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Hacking Google: ethical vulnerability research

Tom has long been fascinated with how the web works… and how he could break it. In this presentation, Tom will discuss some of the times that he has discovered security issues in Google, Facebook and Twitter. He will discuss compromising Search Console so that he could look up any penalty in the Manual Action tool, how he took control of tens of thousands of websites, and how he recently discovered a major bug that let him rank brand new sites on the first page with no links at all. Tom will outline how these exploits work, and in doing so share some details about the technical side of the web.

Related DistilledU modules

DistilledU is our online training platform for search marketing.

On-page Optimization
Time required: 3h 45m

On-page optimization is the practice of ensuring the content of a page is set up to be relevant for the search queries being targeted. If the phrases you are hoping to rank for don’t appear on the page, it will be much more difficult to achieve your goals - making on-page optimization a crucial part of most SEO campaigns.

Technical SEO
Time required: 7h 50m

The web is a technical platform, and there are correct and incorrect ways of building websites. This module teaches you about these and how search engines interact with pages in order to help you diagnose problems and improve websites.