In one
search engine optimization spamming technique, companies paid to have their site listed in the HTML code of a free hit counter. When a webmaster put it on their page, a small link appeared at the bottom, providing a way for sites to artificially accumulate inbound links. This was often done by sites in very competitive industries like online gambling. In 2008,
Google removed a number of high-ranking
mesothelioma sites that had been using counters from the top results. == References ==