Burying Hate Speech in the SERPs

Google tries to handle hate sites, but they can't. Racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic, and other content find their way into the rankings every day. This presentation shows two strategies I've used to push those sites down the rankings.

Transcript

1. Silence the Stupid Handling Online Hate Sites With Search-Fu
2. This presentation references content about The Holocaust. Some content may be upsetting.
3. Ian Lurie @portentint Portent, a Clearlink Company
4. Portent is a digital agency I started in 1995. I just sold it.
5. Nope
6. Yep
7. If you don’t agree with my beliefs regarding hate speech, and some of my politics, I am about to piss you off. I do not apologize. Send angry tweets to @portentint.
8. But use a spell checker. You probably need one. Photo from CNN.com
9. Seriously. Spell checker. @portentint Photo from some idiot
10. Glenn? Spell. Checker. @portentint Photo from FOX News
11. Things that piss me off
12. Things that piss me off
13. Things that piss me off
14. jewwatch.com Site Rank(ed) top 3 for Head Term “Jew”
15. jewwatch.com 200,000+ links 6,000+ unique domains
16. Big Bully?
17. Fight dirty
18. Time to tear out some links!
19. Step 1: Notify accidental boosters
20. Use the link analysis tool of your choice
21. Find the accidental boosters
22. Find the accidental supporters Find the linking pages
23. Recruit others Recruit help
24. Give them a script
25. Watch the links disappear (Citation removed)
26. Watch the links disappear (spam link removed)
27. Links gone from 100 domains
28. Step 2: Dismantle site’s link profile
29. Check JewWatch’s link profile by IP address.
30. 264 linking domains on 1 IP address? Not kosher.
31. Report it
32. Step 3: Dismantle supporting sites’ link profiles
33. They link to JewWatch.com. They’re not going to take their links down.
34. Take a look at their link profile. Is it kosher?
35. Nope. Over 1/2 their links from one IP
36. Report it
37. May work, may not, but it took 15 minutes
38. Wait a second…
39. Waitaminute jewwatch.com Linking site
40. Report it
41. Step 4: Boost competitors
42. Link ‘em
43. Step 5: Straight up kick their asses
44. Anyone?
45. Results? Jewwatch.com fell to #5
46. Results? Since then, they’ve been buried
47. Results? All us? Of course not
48. Results? But I bet we helped
49. Results? We made it easier on the algorithm
50. Holocaust Deniers Thousands of sites
51. Holocaust Deniers Shared theories and terminology
52. Site swarming tactics
53. We can’t get one site ranking for “holocaust”
54. We can get lots of sites ranking for specific questions
55. Step 1: Find the shared theories and terminology
56. About the numbers
57. Claims & questions
58. Scrape Quora
59. Scrape Quora
60. Scrape Quora Scrape Quora
61. Scrape Quora Scrape Quora
62. “Did the Holocaust happen?” “Is the Holocaust real?” “Was the Holocaust real?” “The 4 million variant”
63. Step 2: Check volumes
65. Step 3: Reserve domains
66. How paranoid are you?
67. Different registrars
68. Different IDs
69. Different hosting providers
70. Different IPs
71. I just threw them all up there on one identity. Maybe I get caught for setting up a blog network or something. If Google booted them, imagine the headlines…
72. istheholocaustreal.com istheholocaustahoax.com wastheholocaustreal.com wastheholocaustahoax.com
73. Step 4: Build simple sites
74. Jekyll Jekyllrb.com
75. Why Jekyll? It requires no server-side software It’s text-based Short learning curve Still lets me use templates, etc. It’s free
76. Home page
77. Home page
78. Home page
79. No time to write yet
80. No time to write yet Ask for a few links
81. Unintentional boosters! Yay!
82. A little basic SEO doesn’t hurt, either
83. Entity strategy
84. Speed, etc.
85. Home page link might be spammy, but worth a try.
86. One 300-900 word article posted every 2 days for 2 weeks
87. 2 weeks after launch
88. Denier sites
89. Result 10 hours’ work 5 deniers pushed down 1 spot in the SERPs 1 denier pushed off page one
90. After 1 week of no writing
91. Denier sites
92. Longer-term Result 10 hours’ work 3 deniers pushed down 1 spot in the SERPs 1 denier pushed off page one
93. We didn’t get to do all of this
95. I’m OK with that
96. What I would do next
97. Bump up other sites by linking to them
98. Recruit other writers
99. Interlink sites
100. Well, yeah
101. Other techniques
102. Negative SEO? Use with caution
103. Crowdfunded purchase of available, exact match, head term domains
104. Social content promotion
105. PPC
106. Mistakes
107. Too much smart- assery, so no one would help write
108. Disorganized recruiting
109. Hate sites are about SEO and content
110. We are good at SEO and content
111. Google can’t handle it
112. Take this deck. Use it as a blueprint. Choose one issue and devote 10-20 hours, total, to it.
113. Great communications can change the world
114. Thanks! Ian Lurie Tweet @portentint View and download this deck: http://bit.ly/serps-hate