Black Hat SEO in 2026 Why PBNs Still Work (With the Guy Who Owns 200,000 Domains)

E1179: PBNs still work in 2026, and Kalin Karakehayov has the numbers to back up why he thinks they remain one of the most underrated strategies in SEO.

I'm joined by Kalin Karakehayov, Charles Floate, and David Quaid for a deep discussion on black hat SEO, private blog networks, aged domains, backlinks, AI search, parasite SEO, and where search is heading next.

Kalin owns more than 200,000 domains and operates a PBN of roughly 30,000 websites. He explains why PBNs have become easier to operate than they were a decade ago, why his network doesn't need organic traffic to pass value, and how he evaluates domains based on strength, relevance, history, and geography.

Charles and David push the discussion further into how agencies could build private networks of their own, why backlinks remain fundamental to ranking, and why so many SEOs have moved away from link building even though links still drive results.

Then the conversation moves into AI search.

Kalin explains his research into Common Crawl and harmonic centrality, a link metric based on proximity across the web rather than the traditional PageRank model. He lays out a theory for using domains with high harmonic centrality to increase crawling and potentially increase the chances of websites entering AI training data.

Charles explains how Common Crawl data can also be reverse engineered to find valuable domains and connections between websites, and the group discusses what this means for GEO, AI citations, brand associations, and the future value of aged domains.

We also get into:
- Why Kalin believes PBNs are underrated in 2026
- How a 30,000-site PBN works without ranking the individual sites
- PBNs vs. public link farms
- Why private networks are harder for Google to identify
- Why backlinks without traffic still pass value
- How Kalin evaluates aged and expired domains
- Exact-match domains and partial-match domains
- Why valuable domains keep getting more expensive
- PageRank vs. harmonic centrality
- Common Crawl and AI training data
- How domains could influence AI visibility
- Charles' approach to reverse engineering Common Crawl
- The danger of negative SEO in AI search
- Why the internet increasingly becomes a fight for digital territory
- The ultra-high-quality vs. ultra-low-quality content strategy
- Why Kalin thinks websites stuck in the middle face the biggest problem
- How Charles chooses between Google, YouTube, AI search, and other channels
- Using parasite SEO to test markets before investing heavily
- How Charles would approach a new website with a limited budget
- Building the entire core of a site before launch
- When to start building links
- Why SEO risk isn't as simple as "white hat" vs. "black hat"
- Why Charles focuses on ROI instead of labels

This is a wide-ranging conversation about what actually works in SEO, how black hat SEOs think about risk and assets, and how those strategies are evolving as search expands beyond Google into AI.

⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Karakehayov 
⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karakehayov 
⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kalin.karakehayov/ 
⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/karakehayov 
⭐️ SEO.Domains (domains and backlinks) - https://seo.domains 
⭐️ GigaLinks (AI SEO and citations) - https://gigalinks.com 
⭐️ SEO.BO (SEO agency) - https://seo.bo 
⭐️ I Grow Younger - https://i.gy 
⭐️ I Grow Younger on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@growyounger 

⭐️ Charles Floate's community - https://seo.stream 
⭐️ Charles Floate on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Charles_SEO 
⭐️ Charles Floate on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfloate/ 
⭐️ Charles Floate on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesFloate 
⭐️ Charles Floate on Facebook - https://facebook.com/thecharlesfloate  

⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/ 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/ 

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00:00 Meet The Panel
00:39 Are PBNs Underrated
02:04 PBN Risks And Footprints
04:25 Shared PBNs And EMDs
07:24 Zero Traffic PBN Math
10:40 Buying And Assessing Domains
12:38 Backlinks Culture Wars
16:34 AI Search Makes Domains Pricier
19:28 Harmonic Centrality For LLMs
22:35 Testing Common Crawl Strategies
27:44 Token Engineering And Negative SEO
31:20 Economics Of Link Inflation
34:28 Stop D