I went to Google a few minutes ago and could not believe what I saw. When I typed in the term “Auto Insurance” into Google, the 2nd link was for a domain called kosherhibachi.com. I then tried the term “car insurance rates” in Google and saw that kosherhibachi.com was also 2nd for that keyword. Obviously something is wrong. i thought to myself “has someone figured out a way to beat google at SEO and bring a domain that who’s domain itself has no value for the category”. Obviously the answer is yes. I assume much black hat seo is at work. They have taken a name of a former kosher restaurant in Brooklyn and made it into a HUGE moneymaker as that category has big payouts. How long will this last? Probably not much longer as Google is usually good at finding and fixing these type of actions. I also believe they used a non generic domain, as most likely the domain will be banned in the near future and that would be a waste of a good generic domain as opposed to using a throw away name such as kosherhibachi.com
Sneaky sneaky… 🙂
A quick check of back links turns up a lot of blog comment spam using insurance keywords. That can’t be the only thing pushing that site to page 1 so something else must be up.
Looks like they may have done it 3 times
check out page 2 results for auto insurance
thecoolestlooks. com and makemeasammich. com
wonder how long the listings have been there and how long will they last
Looks like they have a bunch of incoming links from foreign sites
@ brian – Its recent as It wasnt there last week when i checked. It will be interesting to see how long it takes google to delist.
They rank 6th for me currently, but still an interesting catchy Larry! The page is using SureHits to convert. Domain changed ownership on 1-24-2010, then domain went to privacy 2-1-2010. I would be the “Nick Vetrov” listed on the 1-24 history record is the owner of the domain. The two other domains Brian pointed out also recently went to privacy.
Jamie – i’m probably cached. BTW i also get in number 1 for “auto insurance rates”
P2, #1 for auto insurance rates for me, so they appear to be dropping.
#8 in Spain (in English) now, right below statefarm.com.
It took me a second to realize I am seeing mostly US sites on page 1 because it would be ‘car insurance’ in Europe.
thanks for the info paul
Here’s what you can do in order to see the amount of incoming links to the site: google “www.kosherhibachi.com” and you’ll be able to see the pages that have mentioning of the subject. All of the links I see have “car insurance” or “auto insurance” as the link’s anchor text.
Seems just like a link spam.
These guys do this game all of the time, they started in the mortgage vert a few years ago and even to this day have a site listed for home loans:
a21lounge.com
I assume they scrape a ton of content, often hidden or cloaked and once they bomb a bunch of spammy links together they take off, google generally gets them out in about 7 days
Surehits is an affiliate program with Quinstreet
What’s funny is they have a sponsored link if you type in “www.kosherhibachi.com”
Interesting that Yahoo and Bing were not affected as they do not list ksher on 1st page.
Well, 3 weeks since this article and they’re still ranking well. Seen a couple other sites of theirs http://www.soulpitchhustle [dot] com/2010_01_18_auto_insurance-online.html, http://www.qp-58 [dot] com/index.html?page_id=health-insurance-rates etc. hellzyeah is another. They’re really going all out!
Reminds me somewhat of a big UK site moneyexpert [dot] com and even thriftyscot that used some dodgy tactics (dp links etc.). Those 2 sites rank decently (pg 2 for “loans” in google.co.uk) but moneyexpert used to be #1. Guess a lot of people finally caught on but surprised they never got delisted.