Comments on: Hidden Quantcast links on Digg.com

By: mrpals

mrpals — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:43:00 +0000

I agree with Binh Nguyen….we can see so many like this.

Not just quantcast doing this. Most major traffic tracking website, theme, and directory insert this type of hidden link in the code.

By: Binh Nguyen

Binh Nguyen — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:44:50 +0000

Not just quantcast doing this. Most major traffic tracking website, theme, and directory insert this type of hidden link in the code.

That’s how they rank themselves.

What I think is they should let the user opt in to link. Yes they provide free service, but that free always somehow end up some cash deposit into their bank. They should be honest about it.

Thanks for this great post.

By: Generator

Generator — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:00:46 +0000

I have placed quantcast code to my web pages but it is still under review and there’s no show of my website.

By: richardbaxterseo

richardbaxterseo — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:47:30 +0000

Hi Richard interesting code there – it’s very similar except the alt is blank. Did the cached version of the page you found that on still show a crawlable text link in the “text only” view?

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:59:09 +0000

Oops

Not only managed to mispell my name, but the code posted got pulled. Here it is escaped:

By: Eichard Hearne

Eichard Hearne — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:57:25 +0000

Many Analytics companies are at this. Check out the tracking code used by Omniture: [not sure why they are setting the title and not the alt] If memory serves me right ClickTracks do something very similar.

By: richardbaxterseo

richardbaxterseo — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:30:18 +0000

I’m in agreement here – it looks like a classic example of checking the SEO impact before you distribute “copy and paste” code. Oops!

By: Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:15:09 +0000

@Stuart I’m not so sure this falls into black hat territory, since the link anchor text is “Quantcast” and not a juicy keyword phrase such as “viagra”. The href is probably unnecessary but may not violate any guidelines. If it does and GOOG takes action, the penalty would likely impact Quantcast.com and not Digg.com or any other site hosting the tracking tag.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:09:43 +0000

Thanks for the discussion. Just a heads-up that we dropped the href a while back, so it only appears on sites that became Quantified Publishers before we made the change. New sites don’t have that line — and I think that if you recopy-and-paste your tag from the setup page you’ll get the new tag without that href.

By: richardbaxterseo

richardbaxterseo — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:31:17 +0000

@FSP – the whos.amung.us non java tracking code could potentially be doing the same thing. Nice spot!

By: FSP

FSP — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:08:33 +0000

Cool find. I too have the quantcast code on my site. It does not require a link back to use an image to track visitors, however they add it anyway. (look at whos.amung.us as well)

By: Stuart Foster

Stuart Foster — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:41:37 +0000

Now that is an interesting link building strategy. To bad it is black hat however…this could end badly for Quantcast…

By: mark Pilatowski

mark Pilatowski — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:12:30 +0000

Somehow I doubt this is a mere oversight. I am a little surprised that some of these sites did not catch this themselves.

By: David Leonhardt

David Leonhardt — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:12:30 +0000

Not worth the risk. I recall how BMW was removed from the index a few years ago for being naughty (according to Google). Does Quantcast want the same result?

By: richardbaxterseo

richardbaxterseo — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:41:47 +0000

Hi Andy, good to hear from you! I don’t think this is spam nessecarily, in fact it’s probably just an oversight on the part of the developers of the tracking code. Still, I bet the technique is working for them!

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:31:28 +0000

Certainly a year or so back they weren’t being naughty on the links, but at least it probably points back to a useful page for many sites which has info advertisers might like.