demonhale — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 05:43:22 +0000

It seems to be, but I hope not, they started with the sig links, now even Wikipedia is under fire with this it plans to add a no follow to all its links... The landing pages I presume wouldn't do much help either, but some already started doing it. I hope I find a legitimate article source for this to prove if it is really true...

Megan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:49:10 +0000

LMAO. Did that guy not read what we've been talking about here??? Hello!

demonale wrote: On the other hand, it's funny Megan mentioned that "forums may become devalued by SE's", as I have read recently, other webmasters have experienced that forum links and forums itself are starting to be devalued by the Big G. It has caused some concerns to forum owners that they started creating landing pages for their forums... What's your thought on this?

Landing pages -- why? I'm not sure what the rationale would be on that.

I definitely think that signature links are devalued by the SE's. Which is what makes it so annoying when people keep trying the signature spam here. It would be unfortunate if regular links in forums were devalued because many are good edtiorial links. The trouble is separating the spam from the real stuff.

So have you read about people finding that forum pages are being devalued in teh SERP's? That would be unforunate, because often they are a good source of help. I frequently find answers to my searches in forums. And obviously a big problem for us in terms of SEO... I don't think we've noticed a decline in our search traffic lately. Honestly, I don't think Google would be doing itself any favors by completely devaluing forums in the SERP's (links maybe, SERPs no). I wonder if they could somehow learn which forums are allowing more spam and sort it that way....

pr0gr4mm3r — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:45:08 +0000

Quote: Is it? Is it really?! Wow. Fantastic. LOL, some people just don't get it do they.

I doubt Mr. drugtestforall even read the thread.

JeevesBond — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:43:52 +0000

drugtestforall wrote: Webvigour RSS Feed Creator is very useful:

Is it? Is it really?! Wow. Fantastic. LOL, some people just don't get it do they.

So as brilliantly demonstrated above: some spammers are clever, whilst others are just stupid.

desktop rss feed creator

drugtestforall — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:49:39 +0000

Webvigour RSS Feed Creator is very useful:

*** URL removed ***

demonhale — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 01:32:26 +0000

On the other hand, it's funny Megan mentioned that "forums may become devalued by SE's", as I have read recently, other webmasters have experienced that forum links and forums itself are starting to be devalued by the Big G. It has caused some concerns to forum owners that they started creating landing pages for their forums... What's your thought on this?

(maybe this deserves another forum topic, feel free to split it, thanks)

Megan — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:20:03 +0000

JeevesBond;221568 wrote: Although it's worth pointing out (in case anyone thinks we're evil and restrictive) that there's a balance we're always try to strike here. If someone asks a question and someone else has written an article that answers the question (particularly if it's well written and informative), then there's nothing wrong with posting a link. We like that and will gladly give you PR: that's what the Internet is all about, right?

Yes, exactly. If a regular member posted a link to an article and actually wanted to discuss it then that would be fine too. Regular members might even be able to get away with stuff we wouldn't let the spammers do. Don't act like a jerk and you can reap the rewards

(I'm also concerned that due to crap like this, especially since other forums aren't as vigilant about it, forums may become devalued by SE's and not pass value. I'm not even sure that they pass a lot of value as it is, considering the propensity for self-created links and other junk)

JeevesBond — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:04:51 +0000

Megan wrote: One of the ones he didn't mention is what I call "Article as spam" - write crap article with links to your site and post as new topic on forum without any intention of participating in the forum or starting a discussion.

Although it's worth pointing out (in case anyone thinks we're evil and restrictive) that there's a balance we're always try to strike here. If someone asks a question and someone else has written an article that answers the question (particularly if it's well written and informative), then there's nothing wrong with posting a link. We like that and will gladly give you PR: that's what the Internet is all about, right?

Spammers are people who're self-promoting with no interest in helping the community. We like give and take, we want to give good members (everyone in this thread other than the spammer) as many perks as we can because those people are what makes this community good.

Am pleased to see that technique is under the what not to do list. Funny.

Megan — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:07:59 +0000

Funny, I just happened across this article about 101 ways to build links, including 30 bad ways to build links:

Quote: 76. (on Forums) Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.

#75 is why we have our signature restriction in. We also see #78. One of the ones he didn't mention is what I call "Article as spam" - write crap article with links to your site and post as new topic on forum without any intention of participating in the forum or starting a discussion.

JeevesBond — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:02:28 +0000

Apparently bots have broken both Hotmail and Yahoo's CAPTCHA's. Although there is speculation that spammers could be using systems like the Amazon Mechanical Turk to pay people to break them, once the human recognition bit is finished the bot takes over.

How's about that for humans and machines working in perfect harmony?

pr0gr4mm3r wrote: Thanks JeevesBond for leaving that up. I've never thought to look for something like that. It's nice to learn from the moderators now and then instead of the thread going *poof*.

Deleting threads is bad, but necessary. You wouldn't believe how much spam the mods/admins delete here (it's mostly Megan, Busy and Matt I think). By the time I spot some spam, they've usually already deleted it: our mods is fast foo!

Usually the spam is a lot easier to spot, less well thought out, that's why I thought this should be left where it is. Although the spammers have been getting cleverer more recently.