Deceitful or the Greatest Piece of Link Bait Ever? On May 9, the reputable Money.co.uk Web site posted a story titled 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers. To date it’s received more than 2,500 Diggs and was picked up by mainstream news outlets like FOX News, News.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, and many, many others (the stories have all been removed). It’s received hundreds of links and thousands of visitors. The problem is the story posted wasn’t true. It was a hoax, or what we in the SEO community refers to as link bait. Lyndon Antcliff, the SEO responsible for the fake story, was so impressed with his ability to fool the mainstream media that he wrote about his accomplishment (the original post has since been removed) on this blog. This was the first time that many people were made aware that the story in question was not true, and that it was simply the work of an SEO trying to game the search engines and get links for a client’s Web site.

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— SEO Newsletter | Volume 54 | May 31, 2008