There has been talk about selling links, ad-sense site, content thieves etc. And I have made some comments myself about them. in short this is short of a poll to see were you stand on what you think is ethical and unethical.

My feelings not really in any order

Unethical

1. Stealing content or whole pages.
2. Stealing titles and/or descriptions.
3. Hot linking to other sites without approval.
4. Submitting other peoples web site to search engines or anywhere for that matter.
5. People of power on forums or any other type of site with their personal URL in there sig SOLELY for advertising and back links to there own site.
6. Having other people dictate to me how I can or can not make money from my own site. "as long as it is legal"
7. pop ups or adverts of pron on any site without a adult content warning first.
8. Trap pages "any page that once your on, you can not hit the back button to leave. it just reloads that page"
9. Using other pages like forums, blogs, Usenet etc to spam your url. "if that is the ONLY reason your there, joined, or post"
10. knowingly promoting anything illegal.

please post yours

Hey, all is fair in love and war!

Actually just kidding I largely agree with you. I'm just curious how is submitting a site other than your own unethical? How can it hurt another website? If you're posting negative comments about your competition, particularly with no basis for the claim, then you're correct, that would be unethical.

I know that you noted content copying, but the one that annoys me the most in that category is picture lifting.

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Great thread, nice follow up, thanks!

• Not disclosing the risks of any questionable action (such as selling or buying links and risking Google's wrath) to clients. See the thread, Is Link Selling Unethical or Just Unwise? particularly bruceclay's post which puts forth the "do no harm" precept of ethics.
• Any sort of dishonesty.

That's my two cents for the moment ...

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M.-J. Taylor
SEO Web Design by Cyber Key Search Smart Design® SEO Copywriter & Traveling Vacation Gypsy

Hijacking a domain's backlinks by changing topic.

A customer from the pharmacy industry found this website ranked #1 on live for certain popular pharmacy keywords. It seemed fishy as it was a blog with some pharmacy spam content. After checking backlinks, the website showed listed in various important directories like yahoo, in religious furnishings related categories.

If you check this, you'll see that the website was in fact not pharmacy related from 1998 until 2007 when it expired and then somebody purchased it and posted pharmacy content there:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.wcpageantry.com

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Dating Software, Web Video Chat Software, Matchmaking Software w. VideoChat.

Here is a article on that topic
How to buy expired domains listed in Yahoo & Dmoz : Internet & Online

There are still a lot of people out there that buy these sites, mostly to put money generating links, ad-sense, ppc, or affiliates.

I was told this once a while ago "The fastest way to get a #1 ranked site is to buy one"
Not sure if that stills holds true or if that is something you want to do but it is something to think about.

What I was aiming at was doing anything to anyones else's site with the intention of doing harm.

But what would happen if someone submitted your site every day to some search engines? "Rule of thumb is once every 30 days". I have also heard war stories as to where someone emailed an editor of DMOZ complaining about their site not being updated or something like that everyday till the site was removed, only to find out it was not their site. Not sure if the last one is really true for it was being talking about on IRC. I point the DMOZ out due to the fact it is a dog eat dog world and it is hard to imagine how low people will go to get what they want. This includes, and I'm more then likely dating myself, email bombing, pub hacking, registering a domainnameSUCKS.com. Well you get my point.

Unethical is doing something you wouldn't appreciate having done to yourself.

Unethical is being inconsiderate. Cheating and trying to take advantage of loopholes.

Ethical means you know what ethical is without having to ask stupid questions.

That is what ethical is.

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What I am is what I am, are you what you are, or what.
Eddie Brickel

If you found an error on your competitors page, would you tell them? Most wouldn't, but you would want people to tell you.

Inconsiderate, hmm not sure bout that one. Cheating - never a good idea, taking advantage of loopholes - No not a good idea but too many webmasters feel if I do not do it, someone else will

Not real sure what your getting at here. How many threads do you see everyday "not just here" people talking about is it right or wrong to buy/sell links, ad-sense sites, mirror sites, internal links "site to site", stuffing the title, etc. so stupid questions... is there such a thing?

I was trying to get cut and dry stands on what people think and I'm getting alot of gray.

Ethical and morals go hand and hand and in this world there is a lack of morals. It seems nobody wants to take a stand, put their feelings "this is what I feel" and stand by it. People do have a right to do that. And other people have the right to agree or disagree and that is cool. You seem to be taking this not in a web context, but more of a personal context.
In short I guess it is only unethical if you get caught.

I used to know the answer to this one. Sadly, the words "moral" and "ethical" have come to mean "expedient - but don't get caught or you're a crook". If a company or individual claims to be ethical, it's usually a pretty good indicator that they're not.

"This is what I feel" has seldom anything at all to do with either morals or ethics. If it did, membership of organizations such as the klan would be acceptable. It's not.

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Why can't I be different and original - like everybody else ?
www.thehappysmoker.net

DMOZ editors are usually smarter than that. They may be slow to act, but when they do, they *generally* investigate thoroughly.

I like that ... the Golden Rule is always in order. Thanks!

I'm of the mind that there are no stupid questions. Sometimes it is very hard to see the forest for the trees. Our discussion of whether it's ethical to sell links helped me to see where it is unethical and where it's not.

We can always learn something new, even going over old ideas. It's always possible to see things in a new light.

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M.-J. Taylor
SEO Web Design by Cyber Key Search Smart Design® SEO Copywriter & Traveling Vacation Gypsy

If I was a crook, I wouldn't appreciate being caught, or informed on. Your definition would make cops and neighborhood watches unethical, right ?

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Why can't I be different and original - like everybody else ?
www.thehappysmoker.net

I have the same attitude toward those that claim to be "Good Christians" or "Good insert religious belief here".. Generally needing to proclaim your innocence is a cover for not being quite so innocent.. Every time I've been screwed in business for "real money" has been by someone claiming how "good" they are..

As for business decisions, I tend to take those on more of a case by case, risk/reward, basis.. Theft?? Not likely.. Taking advantage of a weakness in someone's business model?? Much more likely..

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Steve : Custom Jewelry | Internet Marketing

Unethical and illegal are two different things. Unethical business practices usually involve underhanded tricks or sneaky doings that might only be questionable and not exactly illegal.

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Marcie Wolf
AlphaGeek Web Design | MarcieWolf.com

True. And no one suggested they were the same... though the original poster did say knowing promoting something illegal is unethical ...

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M.-J. Taylor
SEO Web Design by Cyber Key Search Smart Design® SEO Copywriter & Traveling Vacation Gypsy

Ethical? Moral? Legal?

There's one line more clearly defind than the others but even that one is open for interpretation. And even then, where it may be crossed (or not) is open for even more interpretation.

There are so many variables, how can one "draw the line" and where?

Self preservation comes to mind.

Dave

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Religious-Jewelry Blog - Deep Link Directory - Religious Jewelry

And there are situations in which the morals and ethics of laws may be called into question. For instance, the law which forbids the medicinal use of cannabis. Better to force people to live in pain, or become criminals, than to change a law which appears to have no logical foundation ? Strange that medicinal use of morphine is okay.

Then there is the case of Lord Haw-Haw, a WW2 broadcaster of German propaganda. After the war he was charged with treason, found guilty by a British court, and executed, despite the fact that he wasn't a British national (which was a prerequisite for treason against Britain, according to the law then in force). Following his execution the law was changed retroactively, to make his execution legal.

More from Britain ? The anti-pirate (offshore radio broadcasting) law which made it illegal to broadcast from places where British law doesn't apply. Try to work out the logic, or ethics, of that one.

No. Law and ethics are worlds apart, and morality plays no part.

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Why can't I be different and original - like everybody else ?
www.thehappysmoker.net

Ethics has nothing to do with life anymore. People are becoming hard up in this society and when you are in need you will do what you otherwise wouldn'.

Others are unethical because simply of greed. Doesn't matter who you hurt as long as you get ahead -- unfortunately they have learned this attitude by watching and being part of governments and corporations who will do anything to anyone for a buck -- espcially if there aren't many consequences to face and it is highly unlikely you will get caught.

Stealing - is just plain lack of pride. I can't understand how anyone could get caught putting their own name on someone else's work and not just die of embarrassment. This type of scum are going to burn themselves out as people get tired of copycat material. They deserve to burn out though - let the people who engage themselves in creating fresh material and ideas survive and the heck with them.

As far as hijacking a domain - if that isn't worth jail time, it should be.

Would you tell a competitor about mistakes? I went further than that once. I gave him a list of links on his site that were not working - we are now friends and have cooperation between us. I went the other way though - instead of fighting competitors, I built them a resource that everyone can join in and be noted. More than one way to skin a cat.

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SAL
Get A Life. Self-Reliance.

I would like to thank everyone who has put their input into this thread. And I would like to point out 1 reason I posted it. I just received an email from another SEO site and I'm not going to mention them for I also know a lot of people here have received this same email.

In this email is an article that reads, and I'm only going to point out two of them that really bother me.

10 Key Content Strategies to Increase Online Visibility
By Lani and Allen Voivod (c) 2007

1. BLOG COMMENTS

Go out of your way to read other people's blogs. Your Mother always told you that reading is good for you. She was right! But, when you do so, be sure to productively interact with those bloggers. It makes them feel good. It validates what they're writing about. It starts up a relationship between the two of you. AND, here's the best part, it gives you an inbound link to your site.

4. PARTICIPATE ON INDUSTRY FORUMS

Similar to blog comments and trackbacks, participating on industry forums will get you hooked up with other like-minded professionals, keep you abreast of current trends, and you get to build your own inbound links in the signature line of your posts.

Now I'm the only one that sees this as unethical and unprofessional? This is from a very well know site telling people to go out and just post really anything, but make sure you have a sig file that points to your site. No wonder we have so much spam and people only commenting one time, maybe saying 5 words and never responding again. I like to go on record and say I really respect the admin of this site and what they are trying to do. But I really wonder how many would leave if you could not have a sig file? I would also love it if they went through and looked at peoples past posts and seen how much one really tried to help "compared to just saying "nice job" and have a sig file 4 miles long". If I came on this site and post a totally spam ad, I'm sure it would get deleted " Now I ask you what is the difference from me posting a spam ad or just saying "nice job", other than last one will not get deleted but it is still spam because the only reason that person is here is to promote their own web site.

People come to this site for a few reasons.
1 to get help / advice
2 to give help / advice
3 to spam their own site

now you may be asking if I feel the sig file should be gotten rid of and the answer is no. This is only due to no one is going to help or advise anyone for free, everyone wants something. But it falls on the admin of the site to figure out who is here to help first and promote their site second. And I also feel that if the only reason that one person joins a Blog, Forum or any site is to post short one liners, then yes that person is a spammer and should be removed from that site.

MikMik stated Well would you like it if people post short one liners just to get backlinks in their file? In a way is this not a loophole in the system?

Is this method of getting backlinks sneaky and underhanded?

Now I'm NOT saying MikMik or MarcieZoob was doing this or they are not outstanding members and I'm not trying to offend anyone, I just quoted them to help back up my point, and yes I agree with them.