The Fantomaster (a fabled SEO black hat guru) really caught my attention today by noting an article on Search Engine Watch that he admired! In case you don’t know when Fantomaster admires an article you can be relatively certain the article is worth a read. Written for Search Engine Watch by Rob Kerry the article titled “Playing Dirty with PPC” lays out the steps to get around the editorial controls on the major pay per click search engines.
Here are the interesting but somewhat chilling techniques that Rob outlines in his article:
- How to sneak in advertisements that under normal circumstances would never make it past editorial control.
- How to steal ALL of the top 10 pay per click positions.
- How to get your competitor’s campaign dropped in a single, swift move.
Here is the complete article to read if you are interested. Of course I don’t advise ever utilizing the tactics that Rob outlines; however, I believe it is worthwhile understanding the morally challenged tactics that competitors could use against you.