{"id":827260,"date":"2025-02-15T13:12:15","date_gmt":"2025-02-15T19:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/15\/escaping-googles-manual-reputation-penalty-and-resuming-business-as-usual\/"},"modified":"2025-02-15T13:12:15","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T19:12:15","slug":"escaping-googles-manual-reputation-penalty-and-resuming-business-as-usual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/15\/escaping-googles-manual-reputation-penalty-and-resuming-business-as-usual\/","title":{"rendered":"Escaping Google’s Manual Reputation Penalty and Resuming Business as Usual"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We\u2019ve already seen how Finixio\/Clickout\u2019s assets were hit with serious penalties<\/a> in the days following Google\u2019s algorithm update. I have no idea whether those penalties were manual, or algorithmically applied, though I have a hunch they were manual. But they destroyed the ranking of pages that funnelled, collectively, millions of visits a month into a network of gambling and crypto sites. (We will be back with the lowdown on that later.) For now, we\u2019re concerned with how Finixio\u2019s parasite SEO system has weathered the storm, trimmed sails, and continues to get away with the loot.<\/p>\n

Before we go any further, I have never seen anyone get out from under a penalty this fast. It\u2019s honestly impressive, and apart from anything else it presents a real masterclass in getting away with it. These people are seriously good at what they do.<\/p>\n

Just what is that, exactly?<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve used a mixture of redirects and cloaking to conceal the fact that in just a few days, they\u2019re back in business in a way that\u2019s fundamentally unchanged, deceiving Google once again<\/strong> and showing the capacity of well-developed parasite SEO operations to evade even crushing, sitewide penalties.<\/p>\n

(If you\u2019re unfamiliar with parasite SEO and Finixio\/Clickout Media, and you\u2019d like to read an increasingly wild story about it, check out my first post here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Getting away with it<\/h2>\n

In this post, I\u2019m going to focus on a few of Finixio\/Clickout Media\u2019s websites to tell the wider story while still offering a decent level of detail.<\/p>\n

Techopedia gets the most traffic (by a long way, when it\u2019s not staggering under the load of a Google penalty), and ranks for a lot more keywords than other known Finixio assets like ReadWrite. And I\u2019ve already done enough digging to go fairly deep into what they\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be looking at a couple of other sites, like cryptonews.com, newsbtc.com, pokerscout and cardplayer.com. As often happens, it\u2019s very difficult to say for sure what level of involvement Finixio\/Clickout has with these sites, though cryptonews.com is a known Finixio asset.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll also introduce you to CoinTelegraph. CoinTelegraph is a different beast because Finixio don\u2019t own it (I don\u2019t think). Instead it illustrates another part of their parasite operation and shows how adaptable and effective it\u2019s possible to be when you\u2019re determined to outwit Google and you have the resources to act fast and at scale.<\/p>\n

The penalties to Finixio\/Clickout assets<\/h2>\n

The penalties, as far as I can figure out, were applied on December 2 this year, and they hit several sites I covered in my original post, including readwrite.com, business2community.com and techopedia.com hard. I already covered the detail on this in a separate post,<\/a> so I\u2019m going to give a really light touch here.<\/p>\n

Techopedia<\/h3>\n

Techopedia started life as a solid tech site. Now, it\u2019s a front for gambling and crypto. When it was penalized, it experienced a massive crash in traffic and rankings.<\/p>\n

Obviously these are estimates, but SEMRush sees Techopedia\u2019s traffic fall by 64% over the month from November 17, from over six million to just under three, and then down to just over one.
\n\"Semrush<\/p>\n

Those red marks on the dates at the bottom show days when there were major changes, perhaps caused by Google\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

This image from Ahrefs shows the picture even more starkly:<\/p>\n

\"AhrefsThat\u2019s not a \u2018decline.\u2019 That\u2019s a cliff.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, Ahref\u2019s traffic estimates are probably more accurate. But traffic to a website you don\u2019t own is always more difficult to ascertain. Ranking, on the other hand, is easier. And rankings were destroyed by this penalty.<\/p>\n

\"TechopediaThis is pages that used to rank in the top five, falling to page two or three. That\u2019s nowhere, they may as well not exist.<\/p>\n

Readwrite<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s the same story over at ReadWrite:\"ReadWrite:<\/span>Keywords and traffic fell off a cliff here too, though it\u2019s not as clear a picture.<\/p>\n

Business2community.com<\/h3>\n

Business2Community suffered a similar fate:<\/p>\n

\"business2community<\/p>\n

Traffic and keywords fell hard. Because of the way Ahrefs calculates traffic, changes can look more spread out than they actually are, so sudden events get smoothed into the curve. But this is the sight of three quarters of the site\u2019s traffic being lost.<\/p>\n

How Finixio\/Clickout dealt with the penalty at first<\/h2>\n

We can break down what they did to deal with the penalty in two broad ways:<\/p>\n

1:<\/strong> Gambling pages went down. Pages were just removed from the site, sometimes so quickly and clumsily that they remained in navigation or you could still follow internal links to them, you just got a 404 if you tried it. This was a necessary first step: in order to get out of a sitewide penalty, the company removed all the content that violated Google\u2019s site reputation abuse policy, so the site was no longer in violation.<\/p>\n

2:<\/strong> SEO juice was redirected from penalized domains to other domains owned by the same company, Finixio\/Clickout. 301 redirects, theoretically permanent, were used to shunt the domain authority of the sites they\u2019re parasitizing on, over to other assets in their network. Interestingly, the focus on crypto and gambling actually became clearer here as they often redirected to single-purpose sites that looked more like squeeze pages than traditional websites.<\/p>\n

In less than a week, everything was back up<\/h2>\n

Now, however, things have changed. All the gambling content that disappeared? It\u2019s back up.<\/p>\n

I thought this would happen. In fact, I was so sure about it I ran a poll<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"MyOver half of respondents thought it would be less than a week. (So did I.) It was actually just a few days before all their gambling content was simply back online.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s shot back up the rankings too, even if it hasn\u2019t quite reached its old, dominant positions. Here\u2019s the part of the site that targets the UK:<\/p>\n

\"techopediaSome of these pages are still in the Forbidden Zone of page two or worse, but look at the \u2018change\u2019 column: they\u2019ve leapt by 10, 20, 30 places since November 1. And nearly half the pages here are new pages that didn\u2019t exist before the penalty. They\u2019ve responded to being penalized by actually expanding the operation!<\/p>\n

Now that they\u2019re out of penalty, are they abiding by Google\u2019s guidelines? Uh\u2026 404 <\/span><\/h2>\n

Gambling is back up, all across the affected sites. It\u2019s just cloaked to conceal it from the eyes of any manual reviewer.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the top search result for \u2018Casino utan spelpaus,\u2019 one of Techopedia\u2019s core gambling terms. This page is about accessing casinos that don\u2019t require licensing from the Swedish gambling authorities. The relevant page URL is https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/se\/gambling\/casino-utan-svensk-licens<\/a>, but you can see my search term here.<\/p>\n

\"Techopedia<\/p>\n

These are the top three results from a Swedish server.<\/p>\n

Techopedia.com is definitely owned by Finixio\/Clickout Media. spaceportsweden.com probably is, in my opinion. Casinon-utan-svensk-licens.bet, well, that is as blackhat as they come, using a very clever cloaking method to conceal factmata.com, but that is an article for another time.<\/p>\n

As of December 19, techopedia.com\/se\/gambling\/casino-utan-svensk-licens looked like this:<\/p>\n

\"Techopedia<\/p>\n

\u2026if you went there from a German server.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Swedish for \u2018missing article.\u2019 Which is interesting, partly because it\u2019s not the vanilla 404 message from Techopedia. If I go to a deliberately dud URL that I know doesn\u2019t exist on that site, here\u2019s what I get:<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

The URL techopedia.com\/se\/gambling\/casino-utan-licens<\/a> doesn\u2019t actually exist, so I get \u2018sorry, we can\u2019t find the page you\u2019re looking for.\u2019 The visual appearance is different too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also interesting because the only reason this looks like this is, their servers think I\u2019m in Frankfurt. If I move the dial on my VPN so they think I\u2019m in Sweden\u2026<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

The content can be displayed after all. Funny.<\/p>\n

Since I took these screenshots, Techopedia have added content to their non-Swedish versions of this page. Now, whether my IP is in Frankfurt or California, the page looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the non-Swedish version.<\/p>\n

The Swedish version is still markedly different though:<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

Those are the same section of the page. On non-Swedish location versions the visitor gets served a quick guide to the sort of stuff you should probably be looking for in a casino without a Swedish license. On the Swedish version, the visitor gets a toplist that contains several sites we\u2019ll be meeting repeatedly throughout this post, including Mega Dice, Lucky Block, and Instant Casino. Some of these I strongly suspect are Finixio assets, while Lucky Block is owned through a shell company<\/a> by Finixio\u2019s Head of Business Development, Scott Ryder.<\/p>\n

The page is showing different content depending on where you are in the world. I\u2019m tempted to call this \u2018geocloaking\u2019 \u2014 like geolocking, but for a deliberately deceptive or evasive purpose. It\u2019s definitely an example of cloaking as Google describes it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Showing people from different places different content makes sense. There\u2019s normally no point showing me Japanese or US products and pricing, I live in Europe. And people often prefer their own language. So most big websites clock your IP and offer or just give you the local version. So far, so good.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not what\u2019s happening here. The global version of this page is an \u2018oops, don\u2019t know what you mean\u2019 page, not the same text in a different language.<\/p>\n

Makes sense: most people outside Sweden have no reason to care about Swedish gambling laws. But then, why conceal the content of the page? And why do it in Swedish<\/i>? After all, it\u2019s not like there\u2019s a whole lot of people outside Sweden (OK, Finland and maybe Minnesota) who speak Swedish. No \u2014 if you\u2019re talking Swedish, you\u2019re talking to Swedish people.<\/p>\n

To me, this looks a lot like a trick I\u2019ve seen Finixio sites pull in the past. They\u2019ll conceal a page from visitors in one location and reveal it in another, to bypass regulatory attention. There are pages for Dutch casinos on Techopedia that are visible on mobile or from outside Holland, but not on desktop from within Holland. These are pages in Dutch, about Dutch gambling laws. Who else but the Dutch could they reasonably be aimed at?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a video of me coming to the Swedish page from outside Sweden, then from inside:<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s one of me doing the same thing to the German page:<\/h3>\n

And the French page:<\/h3>\n

In each case, the page is hidden from everyone outside the target country and Google\u2019s automatic crawlers. So the pages are ranking everywhere, but their actual content is invisible outside their target countries.<\/p>\n

Why hide? Unless\u2026<\/h3>\n

As far as I know there\u2019s no legitimate reason to conceal the content of pages this way. But there is an illegitimate reason: to conceal the content from manual enforcers at Google<\/u><\/strong>. This material looks<\/i> like it\u2019s still down, everywhere except in its target countries.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not coincidence:<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

Only German IPs are able to access this German-language, Germany-oriented gambling content.<\/p>\n

Unless Google\u2019s staff manually visit the site from Germany, they\u2019ll never see this page and never know it\u2019s back up, so there won\u2019t be anything to alert them that Finixio\u2019s parasite operations have resumed. At the same time, the page is still visible to crawlers<\/i> everywhere. (Finixio sites, including Techopedia, are consistently taking up two or three of the top five spots for \u2018casino utan licens\u2019 even in international search.) That way, they get the best of both worlds: indexed like they have global, broad-spectrum content that should rank well, but invisibility to casual human checks. You\u2019d have to be looking for this stuff to find it.<\/p>\n

The same thing is happening with the Swedish version of Techopedia\u2019s gambling content:<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

Techopedia\u2019s Swedish language gambling content is locked; only Swedish IP addresses will be served it.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a couple of lines of code on the page showing you different languages or different content based on where you\u2019re from. And it\u2019s not the substantive difference in the actual code on the page that we\u2019ll see in CoinTelegtaph\u2019s iGaming section further down.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually being done in a way I have never seen before, and just like this level of geolocking, I can\u2019t see how there\u2019s a legitimate reason to do this.<\/p>\n

Rather than just 404 the page for visitors from certain locations, the site operators are using cookies to tell visitors\u2019 browsers not to display the page.<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

By contrast, here\u2019s a vanilla 404 page:<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

See how there are no \u2018cookie-set\u2019 lines in this? That\u2019s because Techopedia isn\u2019t trying to hide that this page exists.<\/p>\n

The same game is being played over at another Finixio asset, cryptonews.com. Again this is a site I know for sure is owned by Finixio\/Clickout:<\/p>\n

\"cryptonews<\/p>\n

https:\/\/cryptonews.com\/about-us\/#:~:text=CryptoNews%20was%20acquired%20in%20September,based%20subsidiary%20of%20Clickout%20Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They are using very similar tactics to evade attention from Google while simultaneously doing everything they can to rank.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also using cloaking.<\/p>\n

Check out this page:<\/p>\n

\"best<\/p>\n

https:\/\/cryptonews.com\/cryptocurrency\/best-anonymous-casinos\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This is what it looks like on desktop, from a Swedish IP. If I move IP outside Europe, it\u2019s identical. But if I switch to mobile\u2026<\/p>\n

\"cryptonews<\/p>\n

https:\/\/cryptonews.com\/cryptocurrency\/best-anonymous-casinos\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Suddenly, there\u2019s a toplist that includes links. And some sites that should be familiar by now. Lucky Block and MegaDice are just a bit further down:<\/p>\n

\"luckyblock<\/p>\n

https:\/\/cryptonews.com\/cryptocurrency\/best-anonymous-casinos\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Most telling of all, using Google\u2019s own tool at https:\/\/search.google.com\/test\/rich-results\/<\/a>, here\u2019s what Google sees:<\/p>\n

\"googles<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the version with the hyperlinked toplist. The desktop version is cloaked.<\/p>\n

Why the difference? If I had to guess, I\u2019d say because gamblers are likely to be on mobile \u2014 and regulators are likely to be on desktop.<\/p>\n

301 > why lose money just because you\u2019ve been caught?<\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s one of the most important gambling pages on Techopedia on November 26<\/p>\n

\"techopediahttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20241126141335\/https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/se\/gambling\/casino-utan-svensk-licens<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s well before the penalty was applied.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the site getting out of the penalty:<\/p>\n

\"techopediahttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240000000000*\/https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/se\/gambling\/casino-utan-svensk-licens<\/a><\/p>\n

The amber colour indicates that the pages were 404\u2019d for these days.<\/p>\n

Then, on December 4\u2026<\/h3>\n

\"techopediahttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20241204105245\/https:\/\/casinoutanspelpaus.io\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026it\u2019s a redirect to casinoutanspelpaus.io. This was their stopgap method, to keep generating profit from the parasite network they\u2019ve built while they dealt with the penalty. I still don\u2019t know for sure who owns this site.<\/p>\n

Today, December 20, looks like\u2026<\/h3>\n

\"techopediaPretty much identical to its earlier incarnation. The actual textual content is word-for-word identical.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s definitely not \u2018like nothing ever happened.\u2019<\/p>\n

Redirects feature extensively in the Finixio toolkit to keep site reputation usable even when it\u2019s penalized. Check out this redirect chart:<\/p>\n

\"where<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s cfiw.org.uk?<\/p>\n

\"whathttps:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20220315195110\/https:\/\/cfiw.org.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year, it was a philanthropy website focused on Wales.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to show you what it looks like now, but when you put that url into Chrome it immediately redirects you to\u2026<\/p>\n

\"richmondreviews<\/p>\n

\n

Best Non GamStop Casinos 2024 \u2013 Casinos Not On Gamstop UK<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The \u2018best non gamstop casinos\u2019 page is just the UK equivalent of \u2018casinos utan spelpaus\u2019 or \u2018casino utan svensk licens\u2019 but aimed at a UK audience.<\/p>\n

These are drop domains, purchased partly because their relationship with local press, local government, charity activity and so on confers additional domain authority. (Richmond Review used to be a literary magazine.) They also usually have authoritative links. It\u2019s the same reason sites used to fall over themselves to get inlinks from obscure American universities; those .edu domains translated to rank. Here, Finixio is refitting dead magazines and charity sites as nodes in a redirect network.<\/p>\n

In this redirect chain, you eventually end up at CoinTelegraph:<\/p>\n

\"techopedia<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a video of the redirect in real time:<\/p>\n

CoinTelegraph has a special place in this story, as I mentioned earlier. Finixio doesn\u2019t own CoinTelegraph. Instead, I believe Finixio has entered into a financial partnership with them, paying to put their content on a site with high domain authority.<\/p>\n

Why do I believe that?<\/p>\n

First, the redirect. I don\u2019t think Finixio is redirecting links to sites out of the goodness of their heart.<\/p>\n

Second, there\u2019s recently-added content on CoinTelegraph\u2019s iGaming section that looks very familiar.<\/p>\n

That page went up on December 15. What\u2019s there?<\/p>\n

\"cointelegraphhttps:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/casino\/utan-svensk-licens\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The text at the top of the page isn\u2019t the same as the Techopedia page with the near-identical URL that I looked at further up. (And it\u2019s hardly incriminating to use good URL practices.)<\/p>\n

But what comes next is a list of best casinos by category:<\/p>\n

\"cointelegraphThat\u2019s \u2018best casinos without a Swedish license\u2019 (for the casino; you don\u2019t need a license to gamble in Sweden); \u2018casinos with fast signup\u2019; \u2018MGA (Malta Gaming Authority) casinos without a Swedish licence\u2019: \u2018new casinos\u2019; \u2018pay and play casinos\u2019; and \u2018betting sites without a Swedish licence.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s cool to have such a wide choice.<\/p>\n

Except that whichever one you click on, you wind up here:<\/p>\n

\"toplisthttps:\/\/topcasinosites.eu<\/a>\/<\/p>\n

(Yes, I have tested them all.)<\/p>\n

There are three versions of the toplist here, \u2018Popular,\u2019 \u2018Telegram casino,\u2019 and \u2018Tax free.\u2019 In the popular list, the top spot goes to Instant Casino, which is a fixture in the toplists of Finixio sites and which I strongly suspect they control through a shell company. I\u2019ve seen redirected traffic from Finixio assets to Instant Casino too, which I cover in my original post.<\/p>\n

That would fit the pattern, because the Telegram casino on offer (there\u2019s just one) is Lucky Block.<\/p>\n

\"telegram<\/p>\n

Lucky Block isn\u2019t owned by Finixio, but nearly all its C suite double as Finixio C suite, often in the same roles. James Thatcher is Lucky Block\u2019s CTO<\/a> \u2014 and Head of Technology at Finixio<\/a> and Chief Technologist at Clickout Media; Nelson Campelo is growth manager<\/a>, at Lucky Block, Finixio, and Clickout. The exception is Lucky Block\u2019s\u00a0 CEO, Scott Ryder, who is Finixio\u2019s head of business development. (Through a shell company in the Cayman islands, he also owns Lucky Block<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The sudden appearance of these pages on CoinTelegraph that link out to topcasinosites.eu strongly indicate that Finixio simply diverted the flow of its SEO efforts around the penalty it was subjected to.<\/p>\n

And the link profile of topcasinosites.eu is interesting too:<\/h3>\n

\"linkThis is just the top 20. To see the rest, take a look at this excel<\/a><\/p>\n

Look what\u2019s here: readwrite.com, spaceportsweden.com. Some of these are suspected Finixio assets, like casinoutanspelpaus.ltd, while others are known and confirmed. But something else is going on here.<\/p>\n

The strange case of the Augusta Free Press, and why it\u2019s not even that unusual<\/h3>\n

Is that another drop domain? No, it\u2019s not:<\/p>\n

\"augusta<\/p>\n

https:\/\/augustafreepress.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a news site that still seems to be regularly updated, with stories on the front page of the site from just a few days ago. It covers the action in Augusta County and environs, in the Shenandoah Valley, in the US state of Virginia. So what\u2019s the deal with its link to an EU casino site? Doesn\u2019t seem like a natural link. And \u2018online casino sites\u2019 doesn\u2019t seem like its normal remit. I\u2019m saying amongst those local-news items about tax changes, sports and the odds of a white Christmas, it seems a little out of place.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the page:<\/p>\n

\"augusta
\nTwo things really jump out at me here. First, this is on the site\u2019s Korean section, which, again, seems a bit beyond their normal beat.<\/p>\n

\u2018Covering Augusta County, western Virginia, and Seoul.\u2019<\/p>\n

See what I mean? Secondly, check out the list of casinos for some old friends: Instant Casino and Lucky Block both make the list.<\/p>\n

Turns out the Augusta Free Press has a bunch of international pages, including Russia which for some reason is above the USA\u2026<\/p>\n

\"augustaHere\u2019s the Russian page:<\/p>\n

\"augusta
\nSample page with the default sample text, and a dropdown nav that\u2019s just OnlyFans? Class act.<\/p>\n

OK, what about the other international pages?<\/p>\n

\"augusta<\/p>\n

This is what we find. Canada is just missing, with gambling rather than OnlyFans at the top. Most other international pages are the same, with the odd exception like the Phillipines:<\/p>\n

\"augustaWhat\u2019s interesting is the Korean section, though. Which consists of a single page, the one we\u2019ve already seen. Put augustafreepress.com\/ko<\/a> in your browser and check it out. You\u2019ll instantly be redirected to that page.<\/p>\n

By itself, this doesn\u2019t matter much. But it\u2019s part of a much bigger pattern.<\/p>\n

Augusta Free Press is far from the only inlink to topcasinosites.eu that acts this way. In amongst sites like wallstreetonline-finixio.com\/bitcoin-casino-im-vergleich-die-besten-drei-seriosen-btc-casinos\/<\/a>, which may be owned by Finixio, the list of inbound links includes:<\/p>\n

outlookindia.com\/igaming\/se\/casino-utan-svensk-licens\/<\/a>, Outlook India has been publishing marketing material for years. To get a post on there, you simply pay, and it then outperforms nearly every other piece of content on the web for that keyword.<\/p>\n

business2communitykorea.com\/visit\/crypto-casinos<\/a>, and B2C is definitely a Finixio\/Clickout asset.<\/p>\n

goldencasinonews.com\/casino-utan-svensk-licens\/<\/a>, previously owned by Finixio, now owned by Clickout Media, a distinction without a difference.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also this:<\/p>\n

\"east
\nhttps:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/2024\/02\/01\/casino-utan-svensk-licens-och-spelpaus\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Like Augusta Free Press, the East Bay Times is a regional paper gone digital: big enough to survive the destruction of local papers that took place in the 2000s, too small to live on its subscribers like the NYT, <\/i>would be my guess. So like its Shenandoah cousin, and like Forbes and however many other media sites, it has a sponsored content section. And despite being based in San Francisco, where there isn\u2019t\u2026 that big a Swedish community, it\u2019s a Swedish-language page about Swedish gambling laws.<\/p>\n

The author is Vlad Grindu, described as a \u2018seasoned journalist.\u2019 Let\u2019s see his other work on the site.<\/p>\n

\"eastbaytimeshttps:\/\/www.eastbaytimes.com\/author\/vlad-grindu\/<\/a><\/p>\n

What does this tell us? First, Vlad put in a day\u2019s work on June 21. Second, this is just link farming for Finixio\/Clickout assets.<\/p>\n

This page:.eastbaytimes.com\/2024\/02\/14\/online-casinos-real-money-australia\/<\/a> links to Lucky Block, among other casino sites. This page: eastbaytimes.com\/2023\/12\/19\/casinos-not-on-gamstop\/<\/a> links to Mega Dice, known to be affiliated with Finixio. And so on.<\/p>\n

This is just placing content on sites, though \u2014 standard low-level parasite SEO.<\/p>\n

CoinTelegraph is quite different, though.<\/p>\n

CoinTelegraph\u2019s iGaming section and the Forbes Marketplace playbook<\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s CoinTelegraph\u2019s homepage:<\/p>\n

\"cointelegraphhttps:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s their iGaming section.<\/p>\n

\"cointelegraphNotice how it\u2019s laid out completely differently from the main site?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the igaming portion of the site is separate from the rest of the site. One way you can check that is to click on the logo in the header to return to the homepage. Here\u2019s what should happen:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m on the homepage, navigate to another page, then click the logo and it takes me back to the homepage. That\u2019s been a standard of web design for so long I can\u2019t remember a time when you didn\u2019t expect a site to work that way.<\/p>\n

But watch what happens when I\u2019m in the iGaming portion of the site:<\/p>\n

Nothing. The logo isn\u2019t responsive, but you can see the rest of the navigation bar works as normal.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the code, for the homepage:<\/p>\n

\"cointelegraph<\/p>\n

And the igaming portion of the site:<\/p>\n

\"cointelegraphThese are very different. Note that they use different stylesheets, plugins and other resources.<\/p>\n

The sources are different too. These are the sources for the actual CoinTelegraph:<\/p>\n

\"cointelegraphThese are the sources for the iGaming site:<\/p>\n

\"TheseI can\u2019t put this better than Lars Lofgren so I\u2019m not going to try:<\/p>\n

\"larshttps:\/\/larslofgren.com\/cnn-usa-today-forbes-marketplace\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The iGaming portion of the site doesn\u2019t have many named authors, but it does have some. The English site has a ton of foreign language pages, all aimed squarely at gambling.<\/p>\n

One named author stands out to me, so I took a look at her LinkedIn:<\/p>\n

\"graziellaYep, she\u2019s a Clickout employee.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what it looked like when I went back today to get a better screenshot:<\/p>\n

\"graziellahttps:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/graziella-calleja-0526a3125\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The ClickOut connection? Gone. Scrubbed. Should we look for multiple Clickout staff to be going undercover like this, hiding their affiliation with the organization? Not for now.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Lucas Wallman, author at business2community.com:<\/p>\n

\"lucashttps:\/\/www.business2community.com\/se\/author\/lucas<\/a><\/p>\n

And his LinkedIn still clearly shows his employment at Clickout Media:<\/p>\n

\"lucashttps:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/lucas-wallman-57a7a7184\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Watch this space, but it certainly looks like management-level Clickout staff aren\u2019t hiding.<\/p>\n

What we can say for sure is that CoinTelegraph is doing a Forbes, and Clickout is doing a Forbes Marketplace: using an established website with a good reputation as a cover for promoting gambling services that are totally unrelated to the site\u2019s actual function. This is the definition of site reputation abuse, according to Google. Everyone else just calls it parasite SEO. Being penalized hasn\u2019t stopped them, they\u2019ve just shifted their operation slightly and kept on pulling in traffic and making money.<\/p>\n

Just buy some new websites<\/h2>\n

We\u2019ve already seen how Finixio\/Clickout have leveraged their existing network of websites, continuing to profit from the parasite activities even while they\u2019re under penalty and even stepping up their operations. They\u2019ve moved into CoinTelegraph\u2019s iGaming section and set up shop. But I think there\u2019s reason to believe they\u2019ve also bought a lot of new websites too.<\/p>\n

For example, Cardplayer.com, a site previously focused on online poker. Here\u2019s its original sitemap:<\/p>\n

\"cardplayerhttps:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/sitemap<\/a><\/p>\n

Note the strong focus on poker. Now it has a new, Swedish subdirectory, with seven pages:<\/p>\n

\"cardplayerhttps:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/se\/page-sitemap.xml<\/a><\/p>\n

None of these show up in Wayback at all, which isn\u2019t proof that they\u2019re new but does reinforce the idea. Yes, there\u2019s still plenty of poker here, but \/casino-utan-svensk-licens? Sounds familiar. I wonder where it links to.<\/p>\n

This also looks very familiar. Like as if Finixio has added some new sites to its network, all designed to funnel traffic (and ranking signals) to this casino page, which in turn leads visitors into a network of crypto gambling sites.<\/p>\n

pokerscout.com is in a similar position. This is another site with a historical focus on, well, poker.<\/p>\n

\"pokerscouthttps:\/\/www.pokerscout.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

I feel like they\u2019re not really hiding that fact either.<\/p>\n

They have multiple country- and US state-specific pages in their homepage dropdown navigation:<\/p>\n

\"pokerscout
\nHere\u2019s the sitemap for their \/se\/ subdirectory:<\/p>\n

\"pokerscouthttps:\/\/www.pokerscout.com\/se\/commercial-sitemap.xml<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026and there it is again. You kind of know what\u2019s coming now, but I\u2019m going to go through the motions anyway.<\/p>\n

It links to this page: https:\/\/topcasinosites.eu\/pokerscout-se-casino\/<\/a><\/p>\n

What about NewsBTC?<\/h3>\n

\"newsbtcThere it is. (Also available in Spanish.) I wonder if we\u2019ll find a link out to the same casino toplist page?<\/p>\n

Your guess is as good as mine.<\/p>\n

There are one or two weird things about topcasinosites.eu\/. One is, a Google site: search doesn\u2019t turn up anything.<\/p>\n

\"topcasinosites.euThat\u2019s weird.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Rich Results Test is a great option to see a site the way Google sees it. But this site\u2026<\/p>\n

\"topcasinosites.eu\u2026seems to be invisible.<\/p>\n

\"topcasinosites.euIt\u2019s deliberate, too. These are normally used by devs to prevent indexing of pages in progress or pages like checkout pages that shouldn\u2019t be showing up in search. I get that this is a lander and they don\u2019t want it to rank, but disappearing it from Google\u2019s vision is not the normal approach.<\/p>\n

A complex ecosystem \u2014 optimized for parasites<\/h2>\n

Finixio\/Clickout have built an empire in the space Google has laid out for them. If it\u2019s true that every complex ecosystem develops parasites, it\u2019s also true that whoever administers that ecosystem lays out the parameters that will shape those parasites. And Google\u2019s own algorithmic changes have shaped the space in which Finixio\/Clickout thrive.<\/p>\n

In some cases that means buying up teetering tech sites, often sites that have already changed hands and direction from their original owners and mission, and turning them into fronts for their real business, which is crypto and gambling. In some cases, it\u2019s buying space on major websites to put up content that serves the same purpose.\u00a0 A bunch of the deals they\u2019ve struck are with midsize, regional media outlets that are doing what Forbes was doing. They have the actual media website, covering local news, politics, sports, and so on; then they have a separate section of the website that\u2019s basically a reputation auction, where anyone willing to stump up can get their content published. The website gets a replacement for the advertising revenue that\u2019s been drying up, thanks to the Google-Facebook stranglehold on digital advertising. The marketers who use that section of the site get to parasitise on its domain authority to bypass the increasing impossibility of ranking on content alone.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the real issue. A slew of recent Google overcorrections first drove user-generated content to the top of search rankings, such that a random query\u2019s search results is now almost certain to include Quora and Reddit results. There\u2019s a theory that this was propelled by user requests, as Google become increasingly poor at delivering usable search results to users. My own feeling is that it was more about getting material to train their AI on. But in order not to just become a foyer to a couple of social media sites, Google then had to do something \u2014 and what they did was massively discount topical authority.<\/p>\n

The loss of topical authority as a significant ranking signal compared to domain authority has been a process, it hasn\u2019t happened overnight. But as it\u2019s happened it has driven small and midsize websites and blogs into the ground and left domain authority as the main route to ranking and thus to traffic. You really can\u2019t blame people for swimming with the tide on this. While domain authority outranks all, efforts to combat parasite SEO will just be pushing water uphill. Only the restoration of algorithmic respect for topical authority, eroded since the \u2018helpful content\u2019 update, will actually change the landscape.<\/p>\n

To get back to specifics, I\u2019ve tried to tell the story of how one major parasite SEO player got out from under penalties, and how they reoriented their assets to continue to make money from them even while they were penalized. This is impressive work, from a technical standpoint, and while the algorithm works the way it does, it\u2019s inevitable. But will they be penalized again? Will Google catch them in the act a second time? And will they get out of it, in profit and in just a few days?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\t<\/main><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Camellia Pekar
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve already seen how Finixio\/Clickout\u2019s assets were hit with serious penalties in the days following Google\u2019s algorithm update. I have no idea whether those penalties were manual, or algorithmically applied, though I have a hunch they were manual. But they destroyed the ranking of pages that funnelled, collectively, millions of visits a month into a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":827261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36391,161],"tags":[15496,6308],"class_list":{"0":"post-827260","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-escaping","8":"category-googles","9":"tag-escaping","10":"tag-googles"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}