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Private blog networks, guest post spam, paid back links. Seems to be about 80% of the dodgy side of SEO.

Bottom line is that they ruin the quality of search and create a tremendous amount of churn that requires search engines to constantly refine their algo.

Is snake oil the right word -- if it actually works?

(Well at least until the search engines get better at detecting gray? hat SEO)

However, it's a tragedy of the commons failure? (Is there any short word for that)

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