should i be alarmed/wary?

[gamingedge]

It's been 4 months since my forum opened and recently noticed a lot of signups. Despite this still the same amount of people posting, roughly 6-8 people the usual.

What's alarming isn't the spam bots signing up (only had to ban 2) but rather a bunch of people (really don't know if it's one or more then one) who sign up and in their signatures have a link to absolutepoker.com. Now they aren't affiliates because there links don't contain any affiliate codes/the usual affiliate links. But in the last 2 weeks I'd say about 5 of these people have signed up and thing is they never post.

I've looked at their IP's and locations and they are different, so question is should I be alarmed? and anybody able to come up with an idea of where these people are coming from?

[jason@bp]

Could this be AP itself, or an SEO agency acting on behalf of AP, running an xrumer-type link campaign?

[gamingedge]

no idea, but I'd think that if it was some kind of SEO thing, wouldn't that require them to post?

[jason@bp]

Some bots just aim to place links in user profiles, which might be indexed depending on the forum's admin settings. Other bots attempt to post. I think it is just a brute force/volume thing: sign up at thousands of forums, try a few link placements, and hope a small percentage of the links stick.

I have never used a program like this so I am just speculating based on SEO stuff I've read.

[BishamonMedia]

prob xrumer. they getting profile love. xrumer does a whackload of things not just comment spam....

[AnthonyGM]

It sounds as though it could be as suggested above an SEO profile linking campaign. Interesting how Absolutepoker would allow this type of blackhat linkbuilding towards its website. Maybe they are not aware?

[gamingedge]

yea question is should i ban them? They don't offer my forum any value

[ak]

Yes they will come back and spam the shit out of you. I recommend you getting a paid vbulletin spam blocker

[ak]

Here is a decent program that's free.

Spam-O-Matic

[Student]

Would that be the Lite version or the PRO version?

Here is a decent program that's free.

Spam-O-Matic