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Newbie/Basic Questions

Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: F.P5 (19 Mar 09 4:01am)

I have browsed this forum but, if i am not mistaken, i havent seen such a topic. I was wondering if my blog would be penalized by Google because of Honey Pot hidden links. I dont remember when or where, but i am sure that i have read that Google looks for hidden linsk in blog's pages because they might be considered some sort of Black SEO. Any reply is going to be highly appreciated. thanks!

ps. to be sure, in my blog i placed visible link but with a black color font, so people won't click them...

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: F.Heinzmann (24 Mar 09 11:35pm)

Google has a forum with 45 answers to the question about Project Honeypot including the answer from the Google employee that said we just needed to pick the right answer -- sorry, but like you, I still do not understand.
My website just went from a page rank (PR) of 4 to NR. There are 3 things I think may have caused this but I would like to know rather than guess.
1. First possible cause, I installed a Honeypot including the hidden links. I excluded the honeypot via robots.txt so I thought Google would not be bothered.
2. Second possible cause, I had the public feature set so Project Honeypot could allow others to link to the honeypot - could Google look at all these links as some kind of padding or fraud?
3. Third possible cause, I have aggressively been blocking spammer IPs via .htaccess. Just in case I inadvertently blocked a human, I wanted to give them a way to contact me via a custom 403 error page. I found this error page did not work when hosted on my site so I set up a custom 403 page on another site I own. Could this be seen as a problem by Google?

Can anybody enlighten F.P5 and me?

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: F.P5 (25 Mar 09 4:25am)

I talked with the guys at the Honey Pot project and they said to me that there should not been any issue. They are in contact with some guys at Google so, Google itself knows about the Honey pot project. It has been 3 weeks since i installed the Honey Pot traps in my blog and apart a rise in the number of spam which hit my pages, I have not seen any change in the number of visitors Google sends to me daily.
Like F.Heinzmann i also block spam via htaccess but i think this should not cause any issue. maybe F.Heinzmann should look at point number 2 and above 3 which in my opinion are causing his issues.
Besides, keep in mind that www.projecthoneypot.org has got a lot of honey pots in its pages and its PR ispretty high.
I will keep a close eye to my PR as well (PR2). I expect it to rise with the next update which should be anytime soon. I will kep this post updated.
it is a pity that the guys at the HPP don't provide any info for those people who, like us, are into SEO and are concerned about hidden links and such.

PS hey Heinzmann, have you notices any increse in th number of spam hitting your pages or not? What benefit have you got from your Honey Pots?

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: F.Heinzmann (25 Mar 09 8:08am)

I think Google was having some issues with PR yesterday. My site is back to 4 today.

I did change my main site to 'private' but will leave my other 2 sites at public. Also, after responses over at Google, I think I am going to make my honeypot links visible but just tell humans not to follow them.

I also did away with the 403 error page on another site - anyone inadvertently blocked will just have to find another way to contact me.

I can't really tell if there has been an increase in spam nor can I tell if the honeypot is doing any good. My main problems have been with attempted comment spam on our photo gallery. It amazes me the number of users from China that want to comment on tombstone photos in Illinois <g>. The most value I have received from project honeypot is the IP lookup information. I've implemented hp:bl in the photo studio but can't tell if it is doing any good or not. I have been unable to get any of the hp:bl scripts to work for my index page but I'm still working on it.

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: F.P5 (25 Mar 09 2:28pm)

ok, got it. Can i know what the guys at the google forum advices you?
I have set three honey pots links but just one of them is visible. thanks...(never mind i managed to read your posts in the google forum ;)
By the way, according to Akismet stat (i use wordpress) the number of spam hitting my blog is lowering even though , but i do not why, some spam still manages to hit my blog.
True the HPP is useful in order to spot IP

As i said before i will try to keep this threat alive.

Post Edited (25 Mar 09 2:29pm)

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: M.Prince (26 Mar 09 4:18am)

Hey guys:
Google is very aware of what we're doing. I've talked with guys on their search team, their mail team, their anti-fraud team, etc. Specifically have asked about the hidden links issue. They have repeatedly assured me that it isn't a problem. (They also are appreciative of our efforts on comment spam since that is a direct assault on the integrity of their rankings.) We take quite a few steps to make sure that honey pots don't end up in Google's index, including a noindex meta tag at the top of all of them. The usual problem with hidden links that bothers Google is trying to get some pages into Google's index. If you follow the guidelines that we give you I'm assured that it will not negatively affect the rank of the pages you link from.

If you have a different experience over a sustained period of time, please contact us and we'll open a channel with our friends at Google.

Best,
Matthew.

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: F.P5 (26 Mar 09 7:48am)

What are and where are these guidelines??

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: F.P5 (26 Mar 09 8:32am)

I found something interesting on this forum: http://www.projecthoneypot.org/board/read.php?f=6&i=160&t=159#reply_160

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: M.Prince (26 Mar 09 3:38pm)

By guidelines I meant the suggested formats we provide for hiding the link to your installed honey pot or your QuickLink.

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: M.Ilnyckyj (13 Jun 09 6:57pm)

"If you follow the guidelines that we give you I'm assured that it will not negatively affect the rank of the pages you link from."

I am glad to hear it. I got worried about this, while hiding links in my site.

Re: Honey Pot, Google and SEO

Author: B.L5 (14 Jun 09 9:22am)

http://twitter.com/mattcutts/statuses/2119671011

Matt Cutts says he likes PHP and he's really big on SEO.