A Glimpse into Black Hat SEO Business Through Peripheral Traffic Posts
Recently, while using Google search, I discovered that black hat traffic-generating content appeared on the first page of search results. My search keyword was “Shanghai to Nanjing network latency,” and the first page showed traffic-generating posts for escort services, as shown in the image below:
It’s worth noting that Google built its reputation on search technology, and its search results have always been highly accurate. The fact that black hat traffic-generating posts have appeared this time suggests that these operators have indeed found vulnerabilities in the SEO ranking algorithm and have effectively exploited them. Let’s try to guess how they’re doing it by looking at the search results.
Traffic Landing Page
Previously, the advertising traffic I’ve seen was usually on their own pages with messy content. The black hat traffic page that appeared on Google this time is actually under the google.com domain. Clicking on it reveals that it’s a page within Google Maps.
It appears that these black hat operators have left traffic-generating content on Google’s own Google Maps product. The traffic-generating text here includes adult content obfuscation, but the purpose is still evident at a glance. As of the time of this screenshot, this text has been viewed 133 times.
So, would this black hat traffic page appear for other keywords? I tried several location-related searches, such as “where to have fun in Guangzhou”, “business trip from Guangzhou to Shenzhen”, “cash on delivery in Guangzhou”, and the first page results were all normal, without any black hat traffic pages. Next, when including some of the keywords from the black hat page in the search terms, such as in-call, quality, escort, the content that came up was quite unsavory. For example, this result:
And this one:
These high-ranking pages are all from Google Maps, with pages stuffed with various keywords and contact information. Apart from this type of adult content traffic generation, are there others? Let’s try a simple test. First, let’s try “legitimate gambling“, and sure enough, the first result is still a black hat page on Google Maps, stuffed with various keywords.
This might just be the tip of the iceberg for these black hat operations!
The Black Hat Business
From the information above, it seems that what these black hat operators need to do is prepare a large number of relevant keywords and pile them into traffic-generating text. They might add some noise information in between, then post comments on Google Maps. These pages easily appear on the first page of Google’s search results.
How do we find these black hat operators? I tried searching for google map view 黑产 (black hat industry), and sure enough, I found advertisements left by the black hat operators themselves.
Looking at the homepage of one of these sites, let’s see the black hat promotional language:
Powerful team, strong domination of search results, high efficiency! For those who doubt our team’s ability, you can search for our team’s ads and see the similar effects after cooperation. We have hundreds of servers for operations, and optimization is an ongoing process. Google overseas is the world’s largest search engine with enormous traffic. Our optimization services are not limited by country, only by language!
They even provide effect videos. The black hat page also offers package plans. You can see that for 50 USDT, they guarantee indexing of 100,000 pages. It’s clear that their operation is quite aggressive, achieving miracles through brute force. Their keyword-stuffed pages start at 100,000, no wonder they’re dominating search engines.
Google’s Ban
During my attempts, I found that the same search for “Shanghai to Nanjing network latency” might yield different pages. Some traffic pages have already been blocked when opened, suggesting that Google might have noticed this issue and is banning black hat traffic pages.
Disclaimer
The content of this blog is for research purposes only and aims to expose illegal activities of black hat operators. Any techniques and information described here should not be used for illegal activities or malicious purposes. The author and publisher are not responsible for any direct or indirect losses caused by anyone using or misusing the information in this blog post. Readers should use this information within legal and ethical boundaries and always comply with all applicable laws and ethical regulations.
Finally, a reminder: no matter when, always cherish life and stay away from pornography, gambling, and drugs!
