15 replies to this topic

[McFox]

ahem

I recently encountered a blog which was spamming hundreds of keyword anchor-text links; things along the lines of ... discount-travel, air-travel, that sort of thing. When I checked out the user profile I discovered that they had built up a portfolio of (at present) 43 blogs, each containing hundreds of spamming anchor text links for the various topics; mortgages, car rentals, holidays, travel, dating, etc, etc.

I have a few questions which I feel are pertinent:

Is this an effective, if spammy, technique?
Do Google, Yahoo and MSN recognize and count the links?
Is any PR passed?
Can it be prevented?
Would any sites which are pointed to by the spammy links be penalized, bearing in mind it is as easily done by a competitor as by a site itself?

Given the apparent 'weight' given to blogs, I wondered what people's views on this were.


McF

[Nick W]

>>Is this an effective, if spammy, technique?

No idea, if they are normal links then generally speaking: Links = good

>>Do Google, Yahoo and MSN recognize and count the links?

You tell me, surely you've checked the target domains?

>>Is any PR passed?

Again, you tell me?

>>Can it be prevented?
Why would you want to prevent it? - sounds like a great idea to me...
There are, as far as i know, no TOS's covering mutilple blogs at blogger, what's the big deal?

>>Would any sites which are pointed to by the spammy links be penalized, bearing in mind it is as easily done by a competitor as by a site itself?

Incomings aren't generally the issue, outgoings are another matter entirely.

Thanks for the tip!

Nick

[McFox]

>>Do Google, Yahoo and MSN recognize and count the links?
You tell me, surely you've checked the target domains?

Ok, so I knew the answer to this one. Nothing showing up in Google ... yet. Yahoo and MSN are showing the links.

>> Passing of PR?
I have no idea.

Thanks for the tip!

You're welcome.

McF

[Renagade Master]

Thanks for the tip!

And another spammer is born!

I believe any inbound link that isn't from advertising, SEs, related sites or a site with decent content is spammy. I certainly categorise blogs full of links spammy because the page doesn't sound like it has decent related content to the linked site. IMHO.

[Nick W]

Bearing in mind that i dont think you've seen the sites, how can you know that the content on those blogs is "spammy"? - It might be fantastic.

>>a spammer is born

Nope, a webmaster just got another tool in his toolbox. Dont be so naive or so presumptious

Nick

[powerofeyes]

Is this an effective, if spammy, technique?

Depends on the blogs, If the blogs are unique and has good incoming links, It does transfer those link popularity to the linking sites,

Do Google, Yahoo and MSN recognize and count the links?

Ofcourse yes, I am talking about links in blogs itself not on the links in comments made in blogs,

Is any PR passed?

Ofcourse yes, passes perfectly well depends on the No of outgoing links,

Can it be prevented?

Blogs are all about free speech, All search engines like blogs and it is difficult to prevent big spamming there,

But you should remember free blogs are just like free domains or any other paid network of domains you use, they can be easily registered by anyone but the fact even though you might have 100 blogs all those blogs should have unique incoming links from good blogs or other sites, If the links are made by your own network then it is worthless,

So blogs are just like any other paid or free domains good incomings links to those blogs will transfer the link popularity power to the sites which link from it,

Would any sites which are pointed to by the spammy links be penalized, bearing in mind it is as easily done by a competitor as by a site itself?

Incomings links cannot penalize a site from what I have seen, If google or other search engine ever have 100% proof that you own those blogs and they are used to increase link popularity of your site then they can penalize you,

But for that they need 100% proof since even your competitor can do the same, 99.9% proof is not enough to penalize your site,

[Renagade Master]

Bearing in mind that i dont think you've seen the sites, how can you know that the content on those blogs is "spammy"?

I haven't seen the sites and I can't judge the content. Hence I outlined what I would consider spam, if the content falls outside this I would consider it spam, others would disagree.

It might be fantastic.

Well th OP said:

I recently encountered a blog which was spamming hundreds of keyword anchor-text links; things along the lines of ... discount-travel, air-travel, that sort of thing. When I checked out the user profile I discovered that they had built up a portfolio of (at present) 43 blogs, each containing hundreds of spamming anchor text links for the various topics; mortgages, car rentals, holidays, travel, dating, etc, etc.

Again without seeing the site it does sound like the blogs are full of links and not much else, it is only the OPs opinion I'm listening to and they might have left out the fact that it has 5* content.

[Jill]

Unfortunately, it's not (from the sounds of it) much different than what JupiterMedia does with their network of sites. Take a look at the SEW forums, and the ClickZ pages. All kinds of links to mortgage stuff, etc.

I imagine that the engines would like to eventually make those sorts of links not count toward link popularity, but maybe that's just naive.

Jill

[McFox]

The only content, if you can call it that, is from the 7000+ links contained within the blogs. Bear in mind that yesterday, the total number of links was just over 6000. By next week, the number will have probably doubled to ~14,000.

Just now, content=zero, but I would expect the technique to mature as time passes and for surrounding spammy keyword text to get included too.

McF

[ILoveJackDaniels]

This really is no different to a person setting up a network of sites to spam with. The blogs are going to have very low PR unless serious effort is put in to them. If serious effort is put in to making each a good blog, then fine, nothing wrong with that. If no effort is put in, their PR will remain low and the IBLs will count for very little.

43 blogs with 7000 links - that's a lot of links, each transferring a small share of low PR.

> Is this an effective, if spammy, technique?

Unlikely.

> Do Google, Yahoo and MSN recognize and count the links?

Recognise - yes. Count? That's tricky. Unlikely - with no content and so many links, they're unlikely to count for much, if anything.

> Is any PR passed?

Very little.

> Can it be prevented?

Link popularity systems inherently prevent this kind of thing being overly effective. It takes effort to build a decent site to build a high enough PR to make links from it valuable. These blogs are not decent sites and will have virtually no PR to transfer.

> Would any sites which are pointed to by the spammy links be penalized, bearing in mind it is as easily done by a competitor as by a site itself?

Possibly but unlikely. As you say, a competitior could do it. But it is still spam ...

[Haystack]

It's pretty bold to use a Google owned blogging application to set up an extensive blog based link farm.

[Kackle]

I don't think PageRank getting passed is the issue. But if the keyword you are trying to optimize is repeated in anchor text, the blogs are counted more quickly and more powerfully than non-blogs, at least in Google.

It may be hard to see this unless the keyword is somewhat non-competitive. Check out the "Namebombing" thread on SEW.

[amabaie]

It may be hard to see this unless the keyword is somewhat non-competitive.

I beg to disagree. In non-competitive fields, a few link exchanges and a few directory submissions could land you on Page One of Google. For those ultra-competitive terms, any new idea - like dozens of low-PR, high-relevance links - could be that little edge that gets the site past dozens of others who have all done everything but this.

Is this "spammy"? Since anything done to influence the order of a private company's listings carries an odor of the farm, I find such labels placed on specific tactics useless. To say that the creators are litterbugs might be more accurate, since they are littering the Web with useless "content". Pollution of any kind is not good, but as long as it is rewarded, don't expect entrepreneurs to eschew it.

[archmaille]

I'm not an expert on the topic, but it seems to me that it would be an effective tool. places like this site allow for you to have links (though it is limited on this site... and for good reason)

[McFox]

This spammer person is posting at a phenomenal rate and has now topped the 10,000 posts mark, averaging over 5,000 posts per week across more than 40 blogs.

Each post is an anchor text link to different pages on numerous websites and subdomains.

Quite exhausting to watch.

I cannot help but suspect that no matter how weak the PR, or how numerous and diluting an effect the posts may have, not to mention any type of inbound link sandboxing; that this type of anchor text spamming will influence the organic results.

McF