I have been observing Google’s Search Engine optimisation (SEO) Guru Matt Cutts’ blog recently and I noticed this little gem which made me smile. In a post on the 3rd March Matt Cutts gave his views on what he predicts will happen in 2008.

“2008 will be the year that hacking and Search Engine optimisation (SEO) collide in a major way. By the end of the year, a nontrivial fraction of blackhat SEO will involve illegally hacking sites for links or landing pages. One webhost will get a significant black eye as hundreds or thousands of customers’ websites are hacked. The growth of illegal-blackhat SEO will leave traditional blackhats with a difficult choice: risk doing something illegal or sit out.”

This prediction post is scarily true because as link building becomes more important – and therefore more competitive – as a means of Search Engine optimisation the more under handed SEO techniques are going to be employed to out perform competitors online. There are only so many links you can build ethically before you get to certain link building pinnacle. It’s at that point companies will have to start looking at other means of link building to gain the edge.

Matt Cutts’ prediction regarding Search Engine optimisation (SEO) in the future made me smile because it occurred on the very day that “The Earth Liberation Front” (ELF) website was hacked by a Viagra company. The malicious blackhat SEO technique carried out by this Viagra Company involved changing the meta title tags on the ELF website to promote their Viagra products. The navigational links on the website where also changed to point to specific Viagra promotions.

I am suspicious of this whole situation because the actual domain for the ELF website appears to be currently up for sale. This then could potentially mean the website is no longer being maintained or monitored. One theory I have is that the Viagra based company could have brought the domain name and website content after the website was abandoned and used it as a means of link building for their products. Or this could just be a straight forward website hack.

Either way, I have to wonder whether Matt Cutts’ was aware of this website hack and knowing the potential growing threat of blackhat SEO techniques, used this idea for his predication post or whether he really is THAT good a Search Engine optimisation (SEO) Guru that he simply knows what will happen in the future……spooky thought hey!

Posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 3:59 pm in Archive, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.