Report Black Hat SEO to Google

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes, 29 seconds

Obviously, outing is not something that should be done lightly.

Personally, when it comes to blatant cases of black-hat, I don’t hesitate denouncing them, especially when that black-hat is related to negative SEO actions, malware or cloaking.

When I see a site that is ranking thanks to manipulative actions, then, what I try to understand – before an eventual outing – is how “dated” are those actions, because I don’t know the details of the “SEO reality” of that site, what really happens behind its curtains.
For that reason, if I know who is doing search marketing for that site, I try to talk with him privately, respectfully but directly in order to see if what I’ve seen is a legacy of the past or not.

Sincerely, I know how – with few exceptions – almost everybody in SEO did something not really accordingly to the Google guidelines (I did it too!), and personally I have nothing against Black/Grey Hat practitioners (albeit not approving their actions) if they:

1. don’t hide their nature behind a White Hat appearance;
2. do it for their own personal projects and/or for conducting SEO experiments;
3. they don’t blatantly sell it to clients as their main feature

The first case is the most painful, because sometimes it is related to people that maybe I esteem for their knowledge, but that sort of hypocrisy can make me distrust them in everything they do and tell. For instance, I can’t stand people saying that they do great Content Marketing, and then you discover that the gazillions shares the content they created are mostly composed by likes gained with Fiverr.

And the third case is pissing me off because, usually, those professionals/agencies are selling black hat taking advantage of the ignorance many of their potential clients have about the potential consequences of black hat (or, simply, dumb hat).

It is pissing me off because, finally, their are one of the main reason the SEO industry has such an horrible reputation. Their clients are happy, but then come to me asking me to “save” their site, and many times they cannot be saved at all.

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