Websites that steal content from other websites often falsify post dates to achieve higher rankings on Google and other search engines. This practice is known as "Black Hat Spamming".General Mackevili wrote:Haha, I assure you that was AFTER they 'edited' their forum, no surprise.
Notice how a post by someone who said 'i heard he was released' after we posted it was deleted, and then a post from 'earlier' magically appeared on there in its place? If you still fall for their deceptive tricks over there, I have a bridge to sell you.
I'm happy that Gonk has brought this up because we have been tracking them doing exactly this for a long time, often reporting news before the reported event has even happened.
An interesting excerpt from the linked article clearly states:
Now let’s take a look at just a few of the countless examples.Content Theft and Date Authority
Another common – and more insidious – use of backdating is in content theft. Content is hugely important in the modern web. It’s critical for a site to post quality content on a regular basis. More importantly, your content needs to be original. You’re going to be penalized by posting content that isn’t yours originally. If you’re copying content from somewhere else, and you’re dedicated to a black hat route, the solution seems obvious.
What the typical black hat spammer does, when they copy content, is set the date for their copy to be earlier than the original post. The reasoning is that, when Google sees the two posts, it will compare their dates and give authority to the earlier post.
The death of Kenneth Maret was reported on July 8, 2020. This image, taken on July 10 shows that other websites, including the Cambodia National Police were reporting the death on July 9th. Even CEO Twitter has a time scale of 17 hours.
However, the CEO Google ranking of #1 shows that, although the website was the last to publish the story, they somehow did so several days before the man’s death.
The post in question actually appeared on CEO at 10.34 am (Cambodia time) on the 9th of July.
Another example of this date manipulation can be seen with a story regarding the death of Denis Gambade.
Clearly posted on Monday July 8, 2020, a Google search on July 9th shows CEO reported his death 5 days earlier.
It seems that Cambodia Expats Online manipulates post dates, mostly on threads about people passing away, in a desperate effort to increase its ranking in search engines.
The modus operandi is always the same. Somebody dies, other websites report it, CEO posts the news and modifies the time of the post to appear as if they reported it first: