Legalities and ethics of using third party URL's imbedded in Page Source Code.

I am wondering...can a company put in the page source code a URL link to a specific website to siphon off or piggy back on traffic? I have seen both using meta words and also the full URL. Are both legit...either illegal or unethical? Which forum if any can I ask this in?

In looking this up on the internet...I may not be searching correct terminology but it looks like it is illegal to hide a URL link in page source code for the purpose of siphoning off traffic...but I can not confirm this is an ethical or legal issue.

Do you have a specific example of a page that does what you're talking about?

I would be surprised if it's illegal. Illegal where? How would it be enforced? How do you prove motive?

Whether it's unethical probably depends on who you ask. Depending on what you're talking about, it might be a form of copyright infringement, but without a concrete example, it's going to be a little hard to talk about specifics.

I would wager that you're going to get a similar answer no matter where you go. If it's your content, I would contact the infringer and then consult a copyright lawyer. If it's not, then there really isn't much you can do other than not go to the offending site.

Define 'siphon off traffic'. Do you mean place hidden URL's that are invisible to a user but visible to a parser, such as a web crawler? Don't. It ranks in there as black hat SEO, and can demolish your ranking in search engines, and at worst have your site completely removed from a search engine index.

Ah man, I thought the OP was complaining about another site doing this. On another reading, it seems he's investigating whether he can get away with doing it himself. Pessimism wins again. Boo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by copeg

Define 'siphon off traffic'. Do you mean place hidden URL's that are invisible to a user but visible to a parser, such as a web crawler? Don't. It ranks in there as black hat SEO, and can demolish your ranking in search engines, and at worst have your site completely removed from a search engine index.

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Yes...not me trying to do it to others but rather they are doing it to us. It is not visible to a browser...but near as I can tell only visible to a web crawler: If they are doing it to us...how do I report it?

sample of what they put into their page source page...they have about 10 of these in their code with our URL attached.

<div class="row clear">

<label for="search_string" class="name">Search string</label>

<div class="value">

<input type="text" id="search_string" name="search_string" value="www.iwanttofish.com" class="text" />

</div>

</div>

Somewhat good news. I must of spooked them with the Black Hat reference. They changed their site...and only list us in the page source once instead of 10 - 16 times They dropped all but the one. They are now plummeting on our search criteria.


Strange I checked it earlier and it showed they dropped the .com off our name...now it is back on. It is like they are modifying their page source every once and a while.

Thanks everyone. It was very helpful. Not sure if this is Black Hat SEO but it sure puts them below us. I think our site is better designed and scares the crap out of them.

<div class="row clear">
<label for="search_string" class="name">Search string</label>
<div class="value">
<input type="text" id="search_string" name="search_string" value="www.iwanttofish.com" class="text" />
</div>
</div>