Linkbait or Fraud – it’s a tough one!
Posted on May 20th, 2008 by admin in Domain News | 2 Comments »
If you are a long time reader of DNXpert.com you will remember a couple of Linkbaits I posted in the past in order to generate traffic and earn extra publicity for my blog.
I wrote the “Top 10 Things Shoemoney, ProBlogger And Britney Spears Have In Common” blog post profiling similarities between the three in a humorous manner which was quite well accepted in the blogosphere. That post still gets me a lot of traffic on a daily basis. There was also the “Top 10 Reasons Why Google Is Sexually Promiscuous” post which did ok too.
According to wikipedia Linkbait is “any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites”. Link bait can be a very powerful form of marketing as it is extremely viral in nature.
An interesting story popped up on a whole bunch of forums, blogs and news sites recently about a linkbait that was created by Lyndon Antcliff aka CornwallSEO.
Basically, Lyndon created a linkbait that reached mainstream media and was all over the news within a day. His linkbait was a news fabrication – a lie. Lyndon is an SEO and he was doing the linkbait to generate backlinks for a client – he managed to get over 1,500 backlinks within a week so his mission was a success.
What was the linkbait he used? It was an article – 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers – which appeared on money.co.uk as part of Lyndon’s linkbaiting campaign.
The article got 2452 diggs, appeared on News.com.au, The Daily Telegraph and numerous other mainstream news publications.
Since the linkbait appeared and Lyndon admitted the story was a lie he has been ostracized by the community as a fraudster, a lier, a cheat.
Even though I wouldn’t do what he has done, I can’t help but feel for the guy. He wrote an article, fabricated or not, but that’s all he did. I can’t believe all these news sites picked up on the story without doing any research whatsoever!?! If we look at it in offline terms, if a news reporter heard a rumour somewhere would that rumour go straight to the presses without any due research being done? I don’t think so.
I think the same applies for online stories. Mainstream media cannot get away with posting every ludicrous story they hear about on the web. They should do due research, after all, they are journalists aren’t they?
I think we should all lay off this Lyndon Antcliff guy and tip our hats off for a linkbait well done. He played on people’s stupidity and he won.
2 Responses to “Linkbait or Fraud – it’s a tough one!”
Germ, May 22nd, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Heh, that article is actually pretty funny. I think his only mistake is not making it just a bit more obvious that it was a fake article. I agree that it is the journalists’ responsibility (aka “job”) to research stories like this before printing them. Unfortunately the internet is exposing thousands of “journalists” every day for being the hacks they are and they don’t like it. Tough, it ain’t gonna stop. Anyone remember the article about 50 midgets fighting a lion? The AP picked it up and it went everywhere in about 5 seconds. Anyone reading this story should know it was a joke. I think the take away here is don’t write your fake articles too well or the stupids won’t get it.
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Mak Ossa, May 20th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Interesting post. Perhaps Lyndon would have avoided some criticism if he had put some disclaimer on the post. Besides, your own ‘linkbaits’ about Google and Britney, Darren, and Jeremy are somewhat accurate compared to Lyndon’s fiction..