To support my work at VICTVS, I use Google Alerts to track certain keywords across the internet and get notified when articles are published which include these keywords.  One of the phrases I track is “contract cheating”.  

Most of the news articles that appear in my inbox featuring this phrase are condemning the practice or reporting news about an exam cheating incident.  But recently, I noticed something strange happening — I was receiving a large number of articles from Forbes Middle East, all of which seemed to be promoting the practice. 

“From a Student’s Perspective: What Deserves to Be Called the Best Writing Service?” 

“How an Essay Writing Help Service Can Support You Without Violating Academic Rules”

“The Risks and Benefits of Services That Do Your Homework for You”

These are just some of the titles I’ve received in my inbox lately, all of which are authored by Forbes Middle East’s own page. 

In the spirit of investigative journalism, I decided to look into this and see if there could be a sensible explanation as to why the internationally renowned Forbes brand would be deliberately promoting contract cheating via its Middle East edition.

Is It Real, or Is It Spam? 

My first thoughts upon finding these articles were that perhaps this was a spam site, somehow spoofing the legitimate Forbes URL.  But it didn’t take long to prove that this wasn’t the case: the articles all use the legitimate URL (forbesmiddleeast.com), and the rest of the site shows the type of content you would expect — articles on investor summits, the business of anti-aging products, and an exclusive interview with a tech leader in the UAE.  

The articles are located within the website’s ‘Lists’ subdomain but are uncategorized, sitting on the URL: https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/lists/uncategorized/

This means that the articles do not appear on the ‘Lists’ page itself, which is currently advertising the Top Tech Leaders of 2026 and articles on Forbes Middle East Summits.  There are no visible links to any pages on contract cheating here, or to the specific articles that have been arriving in my inbox every week.  This means that casual visitors to the Forbes Middle East website will not stumble across them — unless they decide to go for a scroll on the specific “uncategorized” URL listed above. 

It is therefore safe to assume that Forbes Middle East are deliberately keeping these articles hidden from active site visitors and Forbes readers, which begs the question… 

Why Are These Articles Being Published in the First Place? 

If the Forbes Middle East website is legitimately posting these articles but is also hiding them in the ‘uncategorized’ section, why bother to post them in the first place?  

I think I have the answer: SEO.  Let’s unpack the reasons why: 

• Poor content quality: These articles are all short (around 900 words) and lack the professional images and text formatting shown throughout the rest of the site.  Compare this article on the Top Tech Leaders of 2026 with the contract cheating article ‘Paper Writing Help Online for Students: What Support Can You Actually Expect?’  The former uses a clear title, strong text formatting, catchy imagery and use of colour.  Meanwhile, the latter has a badly worded title, is plain-text (aside from a few subheadings), and is authored by ‘Forbes Middle East’ instead of an individual.
• Spamming of key words and phrases: All of the Forbes Middle East articles in my inbox have been flagged for the phrase “contract cheating” and are full of other related key words.  Repeating key words and phrases in an article is an SEO strategy used to make the website rank higher in Google for those terms.  In the article mentioned above, ‘Paper Writing Help Online for Students’, the badly written title indicates what words to look for.  Sure enough, the phrase “paper writing” appears in the article 14 times, while “academic” and “student” appear 14 and 21 times respectively. It looks like this strategy is working, too; this article appears as the second Google search result when you search for “paper writing help Middle East”.
• Linking to highly upvoted Reddit discussions: This is a tactic I hadn’t come across before but one which is used in almost every Forbes Middle East article on essay writing services.  Because Google favours genuine, community-led discussions from users with real world experience, Reddit does well in search results and often ranks highly.  By linking out to Reddit articles, companies like Forbes Middle East are trying to piggy-back off the Reddit articles’ SEO success.  The goal is to leverage the authority and relevance of these pages to raise their own Google search rankings.
• Other suspicious articles on Forbes: Also on Forbes Middle East’s /lists/uncategorized page are many articles on online casinos, bitcoin, and even one giving relationship advice.  These articles all list Forbes Middle East as the author, yet the topics are vastly out of line with everything else on the website.  It stands to reason these pages are also being used for SEO purposes to help the website rank on terms relating to these other topics.  

Ultimately, it looks like these articles on contract cheating are not part of a legitimate push to encourage malpractice, but are actually part of a broader SEO strategy. 

A Note on the Author

It is worth noting that some versions of these articles are also listed elsewhere on the internet. Bizarrely, many once appeared on Lindoya.org, a website promoting tourism to the Norwegian Island of the same name — though clicking a link to these pages now redirects you to a 404 page. 

Because these articles appear elsewhere in either identical or similar form, it is possible that they were originally published on another site and syndicated to Forbes Middle East.  The other way around is equally as true: a writer at Forbes may have published the pieces, and they syndicated to these other websites.  This makes it hard to determine if Forbes Middle East actually has a writer producing these pieces, or whether they are simply being copied across or adapted from other websites.   

But regardless of the real author, Forbes Middle East is still making the decision to publish these spammy articles on SEO-primed topics and keep them up on the website, uncategorized, and hidden from any genuine website visitor.  There is no other reason to do this unless they have something to gain from it — like the website appearing higher in Google search rankings.  

Why Is This Concerning? 

Forbes is a trusted media brand.  Hosting or hiding spammy and irrelevant content can undermine that trust and dilute the brand’s integrity.  Not only that, but contract cheating is considered illegal in many Middle Eastern regions — including the UAE, which punishes those who facilitate, promote, or act to commit contract cheating, with fines reaching up to AED 200,000.  

Even in areas where the practice isn’t technically illegal, there’s a global move to clamp down on these services and their ability to advertise on Google.  The newsletter This Isn’t Fine does a great job of tracking and reporting these websites. 

Ultimately, it is worrying that essay writing services are now searched for so frequently that publications want to appear in the results as a way to improve their site’s rankings.  

But publishing content on these topics isn’t harmless, especially when it’s done by a trusted brand name like Forbes.  It implies that there is nothing wrong with the practice and gives legitimacy to an act that goes against the very heart of academic integrity.  

Final Thoughts 

There is much to be concerned about when it comes to these pages, though there is a chance that Google will eventually catch on and flag the content, leading to site penalties.   

In the meantime, the next time you see an article that feels out of place, it may be worth asking whether it’s there to inform you or to simply game the system.  If trusted brands don’t take publishing content like this seriously, the consequences will reach far beyond SEO.  In the end, the more contract‑cheating content that appears in unexpected places, the harder it becomes to challenge its growing acceptance.