Parasite Hosting, GoogleWhacking for the Innocent

I’ve read a few passing references to parasite webhosting as exploitation of .org, .edu or even .gov sites as a bed of redirect and/or linkbuilding farms. Those redirects and link farms take advantage of those “authority” domains by linking to a site which, in turn, has authority imparted upon it. As we all know, authority + content = rankings. Even though I seldom venture all the way to the “black hat” side of SEO, the topic of parasite hosting intrigued me. In particular, can a white hat SEO guy profit from it or is it just another form of spam?

I recently found a single article that gives a basic definition and outline of why parasitic hosting is interesting to watch. In the post Leveraging Trust From Parasite Hosts Webmaster Words gives us a snapshot:

A parasite host is a website which has a high trust factor and also allows users to create their own content (Forums, wikis and classified ads sites). Using these sites means that you can get a page of keyword rich content ranked for fairly competitive terms very quickly. You can see this in blackhat dominated industries…

A related post from BlueHatSEO.com (Jan07) goes on to point out what I think parasite hosting can teach average webmasters and search engine marketers. The fun part (yes, I’m an SEO nerd) is to perform searches for parasite-heavy phrases like “buy cialis” and then explore the sites exploited and promoted to learn from i) the overarching approaches taken, ii) their related use/abuse of blog networks and iii) inherent manipulation of the PageRank and/or authority system so heavily relied upon by the Google search engine. Don’t get me wrong, I neither endorse nor use any blog spam or parasite hosting in my SEO plans – but do I apply the principles of website authority and the power of blogging to everyday marketing.

GoogleWhacking is a similar pursuit in extreme search engine marketing that can show online marketers a thing or two. By perusing the site, visitors can get a laugh from phrases like ambidextrous scallywags while, at the same time, a quick search of those phrases will reveal examples of not only parasite hosting but of principles like anchor text targeting, message distribution and the viral nature of SEO today.

So both parasite webhosting and GoogleWhacking can teach even the most innocent of us principles to use in our every day SEO campaigns. At minimum, it reinforces the things we know to work: linkbuilding from authority sites, the importance of anchor text and participation in blogs as part of a successful search marketing campaign. More than that, it highlights a simpler question, “What can I do to get a real link from a .edu or .gov domain?”. That, my friend, is the real question.

Related note: when I initially heard the phrase parasite hosting, I assumed it was more complex than simply placing wiki or student account pages on authority domains. My thought was that one would find an available IP address C block that was the same as one of those authority sites??? Is parasite hosting the opposite of the “bad neighborhood” hosting theory? Instead of being careful of sharing a webhost with suspect sites, an enterprising black hat SEO could attempt to leverage a “good neighborhood” of C block addresses? Thoughts?

[tags]parasite hosting, googlewhacking[/tags]

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