Will Software Automation Really Get You Google Top Ranking?

Anthony & I  had a lot of questions recently on the use of software to automate things like content creation, automatic setup of accounts at websites, and automatic posting of content to websites.

In theory it sounds great doesn’t it??

Press a button and all your content gets created for you automatically, and your accounts created, and then your websites uploaded.

You then just sit back and wait for your google top ranking to kick in, and get ready to spend all the money you are going to make when you’re on page one of Google.

But then….. you wake up!

Remember the old saying, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is?

Do you really think it’s that easy?

Well it isn’t that easy, and we speak from experience here.

This type of full automation is really just black hat techniques, and is going to ultimately waste a lot of your time and money. Sure you may have some initial results, but your results won’t stick, your accounts can get banned, and you can really just end up where you started from.

The other issue is that the web 2.0 sites are getting smarter about this, they realize people are trying to “beat  the system”, and are actively looking at ways to prevent this automation from working.

You see, computers are dumb, real dumb, they don’t think like humans, they just blindly follow instructions entered by a programmer. What is obvious to you is not obvious to a computer.

Software automation can be defeated by changing a few lines on a web page. I’ll give you an example.

A particular web page has a box on the screen for your username and password. This particular web page has called them Username and Password (nothing original there). If you came back to the web page the next day and found they were now called Login and Security identifier, you may think to yourself, gee this is new, but then enter your username and password into the new boxes and continue.

However a software program would be stopped dead in it’s tracks, because it was looking for the words Username and Password, and didn’t find them, so gave up! Suddenly your expensive program is no longer working, and you have to wait till the programmer gets notified of the error, fixes it, releases a new version of the software, etc.

Most of the popular web 2.0 sites are doing advanced versions of the above, and on an ongoing basis.

Meaning the programmer trying to get the automated solution going is flat out trying to keep the existing programs working, let alone introduce new functionality. Too bad if they need to take a break or go on a holiday! Or worse still, if you stop paying and they have no incentive to fix things for you.

And this is only a really simple example. Sometimes it gets a lot more complicated.

I was actually a developer (part of a team) for a major web 2.0 site a few years ago. My particular job was to write code to combat these automated programs, and also to detect them.

Here is the thing.

They are usually pretty easy to detect for a number of reasons. Firstly, as I mentioned before, they don’t act like a human. A human (usually) does not go to a website, enter their username and password in 0.005 seconds and then 1.15 seconds later post and then 1.5 seconds after that logout.

The average person will login, and probably take 5-10 seconds or more to type in their username and password, maybe a few minutes typing in the post, and maybe forget to logout sometimes, or enter a second post.

So what I did was write a program looking for “non human” behavior and it wasn’t hard to find, and then a few more simple checks for things like “automated” account names e.g. a1122029d, or links to all the same domain, or “spammy” looking content, and then the account get marked for deletion.

Again this is a simple example, the software looked for a lot more things than that, but can you see where I am coming from?

This was a few years ago, can you imagine how much further they have come today?

We believe you are wasting your time and money investing in a complete automated solution because ultimately it’s going to be flagged and your content will get deleted. It’s just a matter of time.

Note that we say “complete automated solution” is a waste. There are parts of the process where automation can be a good idea, and in fact in our Page One of Google step by step plan for massive traffic, we have some automation where it makes sense.

Being unique on the Internet means you should not be doing things the same way each time. We spend a lot of time educating our members on the concepts of leaving footprints (or rather how not to), and the use of purely automated software leave footprints, and lots of them

The downside of all this?

Yes you are going to have to create some content, yes you are going to have to manually create some accounts, and yes you are going to have to manually upload some content on your websites. Of course this can be outsourced (to a real person).

Is this really that big a deal?

Wouldn’t you rather do this, safe in the knowledge that your not leaving footprints, and that your content is going to “stick”?

Stickability is a HUGE factor in all of this guys!

And even from an ethical point of view, wouldn’t you rather be doing things properly and not trying to “beat” the system?

Black hat is too much work.

We are not interested in it at all!

Doing the right thing with your content and with the search engines is actually easier and will help you rank better in the long run.

And of course you can outsource this function anyway, and get someone to do this type of work for you, we just suggest that “someone” is not a computer program.

Your Google ranking is in part due to you being unique and standing out in the crowd of “average” competitors.

We sincerely suggest you save your time and money and invest in a proven program to generate Massive web traffic and great rankings in google.

On the other side you will learn how to do this stuff on your own, so that ultimately you won’t be relying on anyone else other then you.

Doesn’t that make sense?

But what ever you decide, tread carefully and avoid leaving footprints!

Until next time,

Keep on ranking!

Cheers

Tim & Anthony