Grey hat SEO
Grey hat SEO is using tactics that aren't clearly against search engines' rules but bend them, sitting between white hat and black hat SEO.
Grey hat SEO is the use of tactics that sit between the safe and the forbidden. White hat SEO follows search engines' rules. Black hat SEO breaks them on purpose. Grey hat is everything in the murky middle: tactics that aren't clearly banned today, or that break the spirit of the rules without obviously breaking the letter.
The appeal is speed. The risk is that the line moves, and a tactic that's grey this year can count as spam next year, taking your rankings with it.
Examples
What counts as grey depends on who you ask, but these come up often:
- Buying an expired domain with good links and redirecting it to your site
- Guest posts written mainly for the link, on sites you'd never otherwise write for
- Rewriting competitors' articles just enough to look new
- Swapping links with friendly sites at a scale that starts to look like a scheme
Several of these already appear in Google's spam policies, as expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and link spam. That's the usual path for a grey hat tactic.
Grey hat in AI search
AI search has its own grey zone. Some brands publish "best of" lists that rank themselves first, plant questions and answers in forums, or hide instructions in pages hoping an AI model will follow them. Some of these may work for a while. The platforms are changing quickly, and so are their defences.
For example, Kestrel Roasters could publish "The 10 best coffee roasters in Yorkshire" on its own blog with itself at number one. An AI answer might repeat it. It might also start treating Kestrel's blog as a less reliable source, and a reader who spots the trick trusts Kestrel less.
The safer bet is the dull one: get named by sites that people and platforms already trust.
In AnswerOrbit
We never recommend reviews you arrange or reward, posts that hide who you are, or links you pay or trade for. Recommendations sticks to work that holds up, such as getting onto pages that already name your competitors. See Recommendations.