I am of the same view that a continuation of similar attacks can serve no good to the name of SEO as a whole.

1. There’s the term denoting “crackers, illegal hackers, malevolent code breakers, virus/trojans developers” etc. as used within the IT security community (hence, “Black Hat conferences” dedicated to network and server security issues, identity theft prevention, etc.)

2. “Black Hat SEO” describing search engine optimizers/marketers not feeling bound by the various search engines’ respective terms of service. (Which, of course, are entirely private and don’t reflect the law of the land in any which way, no matter what the search engine spinmeisters may try to convey to the contrary.) This term is obviously restricted to the SEO community.

Whereas the type #1 BHs will typically be breaking the law (depending on particular jurisdiction, of course), run phishing and/or DOS attacks etc., the type 2 (SEO) BHs will do nothing of the kind. (Some may go to the lengths of running XSS injection exploits on unsecure web sites, but whether that is actually an illegal activity depends, again, on jurisdiction and is, hence, subject to a lot of debate.)

For quite a while now, Google’s Matt Cutts has been using the term “black hat” in an entirely ambiguous manner, blithely mixing up the two different meanings and thereby implying that SEO BHs (type #2) are actually criminals and felons.

While he has recently back pedaled a mite (see comments section here: http://sphinn.com/story/103245 ) when confronted with a lot of flak (mainly on Twitter) because of this very FUD policy (a comment, by the way, that actually constitutes an attempted thread hijack as I’ve pointed out there myself), the issue remains that “Matt as Google” has been running an extensive and prolonged campaign to smear the reputation of BH SEOs by insinuating that they’re identical with the same pack of criminals pushing porn links on school sites, etc.

This said, Matt has actually pointed out that the case under discussion here was NOT one of cracking a site’s code or illegally hacking into their system. (He has also expressed his doubts that this was actually an illegal activity…) Seems that the spammer in question merely exploited a dated version of the Moodly platform by implementing porn links there.

Personally, I know of no BH SEOs who would condone pumping porn links to kiddie and school sites, and I find this just as detestible as anyone else.

However, this doesn’t give Mr Cutts (or any other search engine rep for that matter) the right to hoodwink their readers and followers by deliberately creating the impression that BH SEOs are dealing in felonous, illegal activities of any kind: this is pure, unabashedly misleading propaganda of the worst fascistoid kind, period.

Moreover, IMV this does a great disservice to the SEO industry as a whole, i.e. including all the “white hats” as well. Because we cannot really expect our clients to dig into all the fineries and intricacies of what is essentially an industry infight. At the end of the day, it will tarnish ALL of SEO, no matter the color of hat. And knowing Google for the control freaks they are, I am still waiting to be convinced that this isn’t entirely intentional on their part…

This is the part that interests me –

2008 will be the year that hacking and search engine optimization (SEO) collide in a major way. By the end of the year, a nontrivial fraction of blackhat SEO will involve illegally hacking sites for links or landing pages. One webhost will get a significant black eye as hundreds or thousands of customers’ websites are hacked. The growth of illegal-blackhat SEO will leave traditional blackhats with a difficult choice: risk doing something illegal or sit out.

It seems that Matt’s crystal ball was bang on but I don’t like the affiliation with Black Hat – this form of link building is its own break away faction, s’ppose ‘CrapHat’ will do till someone else terms it better.

Possibly won’t make it go away, but its the only tool we have to try and ostracise those involved.

Ryman – I think part of the reason for such controversy on this topic is that people do see it as “just SEO”. I feel strongly that community need to stand up and challenge this belief though in order to as PoLR says “distance ourselves” and send out the message that it’s just not acceptable behaviour.

Black Hat SEO would still technically be ‘SEO’ although entirely inadviseable.

So then it also follows that Craphat SEO could technically be a type of ‘SEO’ although on the face of it – illegal.

We used to play Crazy Football at school, it was normal football but you were allowed to violently remove an opponent from the ball. Still football…

The disturbing fact is that hack attacks are becoming more and more – hate to say the word – fashionable.

You just to need to account for the rise in spammy links in blogs, high profile websites being hacked and now School sites … its a worrying trend.