Exposing Amazon Black Hat Tactics: A Seller’s Defense with Leo Sgovio

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May 10, 2018
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Exposing Amazon Black Hat Tactics: A Seller’s Defense with Leo Sgovio  (Follow The Data Ep. 34)

What is ‘Black Hat’? What does it look like on Amazon? How can Sellers defend themselves against strategies like this? On this episode of Follow The Data, Casey and Cameron break down current Black Hat tactics, and how they are affecting Amazon Sellers, with Leo Sgovio, the Head of Innovation at Viral Launch. They’ll talk through the current ‘state’ of Black Hat, what you need to be aware of, and how to leverage this information for success on Amazon.

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Podcast Transcript

CAMERON YODER:

Maintaining rank can be difficult if you’re in a market that’s saturated with competitors who use black hat SEO techniques, but how do you know whether your competitors are fighting fair?

CASEY GAUSS:

Black hat is extremely difficult to combat when you’re committed to staying within Amazon’s terms of service, and it’s even harder to fight when you don’t understand what’s happening.  I’m Casey Gauss.

CAMERON YODER:

And I’m Cameron Yoder, your hosts for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success.  In this show we leverage the data that we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with more than 8,000 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.

CASEY GAUSS:

In this episode we talk to Viral Launch Head of Innovation, Leo Sgovio, about black hat SEO techniques.  We’ve had Leo on the podcast before, and we got a lot of great feedback from this super smart guy, so we’re looking forward to another session with him.  We’ve asked him back to touch on a topic that has remained a mystery for a lot of sellers, and that is black hat activity.  Leo is a performance-based advertising specialist with experience in multichannel digital advertising, and he is the Head of Innovation here at Viral Launch.  He’s worked for over nine years in digital marketing, during which time he successfully built and managed multimillion-dollar traffic acquisition strategies in travel, career, real estate, finance and online retail markets, including Amazon.com.  Let’s jump in.

CAMERON YODER:

What’s up, everybody?  So we have Leo Sgovio with us.  Leo, honestly –

CASEY GAUSS:

All the way from Toronto.

CAMERON YODER:

All the way from Toronto, Skyping in all the way from Toronto.  Honestly, Leo, I talked to a lot of people, and one of their favorite episodes was with you, the last episode that you were on, so you’re just a popular guy.  Thank you for being with us today.

LEO SGOVIO:

Thank you guys for inviting me again.  Yeah, I’ve heard really good feedback about the last podcast, and I’m looking forward to talking today about black hat stuff.  It’s actually one of my favorite topics.

CAMERON YODER:

Yeah, that’s – we’re honestly looking forward to jumping into the discussion around black hat as well.  We want to make sure, before we start just anything with black hat, we want to make sure that our listeners know that by talking about, by talking about black hat activity we are not encouraging it, right?  We want to inform.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah, I’ve talked about this topic before.  This is, again, like Cam has said, we’re not suggesting you using these tactics, just a lot of times it’s hard to understand why are these people outranking me, or you know, getting tons of reviews?  They must be doing something black hat, or are they running launch – you know, I think there are so many questions that come up because it is kind of a black box in terms of being able to attribute what is driving success for competitors.  And so talking with Leo and better understanding what kinds of things are going on out there will help, hopefully, you make better decisions from a strategic standpoint.

CAMERON YODER:

So Leo, before – well actually, first question, first question concerning black hat activity; could you even just describe to us about what black hat is?  Like what does black hat mean?

LEO SGOVIO:

You know, there are different ways to interpret black hat, but in our world, in digital world, I’d say black hat will be like practices that are used to manipulate search engines or programs through means that violate the terms of services.  So in our context, the Amazon world, this term is used it to describe an illegal activity, or let’s say, you know, distinguish a good guy from a bad guy with regards to marketing of or promotional activities that are being adopted when it comes to Amazon.

CAMERON YODER:

So in this space there are even other terms, right?  So black hat is used to – or these terms are used to distinguish good guys from bad guys, black hat determining a quote unquote bad guy, but there’s also – there are also terms like white hat and gray hat, right?

LEO SGOVIO:

Correct, yes.  So black hat obviously is something that you know you’re doing.  It’s illegal.  You’re not supposed to do it.  You’re just doing it because obviously it’s beneficial.  It’s a shortcut.  White hat, of course, is, you know, something totally the opposite, you know, follows terms and conditions, and you’re not breaking the rules.  When it comes to gray hat it’s obviously something that it’s kind of, you know, illegal, but you’re not really doing anything that might cause a suspension.  Let’s put it this way, right?  In the worst-case scenario you might, you know, get an alert from Amazon saying that you’re not supposed to do this.  For instance, when we send out emails, you know, like multiple emails asking for users to leave a review, like we know that that might kind of break the TOS, but worst-case scenario Amazon might just send us an email saying just stop doing it, and we probably won’t get suspended for that.

CAMERON YODER:

Got it, got it.  Okay, now Leo, you’ve been in the SEO space, specifically on Google, for quite a long time, and on Amazon, on both.  Can you describe to us, if you remember it, your first experience with black hat activity on even just outside of Amazon?

CASEY GAUSS:

And this is not saying, you know, activity that you’ve done or anything, but just maybe your first encounter with something crazy was going on and yeah, you found out essentially?

LEO SGOVIO:

Yeah, so like I mentioned earlier this is a topic [unintelligible] and the reason why I know so much is because I’ve obviously, you know, have done some of it.  So of course, and back in early 2000 it was, you know, the good Google days, I came across black hat techniques when with regards to manipulate website rankings.  So it was very easy back then to build links towards your website from different [unintelligible] and you know like within 24 to 48 hours your website was there ranking on page 1 within, you know, like the top three positions.  So we obviously in the SEO space that was considered a black hat technique, and then, you know, obviously Google shut down the operations.  And I want to make sure that, you know, the listeners here understand what the implications are when, you know, these techniques are adopted. 

When these techniques were working very well on Google what happened was Matt Cutts back in the days, which was head of spam at Google, decided to join all these private networks, and it was very easy for them to detect all these blog networks that were selling links to website owners, and what Google did, they started buying links from these sites, and after a few months of research they came up with a list of thousands and thousands of websites that suddenly [weren’t] indexed from Google, and all of a sudden now you saw websites, even websites like JCPenney if you guys remember.  At one point I believe also Kijiji was penalized.  Like I’m talking about big properties lost their rankings because Google – it was so easy for Google to just, you know, figure out what they were doing.  And so I want people to understand that because for Amazon it’s the same thing.  You know, now there are a lot of groups that offer, you know, free reviews on Facebook.  So if I were to work for Amazon and wanted to quickly understand who was doing that, it would be so easy for me to just hang out for these Facebook groups and now I know who’s buying reviews. 

But later I came across, you know, either, you know, black hat techniques always, you know, involving you know, more on the affiliate marketing side, promoting cookie stuffing, which is a very sophisticated black hat technique that involves, you know, the adoption of advanced technology.  You need to hide yourself, make sure that you’re cloaking, you know, you’re not showing your real domain and, you know, the IP address is different.  So that’s how I came across all these techniques and allowed me to understand more about what’s going on, you know, like underground.

CAMERON YODER:

Got it, got it.  And in transition over to Amazon, when did you even first just notice that black hat stuff – I’m sure since you saw it, since you saw it happening in Google you may have thought that it might be happening on Amazon.  Did you see all this black hat activity happening on Amazon when you kind of first jumped in?

LEO SGOVIO:

Yes, yes, of course.  I did.  And I knew that there must be similar methods that sellers were adopting too many [unintelligible] rankings on Amazon.  I mean I started investigating these practices.  I noticed that it was just a matter of sending, you know, the algorithm the right data points to see movement in the ranking.  So for instance, I came across products that had just a few reviews, and they were ranking on page 1, you know, top three.  And it was just, you know, didn’t make sense.  So that’s when I understood that definitely there was some black hat activities going on on Amazon as well.

CAMERON YODER:

Got it.  And what does – in terms of – because black hat can mean a lot of things, right?  But traditionally can you break down what does black hat stuff just even look like on the Amazon platform?

CASEY GAUSS:

Actually, Leo, this is how you started – this is how you kind of heard about me, heard about Viral Launch actually for the first time, right?

LEO SGOVIO:

Yeah, that’s interesting actually, and now here I am, you know, kind of like [unintelligible].  But of course one of the podcasts that kind of like got my attention was yours actually, Casey and [unintelligible] talking about black hat stuff, and you know, I was curious because obviously, like I said, this is really a topic that I love, and you guys were talking about bots and, you know, how people are – what people are doing to manipulate the rankings.  And since then I started, you know, stalking Casey.  I’m like I like this guy.  He’s a very smart guy.  And then later on I met Casey at the conference, and now I’m working with Viral Launch.  So that’s amazing the way it worked out.  But of course yeah, that’s how I got to know you, Casey. 

CASEY GAUSS:

Nice.  Yeah, no, which is super cool to hear on the other side of it.  So just to answer Cam’s question directly, Leo, please interject if I, you know, get anything wrong, but what was going on?  I think this is like late 2016 early 2017, essentially Amazon’s ranking algorithm started to pay attention heavily to, or maybe I don’t know if it started or this is when people really started picking up on it, was essentially you were able to drive ranking with no sales.  And what was going on was Amazon was paying attention to these different pieces of data or data that the front end was sending to the back end.  Essentially what that was was okay, if the user goes, interacts with the listing in certain ways, if they go look at reviews, if think click into reviews and they click add to cart, Amazon was looking at this as some – what they were calling it is education, which means the bot or somebody was going down looking at the reviews and then intent, intent to buy.  And what that was was adding to cart.  So simply by having a bot, people would build these bots that would spin up a new IP – or use a new IP address, spin up a new instant, you know, go to Amazon, search fish oil.  Go click into competitors’ listings.  Go find your listing.  Click into your listing.  Scroll down to look at reviews.  Scroll up and down.  Spend different times on the page.  Click this, click that, you know, click into up-votes or down-votes.  Click into questions or whatever, and then ultimately end in an add to cart.  And some people would have programs that would just do this thousands of times a day, even up to, you know, hundreds of thousands of times a day at one point as bots became less and less effective on these super high-volume keywords, largely because everybody was doing them.  And so basically people just were writing these programs and had these programs and even selling these programs where you could go and get these bots that would just drive your ranking.  And I don’t remember what the delay was or how quickly you would drive ranking, but it was extremely powerful, and you know, people were ranking for every keyword from vitamin C serum, to essential oils, to iPhone 7 case or whatever the popular case was at the time, like they were everywhere.

LEO SGOVIO:

Absolutely, Casey.  There is nothing I can add actually.  You said it all.  That’s exactly what was happening back then, and I’m actually glad that Amazon kind of stopped it.  Like they figured out what was happening, and that stuff is no longer working now.

CAMERON YODER:

Do people use bots now, or is there any sort of bot function now that people are into?

LEO SGOVIO:

I would say so.  There is definitely – there’s definitely people that are using bots still.  Look, even if, you know, you’re not able to rank a keyword now for a specific keyword using bots, I mean things like, you know, making sure your product is the top of wish list or shopping list and these things, this stuff is still working.  So I’m not sure to what extent you might, you know, see an increase in sales when your product is number one on wish list, but it might still help, so some people are still doing it.  Now there might be other people.  I’m not saying that I know of any, but that’s probably just because of the way I think, but I’m not surprised if there are people that have evolved and so now they’re – they take, they took it to the next level, so making purchases with bots, you know, to obviously because you guys know now it’s all about purchases when it comes to Amazon.  So I would definitely think that there are still people using it. 

How easy it is to build those?  Is it worth it?  Probably not.  You know you need to really understand what you’re doing when it comes to building bots, and that obviously can, you know, you can risk your account, so that’s something that I wouldn’t suggest, you know, anyone doing.  And I remember when I was talking for my first time at one of the conferences about, you know, like black hat techniques, this guy asked me, you know, can you – do you mind, you know, talking to me a little bit more?  Maybe, you know, I can even pay you to teach me a bit more about black hat.  And then I asked him, you know, do you know what engagement metrics are?  Do you know what footprints are?  And he’s like no, I have no idea.  I said so, you know, just stay  away from black hat stuff because obviously you are going to get your account shut down, right?

CASEY GAUSS:

It seems to me like the new black hat method of ranking is largely around having a bunch of fake accounts and then going and making purchases.

LEO SGOVIO:

Yes, so we are seeing this now happening with, you know, just using like friends and family going in on Amazon searching for a keyword, you know, buying a product.  You see, you know, that specific product ranking on page 1 within like a few days.  So people [unintelligible] that figured that out.  There, you know, starting to build bots that do exactly that.  But let’s say – let’s leave it at that.  Like obviously I don’t know the details about it, but I think this is the next, you know, like obviously version of, you know, the bots, right, and what they do now.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah.  It’s really funny to see.  I have two things here.  It’s really funny to see kind of how this, the black hat evolves.  So you know I have friends that have been in since like 2011 or so, and basically you know they told me that in the early days what everybody did was they would just buy their own products.  It didn’t really matter what account, and then they started, you know, one person that I know, he’s Chinese.  He lives here in the US, but he has a bunch of people in China that all use Amazon – they were using Amazon gift cards purchased with his business credit card – this is crazy – purchased with his business credit card.  They were purchasing his products to drive keyword ranking.  And then that stopped working.  And then he set up a bunch of separate accounts all using like the same credit card, I believe, and that was working for a little bit and then stopped working.  He got lucky.  He never got suspended for this.  I don’t know how.  Pretty insane, but anyways, and then that stopped working, and then is when bots started to become more and more prevalent.  So I know any time I see somebody ranking that I don’t think should be or they come out of nowhere – this occasionally happens, like you’ll see someone, you know, page 1 for fish oil where like the top three have been pretty solidified over the last, I don’t know, two years let’s say, or so it seems.  And out of nowhere occasionally some guy will come up and they’re ranking number one, and their BSR is terrible, the reviews, they don’t have any, and so immediately I send it to Leo and say Leo, we’ve got to figure this out.  Why is this guy ranking?

LEO SGOVIO:

Yeah, it’s true.  And that’s what we do, right?  Usually we understand what’s going on, but sometimes these guys get really, you know, sophisticated with, you know, the way that they manipulate the rankings.  But at the end of the day, I mean it’s an algorithm, so as long as you’re smart enough to understand what ultimately the algorithm is supposed to do and this is, you know, optimizing their results for, I mean you can figure out a way to make sure that your products, you know, get more visibility.  And you can do it through, you know, like obviously sales, and this is why giveaways have worked well for a long time.  So I think ultimately it’s about understanding also what your competition is doing so that, you know, you see if there is a chance for you to get there.  But yeah, I think it’s not for everyone.  This is for sure.  And these people that do a good job at it in a white hat way, those are the people that most likely hire a developer to just, you know, automate the process.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah, and like Leo was saying, it’s important, and this is why one reason we had to bring Leo on to the team is because this guy knows a lot of the time what’s going on in the black hat communities, and so it’s great for us to know, okay, what are the black hat tactics here, and what are the opportunities to then move them into like do it in a white hat fashion or a way that’s aboveboard?  And so so far no crazy thing has happened.  The nice thing here is maybe for all those people freaking out, you know, like the opportunity’s so low on Amazon because everybody’s just doing black hat and getting away with it.  So we see plenty of people, accounts getting suspended that are doing this.  And the nice thing is that a lot of times these black hat things only exist for so long, and so the people focused on the black hat side of things end up, you know, working hard implementing these black hat strategies.  They work for a month, a few weeks, maybe a few months.  The bots actually worked for quite a while.  But anyways, and then they go away.  Would you say that’s the case, Leo?

LEO SGOVIO:

Yes, yes.  Couldn’t agree more actually.

CAMERON YODER:

Leo, could you touch on just like the general population of Amazon because I feel like people or sellers do kind of pass off if they don’t know too much about black hat activity, can pass off black hat as like the sole reason why their sales are decreasing or like they’ll just put a blame on a dropping market on black hat stuff.  Is black hat a – should it be a legitimate concern for sellers and/or does it change the market in general?

LEO SGOVIO:

That’s a good question.  I would definitely say that sellers need to be aware of this technique, and of course, you know, be concerned about it.  Just this morning I received a call from a friend, and you know he’s saying that he’s being attacked with negative reviews on Amazon.  The good thing is that he’s been in business for a long time with amazing products, and most importantly the products that he has are really great quality products.  So for someone that doesn’t understand what’s going on, right, it would be really hard to, I would say to compete and then come up with a counterattack strategy, right?  So to answer your question, this is definitely something that for, especially for a new seller, you need to understand what you’re getting into and before, you know, you do – it should be part of your product research process actually because before you get, you know, into this product research, analyzing numbers and figuring out, you know, okay this is a good product or not for me, you should also understand what the market looks like.  And if there are black hatters in the market in the space are you ready to fight them with the same weapons, right? 

So you know, like I see these days a lot of Chinese adopting black hat techniques now, and things are getting actually pretty scary.  It is no longer about just, you know, down voting or up voting a bad or good review.  Yesterday I saw a post on Facebook by someone that got actually hacked, his listing got hacked by a Chinese seller that replaced his hero image with a Chinese image with a tag that says don’t force me to attack you.  I’m afraid you will suffer heavy injuries.  Thanks next level black hat.

CAMERON YODER:

That’s literally a threat.

LEO SGOVIO:

It is, right?  So I mean if you’re a new seller what do you do?  If you call Amazon they don’t know what’s going on, right?

CAMERON YODER:

Right.  Okay, that is a blatant thing that someone can notice, right, but what are some other black hat things that someone maybe should even look for if they’re entering into a market?

LEO SGOVIO:

So with regards to black hat I would say things that are just blunt, you know, like visible, number of reviews.  I mean you can use a bunch of different [plug-ins] these days to understand when the product was launched, [unintelligible] reviews this guy got, right, over a period of time.  And I see a lot of new products these days with, you know, like 100, 200 reviews and they’ve only been, you know, live for two to three weeks.  I mean that’s a clear indication of some black hat activities going on, activity going on.  And like Casey always says, considering the reviews is the [unintelligible] currency of Amazon.  So if you cannot compete with that and you know that there is a black hatter that knows how to get reviews very quickly, then that’s an indication, right, for you that you know, might be not a good product.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah, and Leo, if I could just jump in here, I think this is a great reason why I’m such a big advocate of finding these un-sexy markets where you’re not doing too much in revenue because usually the people in the black hat world, people so focused on black hat, are focused on these huge markets so that they can cheat, cut corners to get there.  They’re not, you know, cutting corners and risking their account for you know $10,000 a month on a product, or $20,000 a month for a product.  Would you say that’s the case?

LEO SGOVIO:

I definitely agree actually, Casey, and I think something that listeners should be aware of is the fact that if you’re going after these, you know, high-volume niches like beauty or supplements, you’re kind of forced to look into black hat techniques.  I’m not saying that eventually you’re going to, you know, adopt them, but you need to be aware of what’s going on.  Otherwise you’re just, you know, I think increasing your chances to fail.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah, I mean it’s so – if everybody else is cutting corners and you’re staying in the lane, I mean it’s hard for you to get ahead or even keep up.

LEO SGOVIO:

Right.

CAMERON YODER:

How can someone, how can sellers defend themselves without using black hat as a method of defense?  Is there a way for sellers to kind of prime themselves for defense, or do they just kind of have to take it and do the best they can?

LEO SGOVIO:

I definitely think that there is a way to defend yourself, and probably the best way to defend yourself is to build a brand so that you don’t have to rely on black hat techniques.  And even if you – so one thing that I like to talk to Casey about when it comes to driving rankings and obviously building an Amazon business is to focus on your product, focus on your brand, focus on external traffic.  Make sure that people know who you are outside of Amazon so that worst-case scenario, you know, even if you’re dealing with black hat people or sellers, or Amazon does doesn’t like for whatever reason your account and you get shut down, you have a backup plan, right?  So your brand is recognized outside of Amazon.  You’re driving traffic to your own store.  You don’t necessarily have to rely on, you know, having 500 reviews because people have already heard of you outside.  And so now you don’t have to worry that much about, you know, going after black hat techniques.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah, Leo, is there anything that we maybe didn’t touch on that is going on in the black hat community that you, that you feel comfortable sharing and would be interesting to people?

LEO SGOVIO:

I will say that what’s working today is pretty much, you know, similar to what was working, you know, a year or two ago.  And with regards to bots, things have, you know, changed a little bit.  Obviously you can no longer automate the process of just adding to cart and add to wish list to improve your rankings.  But when it comes to, you know, getting reviews I still see the same techniques working.  People are getting reviews through Facebook groups, friends and families, through funnels, so things like that.  Obviously these are – and I wouldn’t, you know, consider a funnel a black hat technique, but I don’t think there is anything new going on besides like there are a couple of things which I don’t really feel comfortable sharing because, you know, like I don’t want people to, you know, go and research these things after the podcast, which would make a mess of the Amazon space to be honest with you, you know, and so – but there are things like, you know, what these Chinese guys are doing.  You know, there’s a way to do that.  People are taking over other sellers’ listings by adding them to their own accounts or, you know, vendor accounts.  So I don’t want to get into details, but that stuff is happening, which is worse than what was happening two years ago.

CAMERON YODER:

Yeah.  Does Amazon – how long does it take Amazon to react, if at all?  Do they take a year for them to like put up a roadblock for black hat activity or not necessarily?

LEO SGOVIO:

Look, it’s a good question.  Sometimes never.  I mean I’ve seen people getting away with it since 2012, 2013.  I think they’re doing a good job now.  Maybe they’re hiring more people in the spam team, making sure that these techniques are being caught as soon as possible.  But a lot of times if you find out what’s going on you tell Amazon, I mean the company is so big that by the time it gets to the right person, probably the email now is even forgotten, right?  So I’m not encouraging people to do it because Amazon doesn’t care, but sometimes, you know, the response time from Amazon is just, you know, too long for you to react quickly.

CASEY GAUSS:

The area that they do have the least tolerance for is definitely reviews, and so if you’re going to mess around, don’t mess around with reviews.  That’s the – you know, working with 8,000+ brands or whatever, the only time I’ve seen a seller account get actually banned was – or outside of, you know, like fake Chinese, like counterfeit type stuff.  But anyways, is when the sellers were messing around with reviews far outside of the norm, and they just did not heed Amazon’s warnings.  They continued and continued and continued and ultimately they ended up being banned.  And again, that was specifically around reviews.  Now I’ve seen plenty of people get, you know, policy violation warnings for all different kinds of things, but nothing as hard as they were hit – as this one seller was hit because of reviews.

CAMERON YODER:

Well hey, Leo, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah.

LEO SGOVIO:

Thank you, guys.  Appreciate it.

CASEY GAUSS:

One thing that I do want to say to the listeners is if we ever see anything big in the black hat space come up, much like the bots, and we feel comfortable sharing it, we will definitely keep you updated.  I think this is one, just a cool interesting topic.  Two, there is a lot of sellers that may not be aware of kind of what’s going on in this community, not that we’re encouraging it, but you know, we’d like to be a resource to let you know hey, this is going on.  Just be aware.

LEO SGOVIO:

I agree with you, Casey.

CASEY GAUSS:

Is that cool, Leo? 

LEO SGOVIO:

Yeah, of course.  I think it’s good to educate people on what’s happening so that they are aware and, you know, they can make better decisions, smarter decisions going forward than just, you know, going and research information on forums or blogs that are not, you know, as experienced, let’s say.  So I definitely agree with you on this.

CASEY GAUSS:

Nice.  And you’re also not wondering what magic they’re using to, you know, propel themselves up there, that there’s actually a reason, or there is actually a technique behind it, and you can stop, you know, banging your head against the wall trying to figure it out.

CAMERON YODER:

Right.  If anything, the information itself is the defense, or is a defense against something like that.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah, for sure.  Well put.

LEO SGOVIO:

Right.

CAMERON YODER:

Hey, thanks again, Leo.  We really appreciated all of your input, and your insight and your knowledge.

CASEY GAUSS:

Yeah.  Stay warm in Toronto.

LEO SGOVIO:

Thanks, guys.  Yes, actually this is the first weekend the temperature will be probably plus, over the zero.

CAMERON YODER:

Oh man.

LEO SGOVIO:

Yeah, yeah, it’s been a bad winter, but I appreciate it.  Thanks, guys.

CASEY GAUSS:

All right.  Well, Leo, our Director of Innovation, thank you so much.

LEO SGOVIO:

Thanks, guys.

CAMERON YODER:

Well, that is all for this week.  Thank you so much for joining us here on Follow the Data.  For more insights and reliable information on how to succeed on Amazon, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to our blog, follow us on YouTube or like us on Facebook.  We’ve got news, tips and best practices that can help you build your FBA business.

CASEY GAUSS:

As we mentioned last week, we are going to start asking a question each week, and we will be adding your answer into the following week’s episode.  So please send them our way via email, Facebook Messenger or voicemail, however you want to do that.  This week’s question, is there any black hat activity we did not mention you think we should be aware of?  If you do want to share, let us know if you do or do not want us to share it publicly.  We definitely appreciate confidentiality, and your feedback is so important to us.  If you’re listening on Apple Podcast please leave us a review and/or a rating.  And if you have a fellow seller who you think may be fighting against black hat SEO or any other black hat techniques, send them this podcast.  We want to be a valuable resource for sellers and the information source in this space, so please tell your friends, spread the word and share the show.

CAMERON YODER:

Thank you again so much for listening.  And as always, if you want to be featured on the show, again responding to the question on just black hat stuff, have an Amazon-related question or another idea for an episode even, please feel free to drop us a voicemail or simply shoot us a message on Facebook.  Our voicemail number is 3-1 – so get out your phones here – 317-721-6590.  Or again, just DM us, hit us up in the DMs, Instagram, Facebook, and give us your thoughts.  Until next –

CASEY GAUSS:

I get some pretty crazy DMs on my own Instagram, so wherever you need to reach out, we’re here.

CAMERON YODER:

Wherever.  Casey, maybe me.

CASEY GAUSS:

Cam.

CAMERON YODER:

Maybe not.

CASEY GAUSS:

Maybe the spaceman.

CAMERON YODER:

Maybe the spaceman.  Who knows?  Any DM, just any DM accessible to us.  Just remember –

CASEY GAUSS:

LinkedIn.

CAMERON YODER:

LinkedIn, fax, carrier pigeon.

CASEY GAUSS:

Carrier pigeon?  We do have a receptacle for carrier pigeons actually.

CAMERON YODER:

Yes, we do, we do.  Paper airplane, ship.

CASEY GAUSS:

Bitcoin.

CAMERON YODER:

Bitcoin message, all of the above.  You can hit us up.  Until then, until you do that, remember, the data is out there.

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