Matthew C. Egan

Do we know the origins of this at all?  I mean... this is perfect.  This should be required reading for every man woman and child on the planet, because that's how the internet works, that is how journalism works now.  This is like, it ignores all affiliations, sides, opinions, etc, and just goes straight to the facts - if it bleeds it leads.

Yea, and some are saying this implies more searches are done through Yahoo or something, it's just that Yahoo owns more sites, and yea, Tumblr porn (which I don't think they fully realized when they bought it) is huge.

I would imagine that the PR risk is lessened by people who knowingly abuse the program.  They know that they're running the risk of being removed, or suspended.  I would say (knowing the company in your original example) that if someone was suspended first, and their access to the revenue paused until they correct the behavior, that they then have the chance of changing the negative behavior and getting access to that revenue for themselves again.

Money is a powerful motivator, so pausing their access to those funds, and giving them a path to restore access to those funds, would ultimately be the best way to limit any potential PR damage.

I don't ever let fear of bad PR stop me from doing the right thing.  I'd imagine that the positive value of a successful affiliate program is more valuable even at the end of potential bad PR, than not doing the affiliate program.  Just need to give folks a little less rope to hang themselves with, and hold them accountable the first time.

Dave Ramsey was talking yesterday about chastising your children.  If you say "Now Billy you have to behave!" and then the next time they act up you say "Now Billy you have to behave!" that isn't a behavioral problem, that's an integrity problem.  There was no followthrough on the threat, so if it sounds like I'm saying treat the affiliates like Children, then that's probably exactly what you need to do.  You're giving them access to your revenue, even if it's only in part, so if they want that PRIVILEGE, they better be willing to work within the rules to get that.

They likely need the money more than you need the affiliate.

When I wrote that blog for Chris Locurto's site, one of the Nashville Christian Publishers contacted us and we did some consulting for them.  What we determined they needed wasn't actually SEO, but an affiliate program very similar to what you are describing.  By having this affiliate program that churches nationwide could become a part of, smaller churches that weren't large enough to have a full in-house book store could sell this publishers books on their website and these churches would get a cut of that income, thus allowing the church to raise money (which is always hard for them to do) while allowing the publisher to get access to this "crowd sourced" marketing team to sell their products.

In the end, the potential value of the powerful affiliate program outweighs the off-chance that someone says bad things about your product, even when they bash you (which no one is likely to even see) you'll still probably at least get a link out of it!

That "behind the scenes" look of Josh Davis' original post on the subject was what I really loved. http://llsocial.com/2012/05/search-secrets-prominent-seo-company-covertly-purchasing-backlinks-for-fortune-1000/ His examples of what these link buyers actually did, what their script was, how he caught them, how he linked it back to their fax # that was shared between businesses, etc. It was a very interesting engaging read.

Correct. Wil Reynolds is a world class guy, Mike could learn a few things from Wil.

That is why I find value in this post. Mike has a lot of good PR, but you can see his attitude in his tweets. He feels entitled to the publicity, and he's not. If Mike's tweets were taken out of context or spun or whatever, I can see how this might be seen as more drama than it is, but in the end, these are exact copies of his tweets. Regardless of what Shoe Money is saying, Mike's own tweets speak volumes for his opinion of himself.

For a good long while the news about iAcquire being taken down was everywhere. People were defending Mike King, and in the end what matters is that they got caught doing what SEOmoz teaches us we don't have to do. I'm actually really disappointed Rand that you'd suggest this doesn't have a place on Inbound. This is an example of SEOs behaving badly. Mike King's behavior is more newsworthy than their being re-included on Google was. Being re-indexed is never a good thing because that means you had to get DE-INDEXED in the first place. Should we throw a party the next time a blue collar criminal is released from prison too? The whole concept of a socially influenced board like this is that the users decide what is worthy of an upvote and this article got FORTY EIGHT upvotes so far (49 being mine). I'm really disappointed, in general, to hear that something with 48 upvotes isn't of interest to this group because it directly criticizes someone that Rand calls a friend. What's the point of a socially influenced tool otherwise?

Yea, gotta give them credit for what they're doing to dig themselves out of the hole. Theres just an irony to me that the post we're talking about cannot be indexed on Google itself because iAcquire is still completely de-indexed.

I guess people have a VERY short memory.

Enron didn't sell marketing though, iAcquire does. Complicates the issue a bit.

@David - I think it was really unfortunate that Mike made the tweet that he did, saying that Google was "throwing a hissy fit" because there was "no link network to ban". To me, this sounds like he is defending iAcquire, and doesn't sound like a very white hat position to be speaking (or tweeting) from. From what I've been told, iAcquire PR immediately stopped him from tweeting about it further and thats why we got the blog post written by their PR people, and not by Mike, which as an "expert inbound marketer" who we're all looking at going "Dude, WTF?" that blog really should have come from him. That said, I still blame Joe Griffin, iAcquire CEO, for I believe misleading Mike King into taking the job to help them stop doing Black Hat stuff, when in fact he only wanted the guy for his name. Griffin paid millions to buy Conductors Link Buying operation, you think he just wants to shut that down after so recently making that investment? Not likely. Like always, follow the money.

At the end of the day, Google wants to create a good experience for their Search Engine users. Not for the users, but because if people aren't using Google, they also aren't clicking on Ads. That is why Google has Gmail, and Google Docs, and Google+ and Google Calendar all as a free platform, because they want to keep you ON GOOGLE. That is the root of the entire "Google vs. Facebook" battle, Google doesn't like that people spend so much time on Facebook because while they are on Facebook, they cannot be reached by Google's Ads. So if you create something of value on the internet, and you EARN links, that is fine in Google's books because what you've created is also worthy of showing up in their search results. If something gets a lot of Likes or Tweets or Shares on Facebook, whatever, it must be pretty cool, so it's also WORTHY of showing up in Google's Search Results. It's the difference between Marketing, and Advertising. Google wants you to MARKET your website, not ADVERTISE it. And if you're going to advertise it, they want you to either pay them through AdWords, or label the advertisement as such via the "No Follow" tag. Having a contest that gives away a product to bloggers who then might link to the product or talk about it, is Marketing. Not advertising. Is it still PAYING for that attention? Sure! But it's creating something worth talking about. Some paid links, some "endorsed content" might actually be great content, but it's when the website everyone is linking to via paid links is crap, and that crap is what then shows up on Google's search results, that Google gets upset. Google doesn't want CRAP showing up in their search results, because that makes people trust the Google system less, and if they trust Google less, they click on fewer AdWords ads, and Google makes less money. Does that make Google evil? I mean, we're paying them, via ad clicks, for this wonderful service they provide that is their search engine. I have no problem with them policing it however they like. Some SEOs are in Advertising, some are in Marketing, those of us who are actual Marketers are the ones that Google loves, because we're creating materials for the sole purpose of selling a product, but we find a way, we fight through writers block, whatever, to create something of amusement, of value, of entertainment, in order to get there. We don't just write a check and hope for the best. Savvy?

Kieran you're absolutely right and that's one of the big problems with all of this. SEOs go out to SMX or whatever and they come back telling their boss "I learned lots of cool White Hat stuffs!" and then they go back to building Forum Comments and Directory spam and calling it Link Building. That's the problem, it's an industry wide symptom of "The Emperor's New Clothes" and no one wants to come out and admit that they've got no clue what they're doing. SEO is hard, and all these blogs and videos and conferences are giving people who haven't got a clue amunition that helps them cast the appearance of a plan because of course, if you went to SMX a bunch of times, subscribe to SEOmoz, and follow Mike King on Twitter, you too are an amazing White Hat, Content Driven, Link Builder! Right? The reality is a lot different than that, and a LOT of SEO companies out there are only in this business because it's easy to make money selling SEO. Follow the money, just like anything else. Unlike anything else sadly, we aren't lawyers, or doctors, or chefs, there is no health code that covers SEO, or a State Bar Association that we have to keep happy. We are a Multi Billion Dollar, unpoliced, industry. And this will keep happening because of that.

How about the FTC Guidelines? That also seems to get lost in all of this (and thank you Danny for standing your ground amongst the trolls). It is literally against the law, from the Federal Trade Commision guidelines on advertising, to pay someone for an advertisement, yet have them purposefully not label it as an advertisement. Buying links is a violation of Google's TOS, but what they asked that blogger to do (Josh Davis in this case) actually violates FEDERAL law. They make no mention of this in the e-mail outreach and I had a lengthy chat with John Doherty where he pointed out to me that many people are simply unaware of the FTC guidelines regarding advertisements, but to me, the leadership at iAcquire knew EXACTLY what they were doing and I believe it implicates Mike King that he would go to work for people who have no problem breaking the law like this, misleading bloggers like this, or quite possibly misleading their clients by not telling Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp (as they claim) that they were never told that anyone would be doing Black Hat SEO vs. just "SEO". I think it speaks volumes about Mike that he'd be associated with those kinds of people. He is now their leader, if he is in fact the "Director" and it wasn't just a token title given to him because they wanted to capitalize on his White Hat reputation to make iAcquire look cleaner than it was. I don't blame Mike, I honestly think he was duped by Joe Griffin, the CEO of iAcquire, into coming to "help us be more White Hat" and that Mike may very well have meant to do just that, but you don't take a Director position and then immediately go out of country for two weeks on a speaking tour. One of these is a Director of a Department - the other is just a figurehead for PR reasons. Joe Griffin paid MILLIONS of dollars to buy Conductor's Link Buying operation, which included the means to pay monthly the websites that they were buying these links from. There was clear intent here, and what I fear is that so many of the armchair commentators on this issue didn't do any more than skim Josh Davis' original blog post so they didn't see how damning the evidence against iAcquire is. And yea, on the privacy front. They contacted Josh directly, THREE TIMES, trying to buy a link on his website. And they were dumb enough to do this while outing their client as Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. They even name the client as "Dun & Bradstreet" not "Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp" as they may have wanted to capitalize on the big Fortune 500 Dun & Bradstreet's reputation. This is going to go to court for a lot of reasons, and dozens if not hundreds of lives will be effected by this. They broke the law, they have damaged brands, they've caused people to lose their jobs, this isn't about outing SEOs, this is about ethics in marketing and doing "whatever it takes" to win. All because some guy was too lazy to register a unique fax number. =)

Yea I wanted to stay away from the debate itself, the Mike King hazing, etc. That'll sort itself out, but I wanted to address what they DID and why we need to stop debating whether or not buying links is legit or not, and start just being smarter about what we do. Exercising our Draper Fu, as it were. Thanks for submitting this! We appreciate it.