Three of the top six results at Google are user-hijacking, cloaked re-directions to low quality ads disguised as SERPs, i.e.
Note that the UCLA page goes to a listing at Jercys.com, as does the OpenSourceArmenia result. The German AOL user page points throws us to Topically.org. What's really cool is to look at who's linking to those ranking pages :
- Links to the UCLA page - 591 unique pages, including what looks to be a lot of international language spam pages
- Yahoo! doesn't have the AOL.de page in its index, but MSN shows a few thousand links, also with a heavy focus on international pages.
- Links to the OpenSourceArmenia page - 546 unique pages, again with lots of German & Japanese pages on the list.
These links look like automated blog, forum & comment spamming with the backbone of re-directed content on trusted domains/subdomains. For a whitehat SEO, this can at least help you infer the value of content on those domains and provides a nifty look into the spam underworld, and just how successful that spam can be, even for highly competitive searches.
If were going to look at overture, why not wordtracker and Trellian's Keyword Discovery?
WordTracker Low cost airline ticket popularity 1,741 predict 2,249 Cheap airfare popularity 3,807 predict 4,918
Keyword Discovery Low Cost Airline Ticket 19,279 Cheap Airfare 4,823,147
For the first time in like two years I visit the SEMPO page today. Was quite amused that their Hitwise Intelligence Data keywords (bottom of left side) were Airlines industry related.
sempo.org
I thought it was going to say
You know you're in a seedy sector when ... all your domain names have at least 3 hyphens in them
Sometimes you just need a hyphen or two. For example: You live on an island and sell pens... https://www.penisland.net/
Overture says 4477 and bids are:
airtran.com - $1.17 travelzoo.com - $0.66 bookingbuddy.com - $0.65 sidestep.com - $0.58 spiritair.com - $0.55
Orbitz is bidding at #8 and none of the other OTAs are even in the top 30. Hotwire and Priceline are tossing out a token 10 cent bid.
impressive? competitive? not so much
There goes the trust out of all of the .edu links.
EGOL, I don't think .edu links are mistrusted per se... but just as any script kid can now look for installations of "web portal" software that seems to be gotten exploited (judging by the url) to put his spam page up there, so can Google.
In fact I am pretty sure that all those common "footprints" that exploitable web portals, guestbooks and such have are blacklisted by their statistical footprint of urls, page structure etc...
I usually am more broad when I define seedy sectors: any query with the words "loan", "credit", "degree", "mortgage", "cam", "ringtones", "dating", "myspace" or "yellow pumas".
Online travel and destination marketing is brutal niche to be in.
"More than 50 percent of the total click-throughs to online travel sites - Expedia.com, Orbitz.com, Travelocity.com and CheapTickets.com are generated by sponsored ads." https://www.eyefortravel.com/index.asp?news=51...
"Some 73 percent of online travel buyers conducted relevant keyword searches in the weeks prior to an online travel purchase." https://www.imediaconnection.com/content/7255....
I don’t know anyone under 40 who uses a travel agent anymore. Do you?
That's just like all the other pages that appear on .edu's or even .govs that got exploitet guestbooks, forums and such... and whenever I come across these, these pages are gone after some days - most weeks...
e.g. that .edu page you mentioned isn't even cached in google, nor does it return a page or redirect... so all the work (and money spent?) only lasted for 2 days...
a pretty shortsighted strategy ...as with all spam tactics - and definately not under the radar :-)
Therefore I wouldn't call this a "success" ... it's more an EFFECT!
cheers,christoph
Pretty impressive, especially for a term as competitive as "low cost airline tickets."