Note: I actually received an email from Boston College this morning (Saturday January 17th, 2009). They explained that this article is actually webspace that is provided to students, and it’s not an “official” part of the BC website. Apparently this happened before and they are working towards having it removed.
I was doing a bit of research tonight and happened upon a used car website in Florida. I was surprised to see it had a pagerank of “5″ and was curious how it managed such a high pagerank.
After looking this website up at my SEO Quake Firefox Extension, I noticed it only had 11 back-links. I knew one of them had to be a good one since obtaining a Pagerank of “5″ isn’t as easy as it was last year.
I won’t even mention the car dealer’s site because I don’t want to give them free publicity, but you can see the article here: Boston College Article With Hidden Link.
Anyway, I checked their back-links through Yahoo Site Explorer and the first one was the article from the main Boston College Website. I clicked on it and couldn’t find it anywhere (visibly), so I right clicked and viewed the source. Here it is:
Click To Enlarge
So, you think there is a college student at BC selling links? I wonder how many other hidden links are on the official website of Boston College?
For those who don’t know what I am talking about, it’s quite simple. The more powerful the links are that you have pointing to your website, the more powerful your website will be. Sneaking “in-links” like that is referred to as “Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization)”. Doing it ethically and by the book is called “White Hat SEO”. I’m not sure who started this terminology, but it goes back to the old cowboy movies. The good guy always had a white hat and the bad guy had a black hat.
I’m sure it’s possible this site may of been hacked and the link uploaded, but I don’t think there are many hackers in the used car business.
