White Hat. Black Hat. Advertising Methods

White Hat. Black Hat may have different meanings to different people.

White Hat methods are methods of advertising and promotion that are acceptable for use with search engines.

Black Hat methods are usually techniques that try to fool search engines in the hope of increasing website traffic. Black Hat methods are more likely to have the opposite effect and get your site banned form being listed resulting in no visitors.

Black Hat methods include, (but are not limited to), Spamming Search Engines, Splog. Splogging, Duplicate Content and Scraper Sites. Yahoo® states not to use, (to be included in there list), may not be a complete list-

• Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page ("doorway pages")
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages on the web, including affiliate content
• Pages that change user preferences, reset default home pages, resize browser windows, disable back buttons, or otherwise interfere with a user's ability to navigate.
• Pages with automatic software downloads including viruses, adware, spyware, or other self-installing programs
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Pages in great quantity, automatically generated, with minimal content or of little value
• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• Pages with text that is not easily read, e.g., text that is too small or is obscured by the background of the page, or is located in an area of the page not visible to users.
• Cloaking or stealth; a technique used by some web sites to deliver one page to a search engine and a different page to all other users
• Cross-linking to inflate a site's apparent popularity, including participation in link exchanges or "link farms" ", and the use of non-navigational links
• Pages built primarily for search engines or pages with excessive or off-topic keywords
• Misuse or inaccurate use of competitor or brand names
• Duplication of content, either by submission of multiple pages with same content, submitting the same content from multiple domains, or submitting the same content from multiple hosts
• Pages that rely heavily on content or links to content created for another web site, such as affiliate content
• Pages that have Pop-Ups, pop-unders or exit consoles
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience (Descriptions that are not relevant to the page content)
• Pages that result in a 404 error
• Content, domains, titles, metadata or descriptions that (i) violate any applicable law or regulation; (ii) infringes in any manner any copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right of any party; (iii) breach any duty toward or rights of any person or entity including, without limitation, rights of publicity or privacy, or have otherwise resulted in any consumer fraud, product liability, tort, breach of contract, injury, damage or harm of any kind to any person or entity; (iv) are false or misleading; and/or (v) are defamatory, libelous, slanderous or threatening.
• Online Gambling Sites: Yahoo! Search Submit does not accept URLs from online gambling sites. Online gambling sites are those that have gambling as their central theme, including those that accept wagers or require payment in exchange for the chance to win prizes, as well as sites that offer both information and links related primarily to the promotion of online gambling.
• Prescription Drug Sites: Prescription drug sites are those that sell prescription drug products, as well as sites that offer information or links related primarily to the sale of prescription drugs. If a site is a prescription drug site and either sells prescription drugs or facilitates the sale of prescription drugs (via links), these sites must take part in an approved qualification program. SquareTrade, an independent third-party, manages Yahoo!'s approved qualification program. For more information please see
• Tobacco products: Yahoo! Search Submit does not accept URLs for tobacco related products

This is what Google® state, again this may not be a complete list:-

Quality guidelines - basic principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
  
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
  
• Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or Google PageRank®. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "Bad Neighbourhood" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products some search engine products that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
  
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
  
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
  
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
  
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
  
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
  
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
  
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

There is also the term Grey Hat. This is said to indicate a method is acceptable to search engines but still, when not liked particularly by actual users. Advice: Do NOT use Black Hat, (or Grey Hat), Methods. Major Search Engines are more strict and identify these methods more easily. They are likely to ban sites that use Black Hat methods. Only use White Hat Methods to avoid having your listing removed from search engines.

While Grey Hat methods may be acceptable to search engines at any particular time these methods are more likely to get your website listing banned in the longer term.

Some search engines may have different rules, but it is usually not worth the risk of using any Black Hat methods and losing a losing with an other, usually more important, search engine.

Search engines are subject to change there rules at any time without notice. Search engines are looking for Organic Search Engine Optimization. This is so that they are able to provide better, and more genuine results for users.

The possible exception to this is where people are willing to pay for listings but even then only White Hat techniques should be used.

The terms, White Hat and Black Hat, (which are not my terms and are only used here because they are well known in the Internet Industry), could be viewed as being predigest. May be better Terms could/should be Good Hat, Bad Hat.

View Guerrilla Marketing, Duplicate Content, Bad Neighbourhood, Keyword Stuffing, Organic Search Engine Optimization, Keyword, Keyword Phrases, Exchange Links and Software, Freeware Creation and Publishing Search engines. Online Dictionary, Thesaurus. Acronym or abbreviation finder, etc..

Please Help support A Great Portal with a donation. If you find the Advertising Methods FREE TIPS useful.

   Advertising Methods FREE TIPS. Read in conjunction with the General Guide about Advertising Methods.

A Computer Portal. Freeware, Shareware. Download software. Computer languages and Programming code. Including  PERL Scripts and Java Scripts. Webmaster Tools. Internet Marketing, Website promotion. Hardware Help from BIOS to Windows and UNIX.