Thread: Legalities and ethics of using third party URL's imbedded in Page Source Code.

Do you have a specific example of a page that does what you're talking about?

I would be surprised if it's illegal. Illegal where? How would it be enforced? How do you prove motive?

Whether it's unethical probably depends on who you ask. Depending on what you're talking about, it might be a form of copyright infringement, but without a concrete example, it's going to be a little hard to talk about specifics.

I would wager that you're going to get a similar answer no matter where you go. If it's your content, I would contact the infringer and then consult a copyright lawyer. If it's not, then there really isn't much you can do other than not go to the offending site.

Define 'siphon off traffic'. Do you mean place hidden URL's that are invisible to a user but visible to a parser, such as a web crawler? Don't. It ranks in there as black hat SEO, and can demolish your ranking in search engines, and at worst have your site completely removed from a search engine index.

Ah man, I thought the OP was complaining about another site doing this. On another reading, it seems he's investigating whether he can get away with doing it himself. Pessimism wins again. Boo.

Somewhat good news. I must of spooked them with the Black Hat reference. They changed their site...and only list us in the page source once instead of 10 - 16 times They dropped all but the one. They are now plummeting on our search criteria.


Strange I checked it earlier and it showed they dropped the .com off our name...now it is back on. It is like they are modifying their page source every once and a while.

Thanks everyone. It was very helpful. Not sure if this is Black Hat SEO but it sure puts them below us. I think our site is better designed and scares the crap out of them.

<div class="row clear">
<label for="search_string" class="name">Search string</label>
<div class="value">
<input type="text" id="search_string" name="search_string" value="www.iwanttofish.com" class="text" />
</div>
</div>