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If you have not yet heard, an armed man with a bomb on his chest took the Clinton Presidential Campaign Office hostage today. The story is still unveiling, and a conclusion has not been reached (at the time of this writing).

As terrible a story as this may be, I thought I would point out an internet marketing tactic that people are using. THIS (can be) HIGHLY UNETHICAL, but even sites as large as CNN.com (104th most popular site in the world) show blogs that talk about the blog posts they write, as well as sites that give their articles trackbacks. While browsing CNN today, I noticed a few blackhat SEO sites in the “CNN Related Sphere.” I can only imagine how much traffic they are mooching, as any CNN groundbreaking story receives hundreds of thousands of unique viewers I would assume. As unethical as most blackhat SEO is (ranking crummy sites in the search engines to make money from advertisements), I had not thought about using “sad/bad” press as a way to promote yourself and increase website traffic prior to viewing this article today. I doubt this is a new tactic, but it makes you think. I wonder if hundreds of people were mooching the 9/11 press for fun and profit.