Mark Glaser reports on Amyway’s online division Quixtar’s attempts to manipulate search engine results to silence their web based critics:
Someone tells you they have the opportunity of a lifetime for you. A way to make money by becoming an independent business owner through Quixtar. You’re not sure about Quixtar and want to learn more, so you consult your favorite Internet search engine — Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves — and type in the word “Quixtar.”What you see next are search results, and most likely you’ll just check out the first page or two of links. But the first result you see in Google is a Weblog called Quixtar Blog, and in fact, the official Quixtar site, Quixtar.com, doesn’t even appear on the first page of results. What’s going on here? How could Google rank an independent blog that is not even affiliated with Quixtar as the top result?
The answer isn’t a simple one and can’t be answered directly as Google and other search engines will not spell out exactly how their top secret algorithms work. But after reading through Quixtar Blog, the picture becomes clearer: The company, a revamped online version of Amway, has had trouble with critics online and decided to fight them by unloading an arsenal of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that go against accepted marketing techniques and into the muddy world of Web page spam, also known as link farms and Google bombing.
To put it simply, Quixtar enlisted various people to help create dozens of Weblogs that linked to each other and were filled with positive stories and key words. The idea is to help put these newer blogs at the top of search results for phrases such as “Quixtar success” and “Quixtar opportunity,” while more critical sites such as Quixtar Blog and Amquix.info would drop down.
via Quixtar Blog.
It’s junk tactics like this that originally drove me to establish this weblog. Good reporting.
Eric J on June 3rd, 2005 at 8:11 pm
Hey Dane,
Big fan of your blog even though I don’t read it nearly as much as I intend to. I’m glad you liked the article, Mark did a phenomenal job and is an extremely skilled reporter. The interview with Peter Norvig of Google was especially insightful for me.
Keep up the great work.
ibofightback on May 2nd, 2007 at 9:01 am
Great job? Skilled reporting? He just repeated what you told him and asked the same source to repeat it! Let’s ignore the fact that all the sites that Eric quotes on his blog are not Quixtar sites, they’re IBO sites. Let’s ignore the fact the guy who mentioned “google bombing” was not a Quixtar Employee, but a Quixtar IBO. Lousy reporting.
Get the Facts - The Truth About Amway and Quixtar