Internet Mysteries: Padma G McCord

As I’ve mentioned several times here before, I’m a fan of certain horror YouTubers, including Nexpo. Nexpo’s latest video (done in conjunction with SomeOrdinaryGamers) concerns a woman named Padma G McCord, who seems to have thousands (or perhaps even millions) of websites all across the internet with little to no obvious purpose. [EDIT: The Nexpo video was removed, but Top5s covered the topic as well.]

In a way, this struck me as reminiscent of the “South32” and “Captain Kutchie” mysteries, as both of those involved someone having thousands of different websites as well. Maybe there’s a connection there, if only a loose one. In other words, in the case of South32, the culprit is an infamous domain squatter, and it makes sense that he would have a multitude of websites pertaining to his cause (however strange).

If you Google “Padma G McCord,” or some variation of that, you get some interesting (if not creepy) results. I searched for her name on various search engines, including Google, DuckDuckGo, and searx, and these were a few of the sites that came up:

https://padmagmccord.org https://padmamccord.com https://filmsmoviedirectorpadmamccord.blogspot.com/ https://padmamccordnewhomes.blogspot.com/ https://godjesuschristpadmagmccord.blogspot.com/2014/12/padma-g-surya-queen-esther.html https://padmamccordhomes.blogspot.com/ https://about.me/padma_mccord https://padmamccord.wordpress.com/ https://www.pinterest.com/Padmagmccord/ http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/2469343

Not creeped out yet? Take a look at these screenshots:

These are only a few of the many examples (again, not unlike the Captain Kutchie phenomenon). Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks as though her face has been Photoshopped onto someone else’s in many of these photos. Plus, most of the websites have a lot of obvious “keyword stuffing,” using words like “Padma g mccord,” “wedding,” “marriage,” “real estate,” “investments,” and “business.”

She also has a plethora of YouTube videos, revolving around similar content. A Reddit user by the name of u/ostel, who says he works in SEO, had an interesting perspective on this:

She has at least 40 unique domains to her name. These include padmamccord.wordpress.com, padmagmccordbrianmccordjeevanmccord.blogspot.com, and of course padmamccord.com. Some of these are registered with GoDaddy and other domain owners indicating that she pays considerable amounts of money for these domains to remain active.

Across her websites, she has millions (yes, MILLIONS) of backlinks – if you’re not familiar, that means another website is linking to her various websites. Some of these are scam sites with links she likely bought (a faux-BBC news site has an article that either she wrote or she paid for: http://www.bbcnews.svise.com/padma-mccord-president-of-padma-mccord-enterprises-llc-has-been-named-as-one-of-the-most-exciting-business-woman-in-houston/), but you can also see that she comments and links to her own website on various unrelated articles e.g. https://blog.scopelist.com/six-best-rangefinders-keep-hooked/. This indicates to me that either she or someone she is employing is undertaking a massive effort to create a metric ton of backlinks, obfuscating some previous links.

You can find the full post here: Padma McCord: A perspective from someone who works in SEO – it’s on Nexpo’s subreddit. u/ostel points out that one of the pages that ranks very high for McCord’s name is a book on Google Books entitled The Handbook of Sexuality in Close Relationships. While the book is unrelated to her, some of the people listed in the “references” section have both the names “Padma” and “McCord,” which would explain why it tends to rank high in the search results.

At his suggestion, I looked at the site https://semrush.com, which is for analytics and SEO stats, and saw that the Google Books link indeed ranks very high in search results for her name.

Following the release of Nexpo’s and SomeOrdinaryGamers’ videos on this topic, it’s worth noting that McCord started taking down some of her numerous websites. Perhaps being featured on some prominent YouTube channels wasn’t her intention with all this.

While I don’t have a definitive answer as to what’s going on here, it seems as though the SEO answer is pretty accurate. McCord probably wants to bury search results that associate her with something that is, in her mind, negative, like sexuality, and instead play up her business accomplishments, marriage, and family. Ironically, the fact that she’s made a plethora of websites about herself, complete with creepy images and little to no substance, it seems that she’s done the exact opposite.

What are your thoughts on this, readers? Do you have any theories of your own? As always, I’m happy to hear them.