Charles G. Mullen

eBay Sues Alleged ‘Cookie Stuffers’

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Three men defrauded eBay in a "cookie stuffing" scheme that made it appear the men’s companies should be paid commissions, eBay claims in Federal Court. It sued Shawn Hogan and Digital Point Solutions, Todd Dunning and Kessler’s Flying Circus, and Brian Dunning and Thunderwood Holdings.
eBay says the men devised software programs that, "unbeknownst to the [computer] user, redirected the user’s computer to the eBay Web site without the user actually clicking on an eBay advertisement link, or even becoming aware that they had left the page they were previously viewing. As a result, the eBay site would be prompted to drop an eBay cookie on the user’s computer even though the user never clicked on an eBay advertisement or even realized that their computer had ever visited the eBay site."
The complaint continues: "once the cookie was stuffed on the user’s computer by one or more of the defendant’s any future revenue actions initiated by that user when the user later visited eBay intentionally, and not as a result of any advertisement places by defendants, appeared to be eligible for commissions payable to one of the defendants".
eBay claims the defendants also used deceptive means to prevent it from discovering the fraud, and to conceal it. eBay demands compensatory, treble and punitive damages. It is represented by David Eberhart with O’Melveny & Myers.

Source: Here

There’s also a PDF file outlining the document of the lawsuit. You can find that Here.

Good or bad for cookie stuffers? We’ll find out…

Charles

Tags: Announcements by admin
10 Comments »

There’s a concept called "link velocity" and it concerns how fast a site gains links. The faster you gain links, the higher you rank. It’s possible Google sees a site that’s getting links quickly as a site that’s "hot", and you get rewarded. Gaining links very quickly can often be "natural" and a sign of popularity.

Then, your site quits getting links, or gets them much slower and your ranking drops accordingly.This could be mistaken for the infamous "sandbox", but it’s more of a glass half full/half empty point of view. Your site isn’t being penalized, instead it is no longer being rewarded for having high link velocity.

The general wisdom was to create links slowly, over time. The thinking is that you should be links slowly and surely. If you go to fast, your site will end up the the Google "sandbox" (disappear for a few months).

One more time, link velocity is just a theory…But it is something to think about. And, the more sophsticated the SEOers, the more likely they discuss link velocity.

We talk all the time about getting links "naturally". But what is natural? Isn’t it natural for some sites to get exposure on national TV, then get flooded with traffic and links in a short time? Or written up in a major magazine or newspaper? Wouldn’t links gained from these events be "natural"?

Why is it natural for a page to get links gradually, at a steady pace, over a period of time?

It’s just my opinion, but it would seem that the "natural" way sites and pages get links is that they’ll get more links when they are first posted, with the "link velocity" declining over time.

With everything considered, my advice is to get links as fast as you can, assuming you can maintain that pace for a period of time.

You also need to get links from a wide variety of sources and blend  many other strategies to make them look more "natural". Most webmasters seem to rely on only one or two linking strategies, which may be the real problem of the "sandbox".

Whether valid or not, you should at least consider the theory of link velocity. Build sites, blogs and Squidoo lenses and test the principle of Link Velocity. Build links at different speeds to different network resources of your’s and test it for yourself…Just don’t accept that building links slowly and surely is the "best" route to take, without checking it out for yourself.

This is why we build gold, silve and tin sites…We use the tin sites to test (in addition to building links).

You can increase your links, traffic and reach this way without worrying about if you’re getting links to your original site too fast or too slow.

Charles

Tags: Whitehat SEO by admin
No Comments »