Spam alert: backgammon affiliate program SEO challenge closing |
Just did some recon after a series of futile comment spam attacks were launched against this site (only we saw the spam, it never reached the public site) and learned that an affiliate SEO challenge is coming to an end in 48 hours that centers around an online backgammon site (play65.com) and some less desirable affiliates are running out mass blog comment spamming tools to try and snag the $15,000 in prizes.
This “TC.Ads SEO Challenge” (see affiliates.tcads.net/contest.asp — intentionally unlinked) encourages their affiliates to target Google for the following terms: Backgammon, online backgammon, backgammon games and backgammon rules.
This contest started way back in July 7 and ends December 31, 2005 so it seems some spam sandbaggers are starting to crawl out of holes for a final assault against, you guessed it, bloggers with high Google Page Rank.
I’m curious if Google condones SEO challenges like this? The affiliate program owner cleverly leaves themselves an out by writing in some specific content criteria:
The page needs several sections, each section can be about anything related to backgammon, for example: Backgammon rules, backgammon history, strategy, backgammon news, tables of top players, future tournaments and so on. The page can be designed as you wish with images and banners.
Those who follow these content terms might — and I hesitate to use the word might — be adding value to Google’s search results, but sadly it’s the jackass affiliates absorbing CPU cycles littering Google’s search results with redirects pointing to the same site ruining it for the white hats.
Note to readers who are also bloggers: might want to add some backgammon-related keywords to your comment/spam filters so your blogs don’t get spammed up in the next 48 hours. Things could get ugly if the first spam storm signs I’m seeing worsen. Batten down the hatches.
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[…] I remain curious about how the search engines treat these SEO contests. When they are for nonsense words like the contest in question, I can’t see them doing much harm, but when they target common terms like backgammon (different contest), it makes me wonder. These SEO efforts in some contest could knock down the legitimate results for these keywords and thus degrade the search results experience. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » You aren’t what you link, at least not in 2006 — February 26, 2006 @ 4:21 pm PST