Earl Grey. The Black Hat SEO Read more of my garbage on the twitter thing http://twitter.com/syndk8

888.com Online Casino Serp Analysis - Part 3 - Domain Age and Site History

Please excuse the format of this post because i was typing as i was finding different things over different days.

In part one of the online casino serp analysis we looked at Onlinecasinobluebook.com and its backlinks to see why they were currently number 1 for online casino in google.

The conclusion so far is that he breaks every google guidline there is and uses mainly blackhat seo techniques.
We found many reasons why he shouldnt be at no.1 but still havent worked out why he should be.

Next is 888.com the online casino company based in Gibralar and owned by Cassava.
888.com seo team were in Isreal last time i heard and they created a lot of publicity because were were very black hat.
I remember all the search engine spam they were responsible for many years ago but they either got better at hiding it or stopped doing it.

888 Holdings is a publicly listed company so they need to be careful what they do because they have lots of shareholders.

So with keeping the same format as part 1 we can look at the domain history and everything the same as onlinecasinobluebook.com.

Later on i will develop a kind of checklist in a spreadsheet that i/we can just fill in the blanks and post up.

Ok, Same as post 1.

Online Casino & Online Poker Room - 888.com
888 Casino-on-Net is the largest and most trusted online casino and online poker room on the web. Enjoy the best selection of casino online gambling games …
www.888.com/

http://whois.domaintools.com/888.com

Record expires on 13-Feb-2013.
Record created on 08-Nov-1995.

So we see its a very very old domain and registered 4 the next four years.
In comparison with the site above it, onlinecasinoblubook.com was regged 8 years later.

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved =>
Server => Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
Date => Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:50:30 GMT
Content-length => 0
X-ua-compatible => IE=EmulateIE7
P3p => policyref=”http://www.888.com/w3c/p3p.xml”, CP=”ADMa DEVa OUR IND DSP CAO COR UNI COM NAV”
Cache-control => no-cache
Set-cookie => ReBrandingTest_286=287;Domain=888.co.za;Expires=Fri, 06-Nov-2009 16:50:30 GMT;Path=/
Location => http://www.888.com/default.htm?sr=293897
Connection => close

Server => Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
Date => Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:54:56 GMT
Content-type => text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
X-ua-compatible => IE=EmulateIE7
Location => http://www.888.com/
Set-cookie => JSESSIONID=1FBCD2BEA16F0B7001271F7AAA842C78;Path=/
Connection => close

Whoa hang on there!

I just did the 888.com in the header check because it was in a list and thought it would show the header 200 ok

I never thought i would see a 301 redirect

If you look the location is
Location => http://www.888.com/
so if we look at www.888.com

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved =>
Server => Sun-ONE-Web-Server/6.1
Date => Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:57:03 GMT
Content-length => 0
X-ua-compatible => IE=EmulateIE7
P3p => policyref=”http://www.888.com/w3c/p3p.xml”, CP=”ADMa DEVa OUR IND DSP CAO COR UNI COM NAV”
Cache-control => no-cache
Set-cookie => ReBrandingTest_286=287;Domain=.888.com;Expires=Fri, 06-Nov-2009 16:57:03 GMT;Path=/
Location => http://www.888.com/default.htm?sr=293897
Connection => close

??????

Location => http://www.888.com/default.htm?sr=293897

so if you type 888.com it 301 redirects to www.888.com which is a 302 using their affilate link to track.

The search engines list the www.888.com so they see a 302 redirect every time.

I am confused here so i need to refresh my memory on 302 and the concequences and just think about this for a minite.

I remeber matt cutts talked about redirects a while ago and listed quite high in the search engines for 302 redirect is
this nice long explanation.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/

That was back in 2006 and i cant read anymore of his crap and tattle because it makes we want to vomit.

So if you go to http://www.888.com/default.htm?sr=293897 it goes to www.888.com

And i notice this site is a frame.

everything goes to www.888.com so any internal page  links dont exist.

this site appears to be almost a one page site with him architecture at all.

Looking at the current google cache there is no actual site.
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:9Xsv4L3zdnQJ:www.888.com/+online+casino&hl=en&strip=0

when you view text only it shows a bit more and shows there is some links to other pages lower down on the site.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:9Xsv4L3zdnQJ:www.888.com/+online+casino&hl=en&strip=1

In the footer there is some content and links.
This site has loads of pages but they are all pretty much advertisements and the site architecture is just awful.

i am bored of doing the server stuff and i have seen enough.

• crazy 301`s and 302`s that dont really make sense.
• No real content visible to speak of
• frames and silly stuff that we have moved away from years ago.

I think if i was building it or working on it i would try and get away from the framing and build a real site with real navigation but there is more to it than seo.
888.com had lots of media buys, affiate and offline traffic so they will probably need the framing for the affiate tracking and many other things.
It wouldnt be as simple as just saying  `lets get rid of it and change everything` because there will probably be many knock on effects that would need to be adressed.

normally people look at a site that isnt ranking and try and find things to point out that need chagnging.
on this site we have loads of things that we would point out to stop it ranking but it ranks.
Maybe they could rank better if they didnt use the frame but they seem to be doing ok

forget the rest of this post and maybe i will revisit it later after i have done the backlink check because thats the important bit.

update about 20 minites after i posted this ,, few things i forgot

they are on telecity

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/netblock?q=TC-888HOLDINGS,213.52.252.0,213.52.255.255

http://www.telecitygroup.com/

really expensive hosting from what i remember when i was doing some work for casino.com.