All those sites have now seen their rankings collapse, losing hundreds of thousands of visitors in just a few days and with once high-ranking pages falling to page two or three of SERPs. The changes were already happening by the end of November, as Google\u2019s updated site reputation abuse guidelines kicked in, but the process accelerated in the first few days of December.<\/p>\n
\u2026the collapsing traffic\u2026<\/h3>\n
These are the three websites I mentioned in detail in my first post. Since that post came out, they\u2019ve all lost significant amounts of traffic and ranking.<\/p>\n
Business2Community: -240k traffic<\/h2>\n
Here\u2019s traffic to Business2Community:<\/p>\n
![\"Business2Community:](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/b2c-drop-dec-2-min.jpg\")
From around 306k organic traffic to 66k, in around a week.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a shift in the SEO landscape, or a development in the market; it\u2019s a penalty. What I don\u2019t actually know is whether this is Google applying its newly-announced, stricter rules on site reputation abuse (Google\u2019s more accurate, but less complimentary name for parasite SEO) or whether it\u2019s a manual penalty. Manual penalties are pretty rare now, but then, Finixio\/Clickout Media\u2019s operation is pretty egregious as well as being huge.<\/p>\n
Whichever it is, it\u2019s wiped around three quarters of the website\u2019s action off the table.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the same story at the other sites I mentioned in the post.<\/a><\/p>\n In many ways, Techopedia was the flagship of this parasite SEO fleet. It was the biggest asset and it had the best reputation, since Business2Community was compromised by operating for several years on a contributor model that left it open to abuse by a secondary ecosystem of marketers making their real income from the clients whose products and services they promoted there.<\/p>\n In some locations, Techopedia\u2019s traffic has fallen by nearly half a million visitors. This is a sudden, severe drop in traffic that suggests a sitewide penalty.<\/p>\n And for a lot of businesses, it would be tough to survive. If you\u2019re old enough to remember shopping in person, imagine a bricks-and-mortar store that suddenly lost half its visitors. This is the kind of thing that kills single-location businesses, and if these websites were operating as independent entities engaging in totally legit business practices, it would likely have a pretty similar effect on them. Business plans created on the basis of two or even three times as much revenue would have to be hastily revised. People would lose their jobs (especially if they were responsible for incurring the penalty!) and there\u2019d be a cascade of suddenly-free, highly-experienced people on LinkedIn and Twitter offering their services.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t seem to have happened.<\/p>\n The damage has been severe in the region of gambling and crypto. I\u2019ve talked about how I\u2019m sure that this is where Finixio\/Clickout actually make their money. Not anymore\u2026<\/p>\n These keywords have fallen from top-five positions to off the front page completely. They\u2019re not even on page two in most cases. They may as well be in the centre of the earth for all the good they\u2019re doing Clickout Media.<\/p>\n We shouldn\u2019t forget that all this data is coming from a third-party tool, and while Ahrefs is among the best at what it does, its traffic estimates can be way out. I don\u2019t think, for instance, that Techopedia is really seeing 1.4 million visitors a month; I think the drop has been even steeper than that, based on the collapse in rankings. But because of the way Ahrefs calculates traffic, that will take a while to show up, so we won\u2019t know if my hunch is right for a while. When we do, that picture will also be a little off, because the drop that happened in November has likely already run its course.<\/p>\n Back to the carnage\u2026<\/p>\n Is it a different story at ReadWrite?<\/p>\n Not really.<\/p>\n However, we know these sites aren\u2019t operating as separate businesses at all. They\u2019re all components of the same parasite SEO network, with one central entity pulling the strings.<\/p>\n How has that company responded?<\/strong><\/p>\n Finixio\/Clickout Media is faced with a catastrophic drop in traffic at the major websites that funnel traffic to the rest of their network. That\u2019s got to hurt profits (you\u2019d think).<\/p>\n How have they moved to cope?<\/p>\n Well, not by adopting a business model that complies with Google\u2019s guidelines on site reputation abuse<\/a>, as you\u2019ll no doubt be shocked to learn.<\/p>\n Instead, they\u2019ve just played a shell game<\/a>. As Google identified and dealt with one of their noncompliant SEO practices, they simply transferred the benefits to another one.<\/p>\n We dealt with redirects to some extent in my original post, but this is something a little bit different.<\/p>\n These days, traffic to Techopedia\u2019s best gambling pages are redirected to gambling portals.<\/p>\n techopedia.com\/gambling\/best-offshore-sportsbooks<\/a> now redirects to https:\/\/bestoffshoresportsbooks.net\/<\/a>:<\/p>\n It\u2019s a single page:<\/p>\n That\u2019s it. The whole site.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no privacy policy, About Us, contact, nothing that would be familiar to the smallest small-business website; and that stuff doesn\u2019t appear on the site\u2019s single page, the way it does on single-page sites for early-stage startups that treat their websites as one-pagers. What does appear is reviews of online sportsbooks (betting outlets focused on sports), including information on taxation, how to play, and legality. It\u2019s very much a one-pass approach to these topics, rather than being deep or highly detailed, and to me that usually reads as being aimed at newcomers rather than experienced hands.<\/p>\n In other words\u2026<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a website. It\u2019s a squeeze page.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the only techopedia page that redirects to a pure gambling page now:<\/p>\n Casinoutanspelpaus.io is a bit more of a \u2018real\u2019 website than bestoffshoresportsbooks.net. It features an author-editor called Mikael Andersson<\/a>, and even boasts a LinkedIn page, though\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026there\u2019s nothing there.<\/p>\n These redirects were applied at the end of November. One on November 30, one on November 27.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not familiar with redirects, they work by letting you transfer the \u2018SEO juice\u2019 such as domain authority, inbound links, and so on, from the domain that\u2019s redirecting, to the target domain. What matters for Finixio\/Clickout Media here isn\u2019t the traffic that the redirects are sending to these gambling sites. It\u2019s the boost in search rankings the sites themselves are likely to receive as a result of all that credibility being piped straight through to them on highway 301.<\/p>\n (In case you\u2019re wondering: yes, this is exactly the textbook response to a penalty when you want to keep profiting off what you were doing before you got caught.)<\/p>\n The thing is, if this is their strategy, then as traffic nosedives at their old sites, then you\u2019d expect to see it concurrently skyrocketing at the target sites of the redirects as they reap the benefit of the newly-enhanced search rankings.<\/p>\n This is traffic to casinoutanspelpaus.io, where traffic has nearly doubled since November 30, and is still climbing. That\u2019s a 1.4k increase in traffic in three days.<\/p>\n Does this seem like a coincidence?<\/p>\n As we can see here, it\u2019s coming, not from traffic being piped across, but from increases in search rank.<\/p>\n Using redirects to retain SEO juice from penalized domains is pretty standard. It\u2019s what you do when you want to hang on to the profits that come with SEO success but you\u2019ve achieved that success in a way that got you, well\u2026 caught.<\/p>\n They\u2019re doing something similar with their redirects here too.<\/p>\n Casinos that evade national \u2018game stop\u2019 tools is a favourite topic for Finixio\/Clickout Media assets. They\u2019ll usually have a page like this for each location. In Sweden, that would be \u2018spelpaus<\/a>,\u2019 designed to help problem gamblers recover by denying them access to licensed casinos. (Think of their casinoutanspelpaus site.) In the UK, the equivalent is called \u2018gamstop<\/a>.\u2019 Business2Community has a page for casinos that let users evade gamstop: https:\/\/www.business2community.com\/online-casinos\/uk\/non-gamstop<\/a><\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t find the original page on the Wayback Machine, but it redirects now to richmondreview.co.uk\/casinos-not-on-gamstop-uk\/<\/a>. This is a drop domain; The Richmond Review began life as \u2018the UK\u2019s first literary magazine to be published exclusively on the World Wide Web\u2019:<\/p>\n I wonder if it always had those Top 10 crypto casinos for UK links? Very literary.<\/p>\n True to form, the About us page is untouched:<\/p>\n Now, the Richmond Review is acting the way domains controlled by Finixio and Clickout Media usually do: the old stuff is still up but all the new content is focused on crypto and gambling, and it links out to gambling sites. Is this a Clickout Media \/ Finixio property?<\/p>\n It ranks super high for gambling terms too:<\/p>\n But if you visit from the UK on desktop, you get\u2026<\/p>\n Paddy Power, BetFred, BoyleSports. Big names in UK gambling, with plenty of regulator attention to go along with their reputations.<\/p>\n Visit the same URL from UK servers on mobile, though\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The text at the top of the page is the same.<\/p>\n But the casinos that are featured\u2026<\/p>\n Most online gamblers use their phone, not a desktop; most regulators probably use a desktop, I\u2019m guessing. This is a sneaky way of offering gamblers different, much less regulated content than what desktop users of the site will see.<\/p>\n The use of redirects to a drop domain that\u2019s ready-aged is exactly how they worked Spaceport Sweden, which once belonged to a company seeking to establish a space program in Kiruna.<\/p>\n Now, the domain hosts all the old content \u2014 indexed, visible to Google and included in the sitemap, but absent from the navigation \u2014 and four new pages entirely dedicated to gambling.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Business2Community redirecting to solanacasino.ltd:<\/p>\n (Spoiler: it doesn\u2019t actually seem to be.) It\u2019s not affiliated with Solana, it\u2019s just piggybacking on the blockchain project\u2019s styling to offer blockchain casinos. Including\u2026<\/p>\n Several that are known to be owned or controlled by, or connected to, Finixio\/Clickout.<\/p>\n Here, we can see Business2Community redirecting from location-specific subdirectories to new URLs entirely.<\/p>\n business2community.com\/kr\/cryptocurrency\/best-web3-coins<\/a>, B2C\u2019s Korean subdirectory, now redirects to business2communitykorea.com\/cryptocurrency\/best-web3-coins<\/a>, for instance.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the old page on the Wayback Machine:<\/p>\n https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240625054523\/business2community.com\/kr\/cryptocurrency\/best-web3-coins<\/a><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the new page on the new url:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.business2communitykorea.com\/cryptocurrency\/best-web3-coins<\/a><\/p>\n Little has changed. The coins being advertised have moved around a bit. (Many of these are known or suspected Finixio\/Clickout Media projects themselves!)<\/p>\n There are plenty of others. As a sample, here\u2019s Business2Community redirecting to a UK-specific domain: This B2C redirect used to go to casinoutanspelpaus.io. The same redirect now goes from the now-penalized Business2Community domain to a different site:<\/p>\n If you had built a massive network of parasite SEO assets and then seen the top properties in it absolutely blitzed by Google, I think the smartest choice would. be to use redirects to siphon off as much of the SEO juice you’d built up and direct it to new sites. It looks pretty clear that this is what is happening, and it is the textbook response. But it also points to the relative weakness of applying algorithmic, or even manual, penalties based on good faith \u2014 on the assumption that the people you’re regulating are trying to play by the spirit of the rules. I think a lot of us are familiar with doing SEO to the letter of Google’s guidelines and not the spirit; if Finixio\/Clickout Media have taken that to its limit, in a way, you can’t blame them (what’s that saying about ‘every complex ecosystem’? <this link should be a hyperlink on ‘every complex ecosystem’ https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/25452241-all-complex-ecosystems-have-parasites<\/a>). They’re playing the game. And that’s the problem.<\/p>\n Meantime, even as the company behind it all scrambles to adapt, there\u2019s still a whole chapter to this that hasn\u2019t been touched on yet. We\u2019ve shown how a network of affiliate sites, often supposedly competitors, bring in traffic, using parasite SEO tactics to drive traffic that wouldn\u2019t be attainable with traditional SEO. But there\u2019s good reason to believe that the destination of that traffic is a network of actual crypto sites and projects, as well as a network of online casinos. The casinos increasingly have their own coins; the coins have remarkably similar trajectories. (That post is coming soon.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few days ago, I published something I\u2019ve been working on for a while. A deep dive into how a parasite SEO network had spread across large numbers of tech and business sites from the 2010s and earlier (the company responsible, Finixio\/Clickout Media, claims to control over 200 sites). Together with how that network created … Continue reading “Penalties, redirects, drop domains: the next chapter in the parasite SEO arms race”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-199","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/199\/revisions\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Techopedia- -1.7m traffic<\/h2>\n
![\"Techopedia-](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/techopedia-current-rankings-dec-2-ahrefs-min.jpg\")
\nIt\u2019s fallen by more than half, from 3 million visitors to 1.3 million.<\/p>\n![\"Techopedia.com](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/techopedia-cryptocasino-rankings-dec-2-US-min-scaled.jpg\")
Their rankings for their lucrative crypto- and gambling-related keywords have taken a similar tumble. Nothing on this page has fallen by less than 50 positions in SERPs.<\/p>\nReadWrite: -98k traffic<\/h2>\n
![\"ReadWrite:](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/readwrite-traffic-stats-dec-2-min-scaled.jpg\")
Keywords down by 23k; traffic down by 98k. It\u2019s the least severely-hit of the three sites I mentioned in my original post. But it\u2019s still a sharp decline, and at a website that\u2019s already much smaller, and thus in theory much less well-equipped to weather the loss.<\/p>\n\u2026the redirects that let Finixio\/Clickout Media continue to profit<\/h2>\n
![\"Traffic](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/techopedia-redirect-best-offshore-sportsbooks-min-scaled.jpg\")
This site is a pure gambling site.<\/p>\n![\"bestoffshoresportsbooks.net,](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/bestoffshoresportsbooks.net-the-target-of-redirects-from-the-once-lucrative-techopedia.com_-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Using](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Using-Google-to-show-all-the-sites-indexed-pages-e1733403663379.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Techopedia](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Techopedia-redirecting-to-the-gambling-website-casinoutanspelpaus.io_.-min-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Casinoutanspelpaus\u2019](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Casinoutanspelpaus-empty-LinkedIn-profile.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u2026where rankings and traffic are exploding<\/h2>\n
![\"Casinoutanspelpaus.io](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/casinoutanspelpaus.io-ranking-boost-after-redirect-min.jpeg\")
In fact, you\u2019d expect to see something like this.<\/p>\n![\"casinoutanspelpaus.io](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/casinoutanspelpaus.io-keyword-ranking-boost-after-techopedia-redirect-min-scaled.jpg\")
Traffic is up, for sure \u2014 but look at that top keyword. It\u2019s gone from position 17, somewhere on page two (notoriously the best place in the world to hide things) to position 7, bottom of page one. That\u2019s a difference that makes a difference. It\u2019s how Finixio\/Clickout Media is continuing to profit from all the work they put into building their parasite SEO network.<\/p>\n(True to form, they are quite sneaky about it)<\/h3>\n
\n![\"business2community.com](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/business2community.com-301-redirecting-to-richmondreview.co_.uk_-scaled.jpg\")
\nWhen I visited the business2community URL, though, I didn\u2019t get the redirect. I just got a 404.<\/p>\n![\"business2community.com](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/business2community.com-casinos-not-on-gamstop-uk-404-page-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDrop domain redirects<\/h3>\n
![\"The](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The-Richmond-Reviews-original-self-description-appearing-in-SERPs-on-December-3.1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"This](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/This-is-clearly-the-literary-magazines-original-About-us-dating-to-20201-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Richmondreview.co.uk](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/richmondreview-business2community.com-redirect-keywords-boost-min-scaled.jpg\")
Again, this is standard fare for Finixio\/Clickout Media. It\u2019s how they do.<\/p>\nDifferent devices, different content?<\/h2>\n
![\"Richmond](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Richmond-Reviews-desktop-guide-to-casinos-that-let-you-get-around-the-gamstop-program.-min-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"richmondreview.co.uk](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/richmondreview.co_.uk-mobile-cloaking-min.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"richmondreview.co.uk](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/richmondreview.co_.uk-mobile-cloaking-2-min.jpeg\")
\n\u2026are very different.<\/p>\nThese tactics are working: Spaceport Sweden\u2019s ranking has been improving rapidly:<\/h3>\n
![\"Spaceportswedens](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/spaceportsweden-rankings-sweden-min.png\")
This shows ranking at Spaceport Sweden from May to November this year. From basically 0 traffic, from ranking nowhere, to position 3 for tough keywords.<\/p>\nRedirects to crypto casinos<\/h2>\n
![\"Business2Community](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Business2Community-redirecting-to-solanacasino.ltd_.png\")
Solana<\/a> is a blockchain that lets people easily build things on it, including tokens; think of it as a newer competitor to Ethereum<\/a>. Solana Casino<\/a> uses the same colour scheme and website styling as the Solana project, but you\u2019ll be surprised to learn it claims to be registered in Malta.<\/p>\n![\"Allegedly](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Allegedly-one-thats-registered-in-Malta-though-the-MBR-has-never-heard-of-them-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Solana](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Solana-Casinos-toplist-showing-multiple-known-Finixio-assets-or-affiliates1-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u2026and to new, location-specific domains that replace subdirectories<\/h3>\n
![\"Business2Community](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Business2Community-redirecting-from-location-specific-subdirectories-to-new-URLs-entirely-min-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Business2community\u2019s](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Business2communitys-old-\u2018Web3.0-Coins-page.-.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"new](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/new-business2community.com-korea-page.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"Business2Community](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Business2Community-redirecting-to-a-UK-specific-domain-scaled.jpg\")
And here it is, redirecting to a Swiss domain:<\/p>\n![\"Business2community.com](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/business2community.com-redirecting-to-a-Swiss-domain.jpg\")
In other cases, the redirects have been there for a long time, but now they\u2019re switching to new targets.<\/p>\n
\n![\"casinoutanspelpaus.io](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/casinoutanspelpaus.io-used-to-have-a-redirect-from-business2community-min-scaled.jpg\")
It was lost on October 10, so it\u2019s nothing to do with anything that may have happened recently.<\/p>\n![\"business2community.com](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/business2community.com-redirect-to-spaceportsweden-min-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n