You’re right that all the sites that did or do get taken down will end up getting a lot of links. I know I linked to them and I’m sure most everyone who covers this will too. It’s one of the reasons I think it’s easy for some to assume this is all a marketing tactic since the end result could be a lot of links.

I don’t think it was about marketing though. The sites in question aren’t exactly starved for links and the potential damage in reputation from being found out would be more than the potential gains in links.

But I also think it says a lot about our community given how easy it is to make the connection between being hacked and linkbait. SEO does suffer an image problem with many outside the industry and if we’re all quick to jump on our own then I’d say the community also suffers from an internal image problem.

Instead of feeling compassionate towards people who had their sites cracked many will suspect foul play as if it’s business as usual.

I bet the victims of his “hacks” are smiling and rubbing thier hands together though. All they had to do is patch and reinstall then sit back to recieve the huge amount of traffic that this is going to bring to thier site and benifit from all the backlinks they got as a result of it.