The OnlineMBA.com Awards are Part of a Deceptive Link Baiting Scheme Aimed at Bloggers
Hundreds of bloggers are falling prey to a deceptive link baiting scheme that I would like to expose.
The website OnlineMBA.com has a section for ‘awarding the web’. This award system is 100% illegitimate.
Their team of “selected judges” supposedly rank websites for categories like “Top Financial Blogs,” Top Personal Wealth Blogs” and “Top Humor Blogs.” The the owner of the website ranked receives a congratulations email which goes something like this:
Hello [blogger name],
Emma and Dennis here! Just wanted to remind you that you were the
recipient of our 2010 Top 50 Humor Blogs Award. If you have already posted
our badge, then we thank you! No need to respond, this is just a general
email! We work hard to put this award on, and we hate to see it go to
waste!Just in case, you can obtain your winners badges here:
[badge page URL for the specific category]
If you choose to decline our award, please respond by Monday, July 26.
The only reason we ask this is because if you choose to decline or not
recognize our award, then let us know so your colleagues who could qualify
for the award have a chance at recognition and take your spot. Dennis and I
work too hard on these awards for it to be discarded, as this is our
passion. We just want our award winners not only to appreciate our award,
but also to understand what our ultimate goal is; to take away awards from
marketing companies and make them back into what they should be: awards.Please do not hesitate to call or email if you have any questions. Many
questions can be answered at www.awardingtheweb.com/about or
www.awardingtheweb.com/disclaimer.Again, Congratulations, and we hope to see your award on your website!
Cheers,
Emma Lee & Dennis Anderson
2065529587
www.awardingtheweb.com
Seems perfectly harmless, right?
Well, take a closer look at the HTML code they provide for the award badges:
<a href="http://www.onlinemba.com/top_humor/"> <img src="http://www.onlinemba.com/top_humor/images/Badges/circlebadge1.png" alt="Top Humor Blog" border="0" /></a><br><font size="1"> <a href="http://www.onlinemba.com">MBA Online</a></font>
I bolded that last line of code for a reason. What it does is create a very small line of text, “MBA Online,” that may not be noticeable to the human eye but is certainly noticeable to search engines.
When a search engine crawls a page that the badge is located on, it credits the OnlineMBA website with the keyword text “MBA Online.” In a way, OnlineMBA uses the reputation of other websites, to trick search engines into thinking their website is worthy of ranking well for the search term “MBA Online.” All of this is done without the bloggers permission.
Not only is the completely against Google policies, it is extremely unethical.
They also try to exculpate themselves from any sort of legal ramifications by providing a very crafty disclaimer:
We here at Awarding The Web work hard to find the best blogs, and to distribute our awards to those we find with the help of sponsor sites. Our affiliation with any of our sponsor sites are only in this regard. We are not employed by any of our sponsor sites, nor do we receive any financial payments from them. As Emma and I run this awards organization on our own in our own free time and finance this ourselves, we require the help of outside resources to get these awards to the winners we have chosen, most notably a website to host the awards on. We are not responsible for the material that is found on those sites, and take no responsibility for the content found on their site. We are simply a small organization of the two of us who are creating and distributing these awards because it is our passion. We look to recognize excellent web content so that those who have worthwhile content can be distinguished from the useless, bad content that plagues today’s internet.
MBAonline.com is most likely profiting through referral links on their main page. A high ranking in Google for “MBA online” is extremely valuable and OnlineMBA.com has already received a 2nd place rank for the search term “MBA online.”
Bloggers who receive the congratulations email might be a little off their guard because of how flattering receiving an award can be. This makes the scheme all that more effective.
Look out bloggers. If it seems too good to be true, it usually isn’t true.
Post by Chris Scott. Check out his humor blog at www.deadcaterpillar.com.
Tags: blog controversy, blog security, blog seo, link building
Thank you for sharing and disseminating such information.. sort of a scam just for link baiting and that doesn’t sounds good. Good thing you have reminded and informed us.
Chris,
This is a good discussion piece (old post I know)
1. If they looked through lots of blogs to find the best, does this give them more credibility? If not, then how are they any different than any other award business?
2. All people/groups/companies that give awards do not do it without expecting to receive something in return. Take for example, Inc500, or USNews best colleges. They KNOW they will boost their magazine subscriptions substantially because colleges/business love to mention them. They even give you award logos for your site (with a dofollow link). This is why awards work; like most social relationships, giving is reciprocal.
3. Even Godaddy hides millions of links in their “Website Tonight” and “SSL Seals” filled with anchor-rich text for purposes of ranking for competitive phrases. Same deal.
4. What about other linkbait that they do? say, funny posts, big lists, and infographics that webmasters embed into their sites. Same purpose here.
5. As “Nate” and others pointed out here, ALL website awards/hit counters are used for SEO purposes, but you probably werent aware of that.
6. “All of this is done without the bloggers permission” Yes, they forced the webmaster to accept and post the award on their site. Besides, no website owner knows what a link is and how to remove it (or NOFOLLOW).
Could they be penalized by Google? There’s always a risk for getting nuked regardless of the types of links you get. Not sure if this is better or worse than the typical blog comment/forum/paid/wiki link spam crap that the rest of the 99% does.
My summary? Kudos to smart link builders
P.S. Thanks “Virginia Criminal Lawyer” and all those other altruistic commenters.
Thanks for the warning.
Surely you can get around this by removing that line?
Sure you could do that. But you will be knowingly participating in an out and out unethical link building campaign.
You also run the risk of being penalized by Google should this MBA site ever get sandboxed. Linking to spammy sites that are taboo in the eyes of Google has the potential to damage your rankings.
I suggest that you remove both of the links if you want to use the badge for marketing purposes.
Thanks for the information. The badge is gone.
Yeah thanks for sharing this information. To be honest I have always be suspicious of online awards like this. The badge ALWAYS links back to someones website who is benefiting from the whole thing.
bad people
these people should be jailed
Thanks for the eye opener .Yeah sure its a real treasure to find and know such a valuable information about a silicon scam. One should always be careful, and be cautious to surf such a stuff. However the search engines should also come forward and handle the issue on top priority.
One should always be careful, and be cautious to surf such a stuff. However the search engines should also come forward and handle the issue on top priority, You also run the risk of being penalized by Google should this MBA site ever get sandboxed. Linking to spammy sites that are taboo in the eyes of Google has the potential to damage your rankings.
Hello thank you for sharing this, today many people are doing that in consequence link bombs deceive bloggers and commit black hat seo, the use of CSS is a major factor hide background-color texts in the same font color or leave the font size with 1px.
Found this post very useful. The scheme is obvious to anyone who pays attention to the code they put ont heir page but still I am sure a lot of people didn’t look through it carefully enough or just didn;t bother, good to know these things are being brought to the open for the bloggers to see. Do you think that making search engine crawlers ignore links surrounded by extra small font tags can be an option to solve this once and for all?
How deceptive is that! What a hide….these types of link baiting sites should be “named and shamed” and I thank you for doing that.
It’s hard enough going just trying to keep within everyone’s requirements, without having anyone stick some lines of deceptive code into what is promised as being good for us.
It looks like nice sweet scheme. Probably a lot of bloggers thing that this is nice way for recognizing their work and I bet a lot of them just do not know what is going on.
Thanks for the eye opener .Yeah sure its a real treasure to find and know such a valuable information about a silicon scam
Oh no! there still some people who would give disadvantages to others, they just waste others time just to read those bait and of course for their own advantages. Thanks for sharing this to us, it really help us. There must be some rules or law for that because it is already alarming because many bloggers as you’ve said have fall in to their bait, therefore search engines must be sensitive to this issue.
woow really? I always thought those type of MBA emails were legit because it was nicely composed. Whee!!! I will try to analyze more i think from now. Thanks for the info.
Thanks for the heads up. I was able to remove the badge with your help.
Scams all over the place – eh? I Bet tons of people fall for this too. Scary to think. I saw that badge on one of my friend’s blog and told him about your post. The badge is gone now. Thanks.
Thank you for posting this very important information. As we all know, lately there are many scams existing all over the web which is why we need to do something to stop this illegal act.
A lot of other sites that offer awards similar to this one actually get link juice from the high quality sites that show their badges. I have one in my personal blog (sheesh). But this example you gave is one helluva crafty trick! Yeah that is a keyword that has a pretty high value (up to $15 a click I think) and they’re fooling search engines! Tsk tsk
Yeah thanks for sharing this information. To be honest I have always be suspicious of online awards like this. The badge ALWAYS links back to someones website who is benefiting from the whole thing.
Well, I am fairly new to blogging myself, and I sure as hell will be looking out for such scams in the future…
Thank you for sharing.
Wow, thanks for the heads up.
I’m prtty new to blogging myself so I’m glad you’ve brought this up. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out.
We need to stick together against scams.
Another seemingly innocent and advantageous offer based on deception. Is it little wonder that the honest operators trying to offer a “fair dinkum” product that can really help people have so much trouble getting their message through.
The old adage “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t” seems to be a philosophy made for the internet.
God i hate scams like this. i was just involved in a scam where i was trying to sell a website and some guy told me he wanted it…long story short he asked for a valuation of the website so i paid for one…turns out he owned that FAKE valuation site and got my money then bounced. afjdhfkjdshlk!!!! anyways good post.
Thanks for the heads up. I was able to remove the badge with your help.
Sorry for previous post, I didn’t realize that code will be interpreted and not escaped.
Thanks for sharing. I also noticed some scheme similar to this where the code is a script:
≤script src="script"≥≤/script≥≤noscript≥≤a href="link"≥keyword≤a≥≤/noscript≥
Of course search engine skip the script part and interpret the noscript tag giving an illegitimate link only search engines being targeted.
Thanks for the heads up and information about this trick. Many people doing this system for hacklinks also. Totally un-ethical and should not be done. So many scam sites and mails latelly..
Thanks for the Info this is a very informative post for newbies in blog making like me.
This is a great warning for bloggers who are unfamiliar to scams like this. And provides full info about what to know in this deceptive link scheme who are baiting bloggers.
Thanks for that — I thought they were genuine (but always wondered about the motivation behind the award). Sean
WOW…. I’ve seen quite a few e-mail schemes (borderline scams) before, but this has got to be a slick operation they have going. Sending awards with code to show off on your site that help the award giver manipulate search engines is a whole new breed of schemes. And I agree that lots of people see an award and think WOW, I’m special, If I post this and show others they will see I’m special too and like me more! Total psychological mind twister…
if I understand correctly, OnlineMBA.com has the creative & yet unethical trick to gain links. The best way to get links juice is to ask for it with something in return I believe.
Just about every badge or pageview counters have these >:(
it’s hard to find any genuine good services arggg
thanks for the warning
This must be taken seriously, it’s really alarming. Search engines must respond to this issue. It can really do great harm to bloggers. Thanks for reminding us.
thanx for telling this……these people should be banned and sued for life…..
Hey! really an impressive post and i am amazed how people are fooling other by awarding their websites and the owner’s are thinking that they have been awarded by an Honorable wining badge that they happily accept it to their websites which earned them nothing but gain others some ranking on google like on this one ” Online MBA”. Thanks for letting us know about those spammers like people….
That was a real eyeopener, wouldn’t have thought of it as a scam but really ingenious I must say. Infact the BAD-ge should really be given to those two for cooking up this.
Very informative post, Thanks.