Info: About these spam threads...

Simmo!

Paleo Meister (means really, really old)
Joined
May 29, 2004
Location
England
You've probably noticed a number of these often meaningless spam threads this week. Most of these are "bots" and not people at all, programmed to drop links into forums, not so much to get people clicking them but to get Google rankings for their websites higher. We do get the odd twat doing manual spam too but most of these are cheapo cowboy SEO ("search engine optimisation") companies or consultants trying to make a fast buck without really knowing what they are doing.

Why do they do it? Because Google has always looked at the number of incoming links to a website when deciding where to rank a site. But of course, this can be manipulated. In fact until now, Google (+ Bing & Yahoo) has inadvertantly been responsible for the vast majority of web-spam because of that flaw in their algo. But that's changing thankfully. Until a year or so ago, these forum spam posts worked OK but going forward, they are more likely to damage the site they are trying to help as Google's Penguin* technology is getting much better at spotting manipulative practices but, because a lot of webmasters are ignorant or mislead by these cowboy SEO'ers, they don't realise this.

Actuallly, a lot of the sites you see pumped (all this Nike shite and stuff) are actually just short-term template sites where the webmaster knows they will be penalised for spamming at some point and thay are trying to make as much as possible in as short a time as possible before the site is penalised but again, as Google's Penguin* algorithm update gets better, this practice should start to fail too hopefully.

Why so much at the moment? The reason we are getting them right now is 'cos Bryan is cruising (in a big boat rather than a car with darkened windows this time) and when he goes away, Max and I prefer to just let the bots in and deal with them like we are, rather than do what Bryan does and vet every user application up front. Hence why you see the crap.

Thanks to everyone who reports it - it's thanks to you it doesn't last more than a few hours :thumbsup:

Simmo!


* Techie note: "Penguin" was the name given (by Google themselves) to an update of the way Google ranks websites in 2012. It is an ongoing "iterative" update that constantly targets manipulative link practices. When it first came out, there was a bit of a mass panic among webmasters who had been manipulating their website's Google rankings by buying, exchanging or spamming links around the web. Those that had were/are/have been trying to "undo" what they'd done, with very limited positive effects.

PS. You may also have noticed that back in June 2012, we stopped taking ads for links in the Buy/Sell section because it's only done for ranking purposes and is now more likely to hurt an ignorant buyer.
 
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Max and I prefer to just let the bots in and deal with them like we are

The other problem is all the mods (and Bryan) seem to live in the same time zone. Earlier this week the forum got heavily spammed (to the point that the whole board was rendered useless) and it lasted for many hours.
 
The other problem is all the mods (and Bryan) seem to live in the same time zone. Earlier this week the forum was heavily spammed (to the point that the whole board was rendered useless) and it lasted for many hours.

Good observation :thumbsup:

Thankfully it doesn't happen often but it's one I'll discuss with Bryan when he gets back. Personally, I don't think Max should sleep but when I suggested that, we had one anonymously posted complaint. Still trying to work out who that was :cool:
 
FWIW a lot of this past week's spam could have been avoided if I'd taken decisive action earlier in the week. I had (foolishly) hoped they'd just go away on their own. Of course that didn't happen and so we got the crap storm that we did.
 
So your admitting that you DID go to sleep?

LOL, sorry couldn't resist.

I've seen a bit of an increase the last few days with the xrummer stuff over at gpwa, and I am watching closer as of today for tends in ip classes.

Rick
 

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