Black Hat in Digital Marketing: What It Is and Its Consequences

Black hat is a catch-all term, widely used but not always well understood.

In its early usage, the term black hat referred to criminal hackers and illegal practices in that world.

That’s where the term comes from — it’s a reference to old spy movies, where villainous spies wore black hats and dark suits.

The counterpart to black hat is white hat — hackers (and hacking practices) focused on measuring and improving system security.

Bringing this into the realm of digital marketing, black hat is closely associated with the corporations that define how internet navigation should work.

This is a somewhat controversial way to frame the topic, so it’s worth starting the article here: with a solid definition of what black hat means in digital marketing.

Let’s dive in.

Black Hat in Digital Marketing — What Is It?

The way we browse the internet and use its features is mediated by corporations and the tools they provide.

This isn’t a political statement — the internet has always functioned this way. Most people online have similar interactions:

  • When they have questions, they turn to Google or ChatGPT;
  • To access the web, they use browsers like Chrome;
  • For email, they use a provider (likely Gmail);
  • To talk with friends, they use social media;
  • To watch videos, they go to YouTube;
  • And so on.

The internet isn’t so much a place you go to, but a vast collection of corporations that collectively create a shared environment.

As a result, black hat refers to practices that violate the terms of service of these platforms.

Typically, black hat tactics exploit loopholes or blind spots in these platforms — or even inherent features — to gain unfair advantages.

Email spam, for example, is a black hat technique. Spammers aren’t exploiting a “bug” in email providers. Instead, they’re pushing the platform’s basic service to its limits.

So black hat happens in this case because someone is sending too many emails at once. But that doesn’t mean sending many emails is always spam.

Exploiting vulnerabilities is also common, and in some cases, it can get extreme.

For example, many people run Instagram ads that are actually scams.

I say this as someone who has fallen for one. It was a common product, displayed with Mercado Livre branding, but the profile wasn’t the real Mercado Livre.

So we now understand what black hat is, right? To really understand how it works, we need to analyze it channel by channel.

What Is Considered Black Hat in Different Digital Marketing Channels?

Most people have a good sense of what qualifies as black hat, even if they haven’t read the platforms’ terms of service.

Few people have read Google’s terms, for example. But most SEM professionals know that creating dozens of pages targeting a specific keyword — without delivering good content — is a black hat tactic.

Back in the early days of SEO, hiding keywords in white text on a white background was common. It tricked Google, not readers.

We don’t even need to read Google’s terms of service to know that’s black hat.

In this section, we’ll go over some of the more obvious examples that directly violate platform rules.

Then we’ll explore other types of exploits and take a broader look at black hat tactics.

Let’s go:

Black Hat on Google — SEO

Black hat SEO on Google takes both traditional forms we expect, and some that often go unnoticed.

Let’s start with the full list, and then focus on one lesser-known example:

  • Keyword stuffing — excessive, forced use of keywords in page content, metadata, or other elements to manipulate rankings;
  • Hidden text and invisible links — using the same color as the background or CSS tricks to hide them from users but not from crawlers;
  • Cloaking — showing different content to Googlebot than to users, e.g., an optimized version for ranking that redirects users elsewhere;
  • Buying backlinks — acquiring links from other websites solely to boost PageRank, especially via paid link networks or link exchanges;
  • PBNs (Private Blog Networks) — creating or using networks of sites that link to each other to artificially boost authority;
  • Duplicate or autogenerated content — copying articles or using AI tools to churn out low-quality content to rank;
  • Doorway pages — multiple near-identical pages optimized for specific keywords that redirect users to another destination.

The point I’d like to highlight here is backlink purchasing.

Among all these practices, buying backlinks is the least obvious. In fact, some websites still sell backlinks — even using Google Ads. Here’s a screenshot:

Backlinks were a major ranking factor for years. Not as much today, but businesses promising “quality links” still appear overnight.

These links are rarely quality, and even if they were, the practice can lead to penalties.

Something no link vendor tells you is that they rarely get penalized. You might buy links through a Google ad, get penalized, and still find that same ad live afterward.

Penalties aren’t common in these cases, but they do happen — sometimes without warning.

More on that later in the article. Now let’s talk about black hat in SEM:

Black Hat on Google — Ads

Google Ads makes it a bit easier to spot black hat practices, thanks to clearer policies.

Here’s the list:

  • Use of prohibited or misleading keywords — targeting sensitive or policy-violating terms (illegal products, false claims, etc.);
  • Cloaked destinations — showing a clean URL while redirecting users to harmful or misleading pages;
  • False claims — promises like “make R$10,000 a day from home” that violate trust policies;
  • Click fraud — manually or programmatically clicking competitors’ ads to drain their budgets;
  • Ad review manipulation — masking banned content in images or using special characters to trick review bots;
  • Account farming — creating multiple accounts to evade suspensions and keep running ads.

Interestingly, many of these practices are blocked within Google Ads itself.

When selecting keywords, you’re blocked from choosing ones that clearly violate policies.

But as we’ve seen, some problematic keywords slip through — like “link building” (often tied to link sales), or “buy backlinks.”

These are still unblocked in Google Ads.

These lists are long because we’re talking about Google. The next ones are shorter, but still crucial to understand.

Let’s continue:

Black Hat on Instagram (Organic)

Here, we’ll focus only on Instagram, among all social media platforms.

But before we wrap up the article, we’ll briefly touch on others.

Instagram has some well-known black hat practices. Focusing on the organic side for now:

  • Buying followers — inflating follower counts with fake accounts to appear more popular;
  • Engagement bots — automating likes, follows, comments, or mass unfollows;
  • Keyword stuffing in captions — overloading captions with keywords to game the discovery algorithm (usually ineffective);
  • Hashtag abuse — using popular but irrelevant hashtags to increase reach;
  • Plagiarized or duplicate content — reposting others’ content without credit or permission to gain easy engagement;
  • Engagement pods — joining groups that agree to like/comment on each other’s content to artificially inflate performance;
  • Automated generic comments — scripts that post irrelevant comments on other users’ posts.

The practices Instagram penalizes the most, however, are those that use scripts or third-party apps alongside Instagram.

But many of these actions actually go completely unnoticed by Meta’s moderation system, which is becoming increasingly automated — and therefore easier to circumvent.

Now let’s take a look at Instagram ads:

Black Hat on Instagram (Ads)

In addition to the black hat practices on the organic side, there are also some interesting tactics to analyze when it comes to Instagram ads.

Check them out:

  • Creation of misleading ads — promoting products or services with false or exaggerated claims to attract clicks;
  • Masking destination URLs — directing users to different pages than advertised, often with suspicious or malicious content;
  • Using fake accounts for ads — creating fictitious profiles to run ads while avoiding restrictions or penalties on real accounts;
  • Promotion of prohibited products — advertising items that violate Instagram’s policies, such as weapons, drugs, or counterfeit goods;
  • Manipulating ad metrics — using techniques to artificially inflate performance metrics such as clicks or conversions;
  • Deceptive targeting — setting up ads to reach unauthorized or vulnerable audiences, in violation of platform guidelines.

Black Hat on Gmail

Lastly, we need to analyze black hat practices in email.

Let’s use Gmail as the main reference here, but most of these behaviors are considered black hat by nearly all providers.

Take a look:

  • High spam complaint rate — maintaining a spam complaint rate above 0.3% can lead Gmail to block your domain;
  • Lack of email authentication — failing to implement protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which are essential to validate message authenticity;
  • No unsubscribe option — not providing recipients with a clear and easy way to opt out of communications;
  • Mixing different content types in a single message — combining promotional messages with receipts or transactional notifications, which can confuse recipients;
  • Sending to non-opt-in users — contacting people who haven’t consented to receive emails, which increases the chances of being flagged as spam.

Gmail is by far the least tolerant platform when it comes to black hat tactics.

While Meta allows even fake or criminal ads to slip through, Gmail won’t even tolerate cold emailing strategies repeated two or three times.

Of all the tools we’ve reviewed so far, Gmail is by far the strictest. It’s not worth attempting black hat tactics there, as bans often target not just the account, but the entire domain.

All clear so far? Great! Now let’s talk about the penalties for using black hat tactics on each of these platforms.

This next section will be quicker — I promise:

What Are the Penalties for Black Hat Tactics?

Penalties for black hat tactics vary widely.

Each platform, of course, has its own, but most start off mild and escalate over time.

Google, for example, lists extremely harsh penalties in its terms of service, though they’re rarely enforced.

Still, even Google’s milder penalties can be very difficult for brands to deal with — especially those that rely heavily on SEO and Inbound Marketing as their main sources of leads and sales.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the penalties. We’ll discuss them in more detail afterward:

  • Google: ranking drops, page deindexation (very common), loss of domain authority, ad rejections, suspension or ban of the Google Ads account, full domain block;
  • Instagram: shadowban (reduced reach), content removal, feature suspension (e.g., following, commenting, posting), ad rejections, account suspension or deletion;
  • Gmail: direct delivery to spam folder, sending IP or domain block, sending volume limits, automatic message rejection, account suspension or termination.

All of these are real and they do happen.

Google enforces by far the harshest penalty you can receive. Your entire domain can be blocked from all Google products — meaning no rankings and no approved ads.

But this is rare and usually reserved for obviously fake or fraudulent websites.

Deindexation, however, is absolutely real. In fact, in 2024, Google released the Helpful Content Update, which mass-deindexed a huge number of websites using copied or low-quality content.

Instagram also regularly applies shadowbans — and they’re tricky, because there’s no clear indication of what you’re doing wrong. It just happens.

But it’s email marketers who really need to be careful. Black hat penalties are quite common and can completely ruin email strategies — and frequently do.

Other Black Hat Tactics and Their Penalties

So far in this article, we’ve focused on the most common black hat practices across the main digital marketing channels.

However, we left out a few social networks and other tools that are rarely mentioned when discussing black hat tactics.

Here’s a complete list:

  • Facebook: use of fake accounts, spam in groups and pages, buying likes and followers, ad manipulation, clickbait, misleading creatives, automated interactions;
  • TikTok: bots for views, likes, and followers; reposting without credit; misleading hashtags; deceptive content to go viral; algorithm manipulation through artificial engagement;
  • YouTube: buying views and subscribers, clickbait in titles and thumbnails, automated comments to drive traffic, reposting content, generating fake watch time;
  • LinkedIn: automated connections and messages outside Sales Navigator, profile data scraping, fake profiles for prospecting, engagement bots, group spam;
  • Twitter/X: buying followers and likes, spamming with external links, bots for auto-replies, account farming to manipulate trending topics — X, however, has one of the weakest systems for detecting black hat tactics;
  • Pinterest: mass pinning with bots, cloaked redirects, viral image use with misleading links, comment spam on popular pins;
  • WhatsApp/Telegram: unauthorized mass messaging, using cold contact lists, group spam, bots that bypass API sending limits;
  • Marketplaces (Amazon, Mercado Livre, etc.): generating fake reviews, manipulating feedback, fake competitor clicks, misleading product descriptions;
  • Google Business / Local SEO: creating fake business profiles, keyword stuffing in business names, review manipulation, duplicate listings;
  • Unethical Growth Hacking: scraping personal data, fake giveaways to collect leads, misleading content bait, mass behavior to manipulate algorithms.

So, what did you think of this list of black hat tactics and the damage they can (and do) cause?

It’s just not worth engaging in any of these practices. We never know when the penalties will strike — but trust me, they do.

And now, a second invitation: check out the 2025 Lead Generation Panorama by clicking the banner below!

Thanks for reading — see you in the next article.

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