What color are you?

I'm a bit curious about the makeup of the members here ...

Virgin White:
I'll use standard on-page optimization and do some link exchanges and possibly even buy some links. I might have a small perentage of syndicated content but for the most part my site is unique and backlinks are almost all natural.

Off-White:
I am a bit more aggressive with link building and my backlinks are 50% or more bought or exchanged. I sometimes also use content feeds for the purpose of generating more pages or extending the content of pages more so for the indexing benefit than for the user experience.

Shades of Grey:
One or more of the following statements are true: I frequently have sites where more than 50% of backlinks are unnatural (bought or exchanged). I have sites that are created from product datafeeds but the real purpose of the site was to generate adsense revenue vs. the affiliate revenue. I repackage my content over and over again on multiple domains using multiple display methods for the sole purpose of increasing total se sourced traffic.

Dark:
One or more of the following statements are true: I create spam sites where there is little to no benefit to the users but the sites are built to rank. Tactics might include hidden text, keyword stuffing, content scraping + reshuffling (aka articlebot). I do some naughty stuff that's more involved than what's listed under shades of grey but not as severe as full cloaking or IP redirecting.

Black:
I'd show you one of my sites but to see it you have to be a specific bot coming from a specific IP address - otherwise, you just see my cloaked virgin white version


You might not agree with my definitions .. just made them up on the fly .. but let's just run with it for this poll and see how things shake out.

 

I am betweem Virgin White and Off-White! I don't have any external content, but I have a lot of advertising links.

 

Blue. (see avator)

Seriously though, I think I can consider myself a virgin white. I buy a few links here and there but that is called advertising.

I try to stay as clean as possible. Sometimes it is frustrating knowing I could probably get a site there quicker through "dark" practices, but I stick with my principals.

 

I am probably virgin white, but I'll be safe and say off-white a little bit. Makes me wonder why a site is sanboxed LOL

 

Off-White probably

 

Heh, forgot to give my own answer - I Have sites that would fit in Virgin White and Off-White but mostly they would be in the Shades of Grey category. I run a few experiements in the dark and black areas just for learning sake but they don't have adsense or affiliate links or anything else on them to make money - purely for education ... HONEST!

 

Suuurrreee... just kidding.

The shades of grey option isnt that bad. The only thing is it would seem that a site like that is built for the one time visitor and not return traffic.

 

I first thought this thread was about what race you are lol

 

Aint got time to dabble as much as I'd like so it's ALL white. Should I be misbehaving more? LOL

 

Nintendo would have to be virgin white...





...or terrorist khaki...

 

I've never done any experiments with hidden text. The only thing I have going in the dark and black realms are some sites I put up that are scrambled versions of my own content. I paid someone here for 100 unique articles (and used them correctly on my "real"/non-dark sites).

Then, for the dark/black sites I spun the articles using my own dumbed down version of an articlebot like spinner and for each article I turn it into 10 pages for slightly different search terms. The sites use a very ugly human-viewed template that I would think is perfect for search engines.

The sites have some code that checks the IP and bot and if it sees MSN bot it serves up the spun crap version. If a user comes to the page through MSN with the keywords referral I was expecting, then the user is immediately sent off to another domain with the same content as someone who isn't redirected. If I were willing to wear the black hat, this redirection would go to some kind of money-maker site.

This might sound very confusing and weird, but it really is only for educational purposes and I chose MSN because I was seeing a lot of these redirects in MSN serps. I log it all and it is pretty scary stuff because it absolutely works on MSN and for programmer types isn't really that hard to pull off. I have read it works on g* and y* also but haven't tried it (and don't have plans to either).

If suddenly my income pool from the white/off-white/grey dried up and it came down to dropping my ethical standards and having bills paid, or staying on the high ground but with creditors on my back .... well, let's just say I like to have my options open

 

I am between Virgin White and Off-White.

 

Well, don't they say "Once you go black, you never go back"? hehe

 

Kinda white plus a bit.
White plus the dp co-op and some directory entries.

 

Good one!

I wonder if there would be a difference between the clor people are and the one they would be if they had the knowledge and resources!

 

Very interesting thread Nitin. I'd say I'm in the two white areas.

Nitin has your black test site been up long or is it something that you've just had some short term success with?

 

There are a few cloaking sites and the longest has been up for about 3 months. I don't play enough in the black hat side to know if this is considered short term or long term

 

But clearly not a bright white...

 

Interesting poll Nitin,
I am Virgin-White