Why I Love the Sordid Underbelly of the Search World

Beware SEOmoz readers. This is not your typical blog entry from Rand. It contains not only foul language, but a glorification of those parts of the search and online world that I shy away from. It's not for the delicate of heart, but I figure my writing style could use a bit of a shakeup, and what the heck, it's midnight Friday in Beijing, what better time to author something scandalous?

Today I want to tell you a bit about the men and women who make up the sordid, no-holds-barred, downright sexy side of the search industry. They're not much like me at all. In fact, while I'm a literal Momma's boy (with my ethics constantly in the way of a bigger wallet), they're wallowing 6 feet deep in sin and loving every minute of it, especially the greenbacks. The thing is, no matter how dark and ugly their online practices get, these heroes of spam, the decent ones, the ones I respect, are the best kind of people a guy like me could want to know. It is with no irony that I say that you could not ask for a better “posse” when the going gets rough, in the online world, or the real one. They'll bully you into a private party, pay for drinks and meals you could never afford and beat the shit, literally or electronically, out of anyone who gives you a sideways glance. They're one of my favorite things about working in this business.

Who are “they”? They're online hustlers. Gods and Goddesses whose powers stem not from some ritual sacrifice of pig genitalia on a pentagram (although who knows, I don't spend every hour of the day with them), but from their downright legendary knowledge of all things “web,” especially how to exploit it for profits. I'm talking about soul-wrenchingly powerful domainers, arbitrage-overlords, kings of link spam and temporary rankings and web entrepreneurs who know how to source, price, market and sell online the kinds of goods and services that devil would give his right arm for. Yeah – a lot of them are in PPC (no, not that one, the good kind): Porn, Pills and Casinos. And there are plenty who would give a mafioso a run for his money when it comes to who's “seen it all.”

I'm not advocating these industries – I'm certainly not cut out for it myself. But I am giving respect where it's due – to people smarter, wilier, tougher and more morally flexible than I am.

No amount of raunchy expletives or conniving descriptors are going to do my friends justice, though. I'm going to have to give some examples. In these, however, the names, industries and a few facts have been changed to protect the very fucking guilty.

My friend “Nora” is near the top of the gambling industry food chain. She used to eat GoldenPalace's PR bullshit stunts for lunch and crap out nails 10 minutes later. Listening to her isn't just fun. It's inspiring. One story I loved started with a load of domains she had been running around a specific gambling topic – let's say “no limit blackjack.” Most of these domains had rankings at Yahoo! & MSN, and while several had been banned from Google, the rest were still pulling in big cash from the market leader. Anyway, she gets a tip that some of the linking practices she's been using – namely URL injection – are going the way of the dodo. She's a smart girl, so she decides to re-invest; she starts selling the domains one by one on different private marketplaces online (and through offline channels as well). She tells a brilliant fictional tale to each buyer to explain the quick-sell (particularly to some bigger outfits who've been hounding her for a sale or at least a switch to their affiliate program). Variations of her story involve a cheating ex-boyfriend, a warrant for her arrest, and a need for 5 figure payouts on the quick. The best part is that most of the story she feeds her buyers is true, though highly embellished and a few years stale.

In any case, the buyers start biting – snapping up domains that they haven't investigated well because the traffic figures and search stats make them look like good deals. Most of them are using similar techniques for ranking their own stuff, but they're not as good at it, so the buys are worthwhile, and they don't think much of the spurious linking, not having my friend's access to insider knowledge.

Nora re-invests the money in a CMS that's popular outside the US – buying what amounts to basically link love to the site(s) of her choice with a default install (you know those pesky Wordpress template links? It's kinda like that). She plays a waiting game and, sure enough, those sites she sold start dropping like flies – but not all of them. Some had amassed enough legit link juice to stay un-banned, though the loss of value from the “questionable” links left them ranking in the upper 80's. So what does Nora do? She buys a few back at pennies on the dollar – re-connecting directly with the new owners, who aren't particularly pissed since they don't realize just how she played them for suckers. Then she uses her new link source (the CMS) to “acquire” enough juice to propel them back into the stratosphere and bingo. She's not only not lost from the evolving algo, she's made a virtual killing and is back to earning like a top-ranker.

Welcome to hardcore SEO.

Nora and pals aren't just great online earners – they've got their own subculture in the SEO world. If you go to SES shows and Pubcons and the new SMX series (holy crap, Danny, 8 shows in the next 6 months?), you won't see them. Have you ever seen some of these notorious black hats  in daylight hours? Of course not. I saw one. Once. At the Munich airport on my way out of town. He looked like he always does – his personality dripping with his geography – cold & aloof (he is from a northern locale) and impeccably unshakable. He doesn't attend SES conferences for the sessions. He's never spoken, never been on a panel, never even visited an expo hall (well, maybe once). He is there for the social networking (a little) and the partying (a lot). He's not particularly well-known outside the small group of old-school Webmasterworlders, but if he wrote about what he did like I write about what I do, he'd have ten times the audience of Shoemoney (and rightfully so).

Or how about Tom B., who's lucky that those few dozen photos he asked me never to share were stolen along with my laptop in San Francisco (if they turn up now, buddy, you'll know it wasn't me). Or Rae Hoffman, who raises kids, spams search engines, runs domains, consults when it suits her, kicks ass and takes names (primarily for future ass kickings). There's Greg Boser, possibly the best known of the hardcore SEOs, who can get you banned, unbanned, re-banned and DDOSed into obscurity in under 40 hours. There's Marcus Tandler, who Google Dublin has been gunning for by name, and Scott Smith, whose legendary paranoia kept him safe while others fell hard to Florida & Big Daddy and others. There's Frank Watson, who's moved out of spam to become respectable, but can still make most of the adult industry cower with the mention of his illustrious name.

Our pals above (along with dozens of others) are as beloved by the sin-peddlers of conference cities as they are reviled by search quality engineers. They are, I'm convinced, one of the primary reasons that Dom Perignon and Grey Goose are carried by even the skeeviest late-night dives. And, thankfully, generosity runs in their veins. I've never had better booze or offers of more lascivious deeds than in their company, and it's a beautiful thing. This underworld culture reminds me of Russian mobsters or, before them, Italian gangsters. They're the wanted criminals of the search world, but thankfully, Matt Cutts can't issue arrest warrants, yet.

Next time you're at a conference and you want a taste of some of their deliciously sarcastic brand of humor (and deliciously expensive brands of alcohol), wait until midnight in the hotel bar, look for the table of overly casual (their fashion generally has yet to catch up with their bankrolls), sunken-eyed, sardonically-smiling black hats. Just get ready to be ribbed and scoffed at the first few times you chat them up – it took me a good half-dozen conferences before I had the street cred to get an entry-pass to a night of debauchery. Someone else really needs to spend more time in that world, anyway – I'm ridiculously dedicated to Mystery Guest (as several of this crowd can attest), terrible at holding my liquor (hence I usually stop after only 3-4 drinks) and, worst of all, frequently booked for morning speaking slots.

Tonight, from Beijing, where I was just asked on the street if my grandfather and I would like to get a “nice-pretty-lady-massage-two-girls-at-once” (seriously, after I hold my hand palm forward at your face and stare at you with the death eyes and say “no,” you've got to give up, right?), I toast to the notorious, hardcore, badass MFs of the search world. May your glasses never run dry and your spam always stay one step ahead. And may I always be around at the right time to catch a few of your best tales (“Nora” – I hope my alterations were enough to hide your deeds).

p.s. Sorry, dear readers, this post didn't survive long without some edits. More names and specifics have been removed due to personal requests... and not even by me, but by the crew while I slumbered. BTW - view of the forbidden city from the hotel room is incredible this morning. Wow.