
How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google - jmarbach
http://nenadseo.com/new-seo/#
======
searchmartin
FULL DISCLOSURE:

Im an Expedia employee (inbound marketing director, covering SEO), although Im
currently at the end of my notice period. (Im leaving in two weeks).

Also, I worked in the B2B division, nothing to do with the consumer side that
this article references.

The author of the post linked above contacted me a couple of days before
publishing it, to warn me that he would publish (quote: "damning evidence of
expedia spam").

HOWEVER: If I wanted him to not publish it, he would "sell the post to the
highest bidder".

That was what prompted me to post this on my personal blog:
[http://webmarketingschool.com/big-brand-seo-
spam/](http://webmarketingschool.com/big-brand-seo-spam/) and for the record,
I told him to sling his hook reference to extorting money out of anyone in
exchange for not posting stuff about their backlinks.

No doubt that is why I got singled out in the article. You'll notice that at
the top I get mentioned as being in charge of this stuff, then right down at
the bottom, he mentions that in fact Ive got nothing to do with it.

I'll let you all draw your own conclusions.

~~~
C1D
I would trust this post if you could at the very least provide some evidence
that he did contact you and that you are leaving because to me, it seems like
you're just a employee trying to pin the blame on him and do a little damage
control.

The fact that you're the Marketing Director at Expedia makes it even worse (if
you are lying).

EDIT: Okay, I just did some research and this person's company is extremely
fishy but I would still like to see some evidence.

~~~
searchmartin
Proof Im leaving? Check the date on this post on facebook:
[https://www.facebook.com/mogmartin/posts/10151730878862337](https://www.facebook.com/mogmartin/posts/10151730878862337)

As for pinning blame on the author?

Hardly...

Im not debating anything he said, other than calling my name out.

Its not my place to deny OR corroborate any claims against a division that I
NEVER worked for, of a company that I no longer work for! ;)

------
MichaelTieso
Just a few emails I usually get from Expedia.

"In fact, the article can be about any topic related to your blog, just
mentioning at some point something like “find coupon codes for Expedia”, “get
some deals in Expedia”.. Do you think that would fit in? Doesn’t have to look
very spammy (we don’t want that either). What do you think?

About the price, how much would it be a post like this with maybe 2 links? "

AND

"I’m looking to place a link this week on the homepage, but can I ask when the
link for expedia.co.uk expires on your site?"

These are just two examples. There are plenty of these. BUT it does appear
that they are now hiring quality bloggers to write on their own blog so
perhaps things have changed.

~~~
thematt
Isn't this very similar to what RapGenius just got penalized for? Only
difference seems to be Expedia is not providing anything in exchange for the
crappy linkbit like RG was offering to.

~~~
putlake
Yes, this is similar but more sophisticated. With RapGenius, taking action was
easy because the company admitted what they were doing and all the evidence
was in the open. Also, the links were clearly spammy.

With these examples, the links are clearly spammy to a human but a little less
detectable by a bot. And -- this is crucial -- there is no evidence yet
linking these bloggers back to Expedia. Google will have to do a little more
digging to figure out the nexus and analyze the quality of Expedia's backlink
profile before they can slap a penalty. My guesstimate is that there's a 1 in
3 chance there will be a penalty and a 1 in 10 chance the penalty will be
public.

~~~
cases
It's no secret that a lot of Google's reviews are manual[1] and popular
websites like Expedia and RapGenius aren't reviewed by bots. This post and the
one about RapGenius shows it's too easy for them to influence the algorithm.
Like you said RapGenius got a manual penalty because they were openly
flaunting their spam and giving Google a bad name in the process. Expedia does
it more descretely and spends millions on Adwords so they won't have to worry.

[1][http://searchengineland.com/google-now-reports-
practically-a...](http://searchengineland.com/google-now-reports-practically-
all-manual-actions-136822)

------
com2kid
It is sad that an article with actual content towards the end has so much
filler to start with. I think this post would be a lot more impactful if it
started out as

"Hey, you want to know who else pays bloggers to link to their site?
Expedia.com, here is some proof:"

I can understand the author's frustration, and he brings good points to the
table, but the first quarter or so of the article is neigh unreadable.

~~~
davemel37
I see no proof or mention of paying bloggers for links.

~~~
aptwebapps
Why did they do it then? The links weren't topical and they weren't affiliate
links. Is it that hard to figure out the motive?

Edit: Are they using http referrers so reward the correct affiliate?

~~~
mesozoic
Unlikely and besides it wouldn't even work because they're guest posting on
other domains than the one they own or would have registered.

------
pknight
This just adds to the list of why to hate Google.

Basically if you are either a big brand or a spammy company or have a nimble
operation, you can afford to do grey & black seo. If you are a small business/
up and coming company white seo practices are the safe choice.

~~~
throwaway420
Even if you use nothing but white-hat and above-board SEO strategies, you're
at risk of your page getting penalized or delisted. This happens to people
every day. Only unlike Rap Genius, there is literally zero way to communicate
with somebody at Google unless you manage to get a popular thread going at HN.

I'm happy this Rap Genius incident happened because it's driven some attention
to how Google's business actually operates, how poor their algorithms actually
are, how arbitrary their search engine actually is, how poor their customer
service practices are, and many other similar ideas.

Granted, these are monumentally hard problems to solve and Google still does
it better than anybody else, but it's good that some attention is directed
here because there are numerous problems with how ranking in Google currently
works.

~~~
ris
> Even if you use nothing but white-hat and above-board SEO strategies, you're
> at risk of your page getting penalized or delisted

This rather suggests that what you're calling "white hat" is a slightly less
white shade than you may think. After all, who exactly is defining what "above
board" is here?

You're talking as though Google has some kind of responsibility to you. They
don't. You are not their customer. Their customer is the searcher, and they
have every right to do whatever they like with their results to give what they
think is the best result for the searcher.

I'm getting pretty tired of this attitude (generally among "SEO" people) that
Google is some sort of public property.

~~~
gress
Google had a monopoly and exerts market power over the internet. They legally
_do_ have a responsibility to the public.

I'm getting pretty tired of the attitude that they have no responsibility to
anyone other than those who buy advertising from them since it's blatantly
false.

~~~
ris
> Google had a monopoly and exerts market power over the internet. They
> legally do have a responsibility to the public.

Not really. Certainly not a responsibility to abide by the whims of random
people who want their content ranked higher.

And if we decide to burden them with "responsibilities", what about their
responsibility to keep my search results free of spa^W SEOers' crap?

~~~
gress
All monopolies with market power have a responsibility to the public. It's a
matter of policy and law.

You're right that they don't have a responsibility to abide by the whims of
random spammers, but they also don't have carte Blanche to use their power to
regulate the internet as they see fit.

The 'it's their product so they can do what they like' line is simply not
correct. When they take action like this they need to be scrutinized carefully
and we as the public most certainly should debate the merits of their actions
and their effect on the internet.

------
swombat
> _You know all those bloggers /SEOs at MOZ giving webmasters tips and tricks
> on how to rank higher? Well, they never said: “Guys, you gotta do basic on-
> page SEO, buy quality links and you will rank higher, that’s all you need to
> know.” Instead they keep selling stories how their clients rank using “white
> hat” SEO._

GrantTree is ranked pretty high against our competitors on several keywords
that are important to us. This was all entirely through whitehat SEO within
about a year of setting out to do it. We've just written lots of high-quality
content on our blog, and then contributed genuine, original articles to other
sides and got them to include a link to GrantTree or to one of our topic sub-
pages (like
[http://granttree.co.uk/tax_credits](http://granttree.co.uk/tax_credits) ) in
the byline. We've never bought links, nor will we ever buy links.

Now, GrantTree's context is not super-competitive like, say, Expedia or
RapGenius... but we do have competitors. So competing with good, well-
structured content and genuine contributions to other sites _does_ work - at
least in some contexts.

Also, I'm frequently on the receiving end of these "your blog/site/whatever is
awesome and we'd love to publish a high-quality article on your blog and we'll
even pay you for it" emails, and as far as I'm concerned they are spam. I
never even bother replying to them.

I'll be happy if Google nails those spammy bastards to the wall - both the
paymasters and the so-called bloggers.

(Note: this makes no judgement on the claim that Expedia is partaking in this)

~~~
MichaelTieso
Curious: Would you still write the article if the link was nofollow? And what
links are you requiring in the byline? I'm very suspicious of any company
asking to "guest post".

~~~
swombat
> _Would you still write the article if the link was nofollow?_

Typically I've written the article _before_ passing it on to someone, so in
those cases, obviously the question doesn't apply. In the latter case, if
someone asks for me to e.g. write about tax credits for their site, then it's
only polite for them to allow us to include a byline without nofollow.

> _And what links are you requiring in the byline?_

Hah, whatever I can get :-) Depends on the site, obviously, but if I can get
links to some of our topic pages with the right text, I'll go for that! (e.g.
[http://www.ec1capital.com/blog/rd-tax-credits-
explained](http://www.ec1capital.com/blog/rd-tax-credits-explained)).

We don't "ask to guest post" as a company, though I've offered to write some
good original content on occasion, but only in person and with no pressure.

------
cowardlyanon
I used to own and run two popular travel sites and have been contacted by a
third party to place Expedia links for under $400/year on both sites.

Even though the third party had nothing to do with Expedia (besides emailing
me the particular anchor text and URL), the fact that I was only ever
contacted to put Expedia links and no other sites in the 5 years I've been
running them made me think that they were Expedia shills.

(this is obviously a throw away account)

------
aerolite
Funny how Matt Cutts was all over the Rap Genius article on HN right after it
came out and he's nowhere to be found here. Must be the millions Expedia
spends on Adwords, or my cynicism, one of the two.

------
bdcravens
So an SEO "firm" (around since 2010, but their domain was registered in
November?) is exposing secrets of SEO, which they imply is the secret sauce to
getting to the top. What's the end game?

~~~
Danieru
Matt Cutts has said Google is trying to break Blackhat SEO's spirits. That
tactic appears to be working and this post is a result of that. The author is
not trying to build their brand or position themselves. Rather they are sad
and angry. To them the situation feels unfair and they want to make the big
abusers feel the same pain they've experienced.

~~~
jfoster
I think it's awesome that Google busts as many blackhats as they can. I don't
want blackhat seo to be what I need to engage in in order to be successful.
I'm reckon I'm better at creating value than I am at link building, so it
suits me.

That said, Google are not doing a very comprehensive job of busting blackhats.
Even some of the cases that an algorithm should be able to easily detect are
not being punished in the same way that RapGenius was. This essentially leaves
everyone in an awkward situation. You can't compete using whitehat methods
because your competitors are using blackhat methods and Google is turning a
blind eye. You end up with two options; (a) lower your standards and start
using blackhat methods, or (b) hope that Google will eventually punish your
dodgy competitors and buy traffic from Google in the interim.

~~~
Shog9
This is probably the best argument in favor of that "break the spirit"
strategy then: if you've little-to-no hope of actually putting a dent in the
shear _volume_ of abuse by way of penalties, making the _existence_ of
penalties (and the behaviors that lead to them) as notorious as possible might
be the next best thing... Make associating with such SEO tactics appear too
risky for any valuable brand, and cut off the funding for them with FUD.

------
hvass
I am a bit confused about the argument about Expedia not being penalized
because they are spending on AdWords, wouldn't great organic rankings reduce
their paid budget? And if Google penalizes them for legitimate reasons I doubt
they would cut their AdWords budget.

I am sure Matt will provide more info soon especially after what happened to
RapGenius.

~~~
davemel37
Google did research that shows having organic rankings and paid ads, boosts
your click rate significantly. So, it would be a mistake to stop advertising
if you rank well organically.
[http://www.google.com/think/infographics/organic-impact-
on-p...](http://www.google.com/think/infographics/organic-impact-on-paid.html)

This is nothing compared to what RapGenius did. This is a low quality, but
legit link building tactic.

The author claims the articles are poor quality, but they aren't. The only red
flag is commercial keywords as anchor text, which Penguin today does a good
job of discounting.

~~~
girvo
Why is this legit? It seems bullshit to me, as an outsider, just another way
if gaming the system.

~~~
ars_technician
Yeah, I don't understand how a company essentially paying bloggers to create
links to their site is a legitimate method of ranking in a search engine. That
sounds fundamentally broken and far from 'organic'.

------
iaskwhy
This kind of SEO hack seems hard to fix with an algo. One way might be to
target "content" creators like Abby and Jennifer as they probably use Google+
(and probably other social networks) to promote their work. By targeting the
writers and giving some penalty to everything they write as well as the site
where the article is published, these sites will need to verify how good the
writers are before accepting the guest post.

I believe avoiding targeting the big brands is for the better since giving bad
reputation to the brand linked on these articles would backfire with false
articles against competitors.

~~~
davemel37
This is what Google was hoping too accomplish with AuthorRank.

Penguin is also discounting many of these links that have commercial keywords
as anchor text. (I wonder if these links even help them.)

------
cclogg
It's weird when you realize how much stuff that seems organic is really just a
massive ploy/effort by a company or PR firm. I think even Paul Graham had an
article about PR firms related to the comeback of the 'suit' haha.

One wonders how safe HN will be from this. Inevitably if something can
generate views or $$ then someone will have an interest in gaming it.

~~~
davemel37
This is and always has been the nature of Business. Long before search engines
or the internet came into being. People will do whatever they can to get
exposure, publicity, and a competitive edge.

All marketing is a Ploy if you really think about it, and businesses for
intents and purposes is just an investment vehicle and marketing is how your
turn over that investment.

Heck news media a ploy for corporations.

Someone has to Pay the Bills and Keep The Lights On

~~~
clarkm
It wasn't too long ago that calling someone a "corporate shill" meant you were
parodying tinfoil hatters. It's funny how quickly things change.

~~~
RyanZAG
It was always a valid point and has been going on for a very long time. There
was a concerted effort awhile back by PR companies to attack anyone calling
out their corporate shill accounts, mostly done heavily by Microsoft on
engadget and slashdot among others. Popular industry blogs like communities-
dominate have also been a historical hotbed for shill accounts. It's nothing
new and generally any furious backlash you see against people calling it out
is more of the same.

------
jpalomaki
Once you start giving penalties for this kind of behavior, then you open up
the possibility for really black hat people using this against their
competition.

------
bryan_rasmussen
It seems that this is an awful thing that google is doing, but I really
couldn't get very far in the article before getting tired of the author's
unintentional schtick - the following is where I stopped:

"They don’t buy links? They don’t bribe bloggers? They don’t sell links on
MOZ? Yes, you’re reading right. SEOs sell links on MOZ. But we all know this.
It is so obvious. But MOZ is not the topic of this article.

And this is not going to be an article; I would like to look at it as a
report. We will make a report about huge companies (we will start with one
company), ranking for tens of thousands of keywords using black hat tactics. "

~~~
RBerenguel
I almost stopped there, but the examples afterwards are pretty much spot on

------
MrBlue
Looking forward to see how Cutts spins this.

------
ecopoesis
This isn't paid linking-- it's an affiliate/referral program. Expedia isn't
paying for the link, they're paying for the conversions generated by the link.
Every OTA does this, and it's how the mass of travel sites that aren't OTAs
make all their money.

This is all Google's fault. Most travel sites used to try to generate good
content, and then buy SEM to their content and use OTA search widgets to
monetize via affiliate programs. But Google decided this was search arbitrage,
and stopped approving SEM landing pages that were monetized by affiliate
search, so people have had to resort to text links, in the hope that someone
will click and they can drop their cookie and get paid.

NB: I used to work for a site that was at the time owned by Expedia.

~~~
MichaelTieso
This is definitely paid linking. I own a very popular travel website and
friends with other popular travel related sites. I can confirm that Expedia
has contacted us to purchase links. It's not really news and very well known
in the travel community. Often their pay is as low as $10 for a link.

~~~
ryguytilidie
This is what always frustrates me about these discussions. There will be a
long, article citing many sources and someone will simply say "thats not true"
without seeming to have any knowledge at all of what they are talking about.
Later on, someone like you, with actual facts, contradicts the other person
and I wonder why someone who had no idea what they were talking about
definitively shot down a well thought out point in the first place at all...?

~~~
shaneofalltrad
Paid links and paying for conversion can be different pricing structures, but
the fact is they are either paying someone in house or for contract to create
links to the website through blog. This is common, as blogging, especially if
the blogger can get the article on a legitimate website it has value. They can
pay in many set rates by volume of work to performance of the links.

Another thing is the website owners can be paid to add new content to the blog
via an in-house SEO grunt, who has to add a number of links and space them out
based on expected. I.e. one link per blog. They will edit over or add to the
actual bloggers content.

------
gesman
Google is a goverment of internet. To be a good citizen is to pay taxes. You
pay taxes - you have a chance.

You try to avoid taxes - you get squished.

------
wzy
This is why i don't follow what Google say about "correct" SEO. I just do what
i know works for me.

------
davidw
SEO articles often leave me with the same feeling I get when I realize I've
stepped in dog poop.

------
lazyjones
I'd really like to have a place where we can report those dubious "SEO
companies" who are sending spam e-mails to website owners offering to write
"guest posts", so they and their practices can be scrutinized better by the
community and perhaps search engines.

For example, slap-up-media.net spammed us today, offering to pay us to publish
guest posts written by them. I'd really like to know who their clients are
(but would not risk accepting their offer out of curiosity).

------
rivo
A friend of mine used to work for one of these paid content agencies. Her job
was to set up a few Wordpress blogs a day while writers filled them with
content. Apparently, among their clients were lots of large companies. It
seems, though, that after Google's crackdown on duplicate/fake content etc.
they had to take a massive hit in revenues. They've since let most of their
employees go and have - so far not very successfully - been looking for a new
business model.

------
arikrak
As Google moves away from relying on pagerank, it will make such schemes less
effective, and people will need to try harder to game Google.

~~~
davemel37
I think most SEOs agree that as long as links are what connects the internet,
they will be an important ranking factor.

------
ksolanki
This and the Rap Genius stories go on to show why algorithmic search (aka
Google search) is not going to last another ten years. It probably already
does, but more and more Google algorithms will include lots of ifs and buts.

There is definitely some room for fresh approaches to content discovery,
knowledge indexing, and finding answers. New startup(s) or Google
rediscovering itself?

------
davemel37
I see no smoking gun here or evidence of paid linking, or even link schemes. I
just see legit guest posts, that could just as easily be meant to drive
referral traffic.

Ironically, Tampa is where BlueGlass was located before they went bellyup.

Personally, I think articles likes these are fine for SEO. The articles are
NOT PAID FOR and while the links might not be totally organic, you could
certainly argue it adds some value to the post. (i.e. expedia's app is a good
app for finding cheap airfare.)

Google has announced several times that they are going to crack down on poor
quality guest posting, and I think expedia should be a little more progressive
in their anchor text (i.e. linking with a brand name, url or even not
linking... but just mentioning the brand name could help their rankings.)

Bottom line, Good offsite SEO today is a more polished version of this...

Step 1: Create Linkable, shareable, emotionally charged content.

Step 2: distribute your content socially.

Step 3: Do outreach to bloggers and journalists to get exposure to their
audience, and perhaps attract links...

That being said, aside from the overly optimized anchor text, this is
legitimate link acquisition and its what all SEOs do today... They create
content and try to get distribution far and wide.

These links and posts could just as easily be traffic generation strategies,
not SEO strategies.

~~~
pdeuchler
I smell bacon.

"A little about me... I am a search marketing consultant,and I love everything
about marketing and emerging technology. Growth Hacking is my strongest
skillset, especially when leveraging search engines."

While I'm not sure that what you're doing is technically astroturfing, it's
still equally as dishonest.

First, none of the links described in TFA match your "guidelines" to "Good
offsite SEO", so even by your own admission this is not "Good offsite SEO".

Second, there is no such thing as "Good offsite SEO", since any "offsite SEO"
is by definition either link farming or gaming the system. The entire point of
the Penguin update (if I'm not mistaken) was to prevent quite literally all
"offsite SEO" so google can rank your page according to _your_ content, and so
they can reliably weight incoming links. If an incoming link (that is not on
your site!) has been SEO'd then by definition it is not an organic, quality
incoming link.

Third, you state "this is legitimate link acquisition and its what all SEOs do
today", which undermines the entirety of your post since link acquisition is
by definition not organic, nor does it produce "quality" inbound links.

But hey, since "its what all SEOs do today" it must be kosher.

Edit: Just to address your last point (not to pile on or anything, but I feel
like it's important), I'm pretty sure this is a willful conflation of two
totally separate concepts. Since, you know, everyone who's ever done any sort
of SEO knows that if you want to drive traffic, but not pay the penalties for
link farming, you use rel="nofollow". Which Expedia/ the blogger did not do.

~~~
davemel37
"While I'm not sure what your doing is astroturning, its equally dishonest"

I don't even know what that means. But, that was written close to two years
ago... I have since moved on to content development and traffic strategy.
Still, Whats wrong with being a search marketer and knowing about link
building strategies that are legit. Why is building a site that inherently
attracts links, not both legit to google, and a growth hack?

I think your understanding of Penguin, or Offsite SEO are misinformed.
Creating great content and proactively seeking exposure to that content is
perfectly white hat and within Googles guidelines. Using No Follow is for PAID
placements, advertising and advertorials. These posts were none of the above.
Blogger outreach without incentive (i.e. content they chose to feature because
it adds value to their audience.) is a bedrock of content marketing and
inbound marketing, and traffic generation, and I would do these things even if
Google and Search Engines never existed.

Bottom Line, distributing quality content through outreach is a legitimate
practice that all GOOD seo's engage in, and whether you like it or not, its in
Googles best interest as well for content creators to be incentivized to
create more content, which comes about through growing an audience, which
comes from exposure to other publishers audience, and search engines.

~~~
pdeuchler
If you really don't want to take my word for it, Google explicitly states how
the links that TFA addressed are _clearly in violation of Google 's Webmaster
Guidelines_:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356)

"Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our
guidelines..." (3rd bullet point)

~~~
davemel37
I dont see any evidence that this was a large scale effort.

As another poster pointed out as well, these might be affiliate links dropped
by a widget like skimlinks,etc...

~~~
vini
you can use NerdyData to search links like those directly on the sites source
code: [http://d.vncs.me/T864](http://d.vncs.me/T864) [short link, HN mess the
full link]

~~~
alixaxel
Wow, NerdyData seems like it can be very useful sometimes, thanks for sharing!

------
rch
I thought this was understood across the board. I'm interested to see how the
conversation plays out though.

------
artag
Martin MacDonald's thoughts on this subject (Big Brand SEO Spam):
[http://webmarketingschool.com/big-brand-seo-
spam/](http://webmarketingschool.com/big-brand-seo-spam/)

------
adidash
How is it any different from offline world of business? Seems like big
businesses with resources always go that extra mile to compete with other big
businesses. The small businesses are usually the collateral damage.

------
ivanbrussik
how bout we look into nenad who looks like they are really active on a
"blackhat SEO forum" and gets tons of links from there. seems legit.

------
alixaxel
I'm nearly halfway through and I must say this is being a very good read.
Great piece of investigative journalism.

------
pyb
Looks like Google might have reacted, I googled 'cheap flights' and Expedia is
not on the front page.

------
ysekand
I can demonstrate that Microsoft sells links.

~~~
syllogism
Go on then.

------
lisp-and-seo
It is very simple: Expedia is paying over a billion $ annually for ads, Google
is giving them a buy one, get one free deal.

Google is only having "SEO scheme" problems with freeloaders, like RapGenius.

To site Wikipedia: "Don't be evil" was the informal corporate motto (or
slogan) of Google. Key word here is was.

~~~
dpatrick86
This is what you get when you take the shortcut of moving away from a strict
algorithmic ranking: obvious abuse of prosecutorial discretion.

------
repkor
Because of its large inventory of information

------
pastpartisan
brb gonna declare bankruptcy (google ads are reallly expensive and lots of
bot/garbage clicks)

~~~
pastpartisan
I wish there were a way to delete since now i'm gonna get negged to death and
I will probably need to make a new account

~~~
bdcravens
There is for a short time. If your account is only 3 days old I guess nothing
of value is lost :-)

