and also so purposely got me to thinking.
In a competitive marketplace what do you need to do to keep ahead? What does it take to obtain a link like this and is this site selling links? In some form or another it is weather its paid or as a favor, this link does not belong here and is only there for the value of SEO.
The purpose of me posting this and revealing what I have found is to unveil the level of work that goes behind what an SEO does. To find someone who is skilled enough to obtain a link like this is a person you want on your payroll!
I was talking with aaron walls about a year ago and I remember a piece of advice he gave me. Get links where others cant! Be creative and be effective!
These are words I live by still today. Remember this when doing your linking or considering a firm to do your link acquisitions.
Popularity: 15% [?]
LOL! Looks like 16 year old BJ Pinchbeck is a businessman!
It’s a very deliberate placement. So, I tend to agree that it’s a paid placement. May just send BJ an email myself, see what he’s got available
Comment by Mike — September 26, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
hmmmm, you gotta do what you gotta do to get ahead. that’s business.
Comment by David — September 26, 2007 @ 9:48 pm
Looks like he won’t be getting ahead anymore since you outted him on his ever-so-sneaky tactic.
This reminds me of a mistake a person who was working for me at AA was doing. It was a reciprocal link job on clients about 4 years back and she was copying and pasting the same information to each client’s site. Well, it just so happened she copied over an image to another client. So the one client had 200 links from other client’s who also had a marketing package. Needless to say, her rankings and backlinks went through the roof.
Having said all that, this also could have been a “copy/paste” error as well. You never know of course unless you talk with either the advertiser or publisher.
Comment by Adam Maywald — September 26, 2007 @ 11:45 pm
Very interested, a great find indeed Joe.
There could be a another possibility, what it the site was hacked and the link was put there by the hacker.
Now I know that may not be very realistic. Edmonds.com as we all knows is also another reputable site but hacking sites for links happens every day.
Comment by Ado — September 27, 2007 @ 8:31 am
My name is Scott Polk and I am the Sr. Manager of SEO for Edmunds.com. I can assure you that Edmunds.com did not buy that link, nor buy any links to our site to influence organic listings.
We are looking into how this link got on this page, but we suspect that it is a simple copy and paste from another template that links to us … we are trying to locate that template.
I would like to know who is in charge of SEO for Discovery Education?
Thanks,
Scott Polk
Edmunds.com
Comment by Scott Polk — September 27, 2007 @ 10:16 am
Sounds like everything is for sale. Sometimes procurement just takes a little creativity.
Comment by Colbs — September 27, 2007 @ 12:28 pm
Good find Joe! Definitely seems deliberate. We’ve got some clients who could benefit from that! Sign me up!
Comment by Jeff Quipp — September 27, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
“To find someone who is skilled enough to obtain a link like this is a person you want on your payroll!”
I disagree. I would want hidden links for any of my clients.
Comment by Jaan Kanellis — September 27, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
Hey Jaan,
I completely understand where you are coming from and I think a lot of people feel the same way you do.
I honestly don’t think a link like this is hurting edmunds at all. I really don’t see the issue with obtaining links like this. If a link like this would hurt a client then of course I don’t think any of us would want that.
One of the best ways to build your inbound links is to be as discrete and natural as possible. This link has been around for over a year that I know of. Seems like its passing link love and I honestly do not see anything unethical about it at all.
Its not truly hidden its just an image link. I think my title may be a tad to sensationalized
Comment by Joe Whyte — September 27, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
Detective Whyte:
Interesting find — question for you.
The page where the ‘hidden’ link is located does not show any page strength?
Page Strength: 1 / 10 - SEOmoz
Google PR ToolBar: 0
Even though this obviously looks questionable, is there any value in this link?
Comment by mike b - geeks — September 27, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
Hey Mike,
I think you are asking the right question. I could have sworn this page at one time had page rank within google but because its not there now lets just pretend it never did.
Here are the positive things I am looking at.
1. Page is indexed within google so we know spiders are crawling it and counting links.
2. I really don’t hold to much value in PR. I have seen tons of sites rank higher then others who have a better PR then them. To me, page rank is pretty dead - bold statement!
3. Google is not showing backlinks but as we know they dont like to show people like us that kinda info. However Yahoo is showing backlinks and when doing a backlink search on edmunds this is one of the first backlinks.
4. This link is coming off of a page that has high authority and page rank within google. Its a trusted site and a way to pass authority and trust rank to another site is to have authority and trust rank sites pass link value to you.
So my answer to this question is yes I see value to a link on this page. Yes their could be more value like anchor text on the link ect but there is absolute value in my opinion.
Interesting the page is already grey bared on my system here. I wonder why that might be?
Comment by Joe Whyte — September 27, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Nice catch, Joe.
“I really don’t hold to much value in PR.”
Lack of TBPR can sometimes mean that 1) backlinks to a URL is untrusted - if they are trusted, they would pass PageRank 2) domain doesn’t have much juice. For example, a TBPR 9 directory will have decent TBPR category pages, while a TBPR 1 directory may not have any pages indexed at all. And if backlinks into a domain is untrusted, then outlinks from it to a completely unrelated site has a higher probability of not passing any value.
“This link is coming off of a page that has high authority”
Assuming its a high authority site (though we all have different metrics in deciding authority), an authoritative site can have links that are completely untrusted by Google. (e.g. SER’s sponsored links, or Graywolf’s paid links on his home page). The question is whether the link is easily detectable? Absolutely. It’s not contextual. It has no anchor/TITLE attribute text. It links to an off-topic site. And if edmunds.com’s link profile is dirty, it makes it even easier for Google to draw the right conclusion.
Just because a link is hard to spot with the human eye doesn’t mean its hard for machines to detect.
So without any anchor text the link is useless, at least for improving rankings. And it won’t confer any trust to edmunds.com either IMO, because the link is manipulative and its easy to detect.
“Interesting the page is already grey bared on my system here. I wonder why that might be?”
The word on the street is TBPR update might be afoot; its probably not the best time to be looking at the toolbar.
Comment by Halfdeck — September 27, 2007 @ 7:33 pm
[…] However, in some cases, it might better to offer something else of value in stead getting a regular paid link. Another option is using viral marketing as a link building […]
Pingback by Link Building this week (28-09) | Wiep.net — September 28, 2007 @ 6:19 am
Halfdeck said:
“So without any anchor text the link is useless, at least for improving rankings.”
Just because the link doesn’t have anchor text, doesn’t mean its useless for ranking purposes. The link juice from non-anchor text links pours onto the Title tags, which does boost rankings - counting towards “authority status”. That is a general statement, not specifying this case above.
Comment by Adam Maywald — September 28, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
[…] Original post by Joe Whyte […]
Pingback by Affiliate Freebies and Marketing Ideas » Blog Archive » Discovery Channel Selling Hidden links? — September 28, 2007 @ 6:51 pm
“just because the link doesn’t have anchor text, doesn’t mean its useless for ranking purposes.”
Adam, that’s not what I said. Obviously a link’s worth is more than just anchor text. I said the link apparently doesn’t pass either authority or PageRank so if it had anchor text/TITLE attribute then it would at least be of some use. But it doesn’t have that either - which is why the link is useless in my book.
Comment by Halfdeck — September 28, 2007 @ 10:53 pm
[…] I thought about making this post, but then decided it is bad karma to out the site I menioned, so I edited out the identifying details. You understand the lack of validity of Google’s paid links scaremongering techniques by reading Jim Boykin’s great post about quality sites never getting penalized for selling links and by looking at some of the places sketchy links are popping up. […]
Pingback by SEO News » Blog Archive » How to Rent a Half Million Links & Stay Below Google's Radar — September 29, 2007 @ 6:00 am
wow - talk about busted!
Comment by Matt Ellsworth — September 29, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
[…] sure that you don’t make your covert ads too obvious. Although Google has been busy penalizing multiple directories (which used questionable tactics), […]
Pingback by Why buying links is similar to covert advertising | Wiep.net — September 30, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
[…] Channel selling hidden […]
Pingback by Search engine newsletters | Richardsons Design and Marketing — October 2, 2007 @ 3:25 am
haha, what’s next, will they make the arrow out of 100s pixels and links
?
seems like just another implementation of a million dollar pixel page
Comment by The Mindbreaker — October 2, 2007 @ 3:30 am
[…] Channel selling hidden […]
Pingback by Make money web » Blog Archive » Search engine news of the week — October 2, 2007 @ 5:45 am
[…] Channel selling hidden […]
Pingback by Grow A Blog » lee.n3o: SE Newslets (Again) (Tech News) — October 3, 2007 @ 12:38 am
[…] I thought about making this post, but then decided it is bad karma to out the site I menioned, so I edited out the identifying details. You understand the lack of validity of Google’s paid links scaremongering techniques by reading Jim Boykin’s great post about quality sites never getting penalized for selling links and by looking at some of the places sketchy links are popping up. […]
Pingback by How to Rent a Half Million Links & Stay Below Google’s Radar — October 7, 2007 @ 10:09 am
[…] I thought about making this post, but then decided it is bad karma to out the site I menioned, so I edited out the identifying details. You understand the lack of validity of Google’s paid links scaremongering techniques by reading Jim Boykin’s great post about quality sites never getting penalized for selling links and by looking at some of the places sketchy links are popping up. […]
Pingback by » Blog Archive » 5 Differences Between Google.com & International Google Search Results — October 8, 2007 @ 3:18 am
Google is keen to this strategy
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