Comments on: Safra, Hitachi & Mapletree Websites Screwed up by Active8

By: Malaysiappc -SEO

Malaysiappc -SEO — Sat, 01 May 2010 15:36:10 +0000

nowadays there are more and more self-claimed “SEO consultant” who are actually using black hat tactics to do SEO for clients. In Malaysia, there are few guys are doing this and ironically their website say they are following “anti spam policy” .

they go to various forums and create multiple accounts and fill in the signature field with many links. I even noticed that they created more than 50 accounts in a forum and all the signature are links to same domains.

wondering who they are ? well , both of them are rank top 10 for the keywords “Malaysia SEO” and they are freelancers and do not publish any company information.

By: Larry Lim - SEO Malaysia

Larry Lim - SEO Malaysia — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:07:41 +0000

That’s the word for it – a convenient excuse.

I had my website content ripped by Quaffs.com and pasted on their blog. As if that was not enough, it went on to say that the company is associated with me. When I pointed out to Eric Chia, he claimed ignorance and blamed it on his copywriter.

Active8 is just doing what many web design firms commonly do. The only difference here is they probably didn’t have the permission from the customers to stick the link there. No doubt the content may be unrelated, but at a lower weightage, it’s still a free backlink.

By: Bluelambda - Professional SEO

Bluelambda - Professional SEO — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:48:27 +0000

This isn’t the only case of “evil” practices I have seen. Many unethical companies and people are willing to make use of their client’s ignorance.

Anyway, FYI, your link to the mapletree site in this post is broken. Suggest you fix it.

By: TIMMGuru

TIMMGuru — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:12:41 +0000

Rank High,

Active 8 did not take 18 hours to discover this blog post.

To set the record right, Sam Chia of Active8 discovered this post before 2129h on 1 July 2009. He picked up this blog post within 49 minutes and sent me an email.

By: Rank High

Rank High — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:49:02 +0000

Agreed with Jonathan. You got the guts to do it, just admit it. If A8 can pick up a blog post within 18 hours and response to it, don’t tell me no one in the company is monitoring the backlinks to the company.

This is your bread and butter, isn’t it?

By: XM

XM — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:52:11 +0000

Jonathan Wong, you are absolutely right. However that’s the best answer Active8 can use now, nothing else. Or perhaps blame on the clients? They put hidden links to sabo them? No way… hehe

By: Jonathan Wong

Jonathan Wong — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:59:39 +0000

I don’t buy this.

I agree with the various commenters above that blaming a “former staff” for this fiasco is a terribly convenient excuse.

Even if that is the truth, I question the internal policies in place at Active8 to allow this kind of thing to happen.

I mean, an employee who was tasked to do SEO for Active8 (and not the client) actually had full editorial access to the production websites for all these companies? And there was no operations or project management in place to audit and double-check all changes?

I don’t buy the fact that this was entirely the work of one rogue employee at Active8, with no one else knowing. I mean, common sense dictates that surely after this employee completed his job, he had to report to his boss what he has done to improve SEO for the company, right?

No matter how it’s spun, as a customer I would never trust a company like this to handle my website for me.

By: Jolly

Jolly — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:37:57 +0000

Good on you, Sam! Swift action taken… fantastic! Make sure your staff do the right things from now on. Let all web designers and SEO consultants maintain ethical practices. I do hope that those who are doing the “black hat” will stop or be exposed eventually.

By: XM

XM — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:53:55 +0000

What they mean shirking “responsibility” is push the blame to the staff. They should have admit that they know is unethical but still doing it for the sack of pushing SEO ranking and they do not think clients will know this, until someone pointed it out.

By: TIMMGuru

TIMMGuru — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:00:00 +0000

@xc I don’t think Active8 is “shirking responsibility”. Sam Chia of Active8 admitted the hidden links were by planted by “former staff” and has since make good the websites by removing all these hidden links as he’d claimed.

Let’s NOT assume that everyone who works for Active8 is guilty of planting the hidden links.

As Kian Ann, Dinu and you have mentioned, I also think that Sam’s swift action is commendable. He got the problem fixed within ONE working day.

And that reminds me of a post I made on 12 December 2007…

Flash Web Designer Using Sneaky SEO Trick

The website is still not fixed after 18 months!