Articles by Anna Bruno

Digital Tools

Sites with hidden links to deceive Google, FullPress analyzes a case to fight spam

31 January 2011 Anna Bruno 0

No intervention from Google
What’s strange is that no one has reported such irregularity to Google and that no Quality Rater has noticed such a high PageRank, which clearly highlights, without needing scientific calculations, an anomaly. Perhaps precisely because the site is little known, it has been ignored. The links on this site are outbound, but just follow the destination of the hidden links to understand where they lead. Looking at the HTML code with any browser, you immediately notice that other links are present on the destination sites, and so on, forming chains of hidden links intertwined with each other. Clearly, the agency’s site also receives links from the satellite sites, and so the PageRank rises without having to work to achieve better positions. In my research, I discovered a site that has over 50 hidden links on the homepage disguised as a 1-pixel image. Webmasters and more technical users will understand exactly what I mean. However, I find it very strange that with the most important keyword the site does not rank in the SERPs. It may also be that Google has penalized the site in the SERPs without affecting PageRank. The agency’s clients’ sites, however, seem to have not yet received any penalties.

The Agency’s network from hidden links

Text of the SEO agency network using illicit techniques

Sure, if the links are hidden, I wonder how a network member can receive money for a click on a link that no user can see?

Google anti-spam report and sold links
Google, for its part, suggests reporting these “anomalies” and especially these spam actions (hidden links are spam techniques) with two forms provided anonymously or via WebMaster Tools:

1)     Form to report spam to Google
2)     Form to report link buying and selling to Google 

I often read in various places on the Web about delays by Google in taking action following reports. When in doubt, it is always good to report, because the more reports we make, the more hope we have that the Web can free itself from these actors that the Internet can easily do without.

In this case, I have made my report to Google. On behalf of myself and FullPress, I invite you to do the same in similar situations. If you have similar cases to propose to the editorial team, we will be happy to analyze them.

The name of the agency and its site never appeared in this article or in the images. I did not want to protect the agency but simply avoided driving traffic and notoriety to those who, due to the use of illicit techniques, deserve no consideration from users or search engines, especially Google.

Digital Tools

Facebook, in the United States one in four users is on the social network while Google slows down

22 November 2010 Anna Bruno 0
**Facebook and its popularity**
Rewinding the film, here we are today. The *net-economy* recognizes another king that rhymes with “social network.” Even if the rhyme isn’t perfect, its name is very easy to remember: **Facebook**. To think that a *large square* built for people and made popular thanks to the “population” itself could scare the *Mountain View* giant until recently seemed more like a magic trick than a theory. Yet, it happened.

Today **Facebook** represents the real bogeyman for **Google**, and they know it well in California. **Google**, which for years made “silence” its winning weapon (it seemed to hold the *Coca-Cola* recipe), has become more human in recent times. The silences continue, but at more or less regular intervals, a representative occasionally pops up here and there on the Web, between a forum and a blog, between a video and a tweet. Google wants to become more popular, more loved, and above all, more used. Will it still be able to impose its business model tied to the world of advertising in the wake of Wired’s declaration: “the *Web is dead*”? **The near future may give us answers, while the race to *mobile* by various Web players has begun, and Google doesn’t seem to be in “first position” at all.**

Digital Marketing

Google Adsense and PPC Arbitrage, a technique still widespread today

12 April 2010 Anna Bruno 0

So, is PPC arbitrage not an illegal policy?
The answer is obvious: evidently, it is not illegal. However, be careful. Google might penalize or ban some publishers (for unknown reasons) and not intervene with others (for equally unknown or unclear reasons). In practice, it is not guaranteed that the rule applies to everyone. If you are small publishers, do not use these techniques; I am not so sure that PPC arbitrage is legal for you and complies with the democratic rules of the series: the policy is the same for everyone.