Spam

[Planet Mark]

Probably made my feelings clear in other posts... for me this is getting well out of hand - this forum is probably on some 'internet markekers' "dofollow forums" list. While not replying is a good start. I personally think we need a little more pruning of non-contributing spammers, and quickly - before the sh1te starts to outweight the real debate.

What are your thoughts on this one Jeremy??

[Unknown Webmaster]

I just want to point out that the signature links aren't visible unless you are logged in (I hadn't noticed this until today).

But I think that Mark is right and PAL probably is on some list of dofollow forums, and some spammers probably havn't noticed that the links don't show up when you aren't logged in.

[Michael Martinez]

You cannot prevent all forum spam but there are certain things you can do to protect yourself. I run my own science fiction and fantasy forums and have been fighting spambots for years. We've deleted over 30,000 registrations that were autocreated.

I wrote an article on this topic at SEO Theory in January. You can read it here. The link at the top of the article takes you to a post from Google Webspam Engineer Matt Cutts where he talks about ways to fight these spammers.

I wrote the article after one pernicious spammer, Internet Service Team, attacked my forums (so I was in a BAD mood), so if you scroll down past the hyperbole, you'll find a lengthy detailed list of steps you can take to help protect your forums.

[leporello]

These guys are all cheap Indian SEO people hired by webmasters looking to build as many artificial links as humanly possible. They are rampant on forums that i post on and the SEO companies are undoubtedly working off a big list of dofollow forums.

[pokerextras]

@unknown. Are you sure that the links don't show unless you're logged in? I can see all of the links on this thread now and you can't all be logged in. In regards to the obvious spammer. It really annoys me when i get an email saying that there's a reply to a thread i've posted or subscribed to, and it turns out to be some unintelligable garbage. Now i know how blogers must feel towards comment spammers.

[Unknown Webmaster]

@Pokerextra
What I meant was that if you log out from your account, you will not be able to see any signature links.

I just logged out and took a screenshot of your post:

[pokerextras]

Originally Posted by Unknown Webmaster

@Pokerextra What I meant was that if you log out from your account, you will not be able to see any signature links. I just logged out and took a screenshot of your post:

ah. I see. So how does google index the links then? Surely it can't automatically override the login procedure?

[Unknown Webmaster]

From the looks of it Google don't see the links: Spam - The Forums At Poker Affiliate Listings

[pokerextras]

Hmm. I suppose this begs the question. Is there any point in them being there?

[Michael Martinez]

Search engines will only see links in body posts, not in signatures, where forums require that you be logged in to see signatures.

Some forum spam bots create fake signatures using underscores or hyphens in the hope of fooling moderators into thinking the links won't be indexed by search engines. In my opinion such links are pretty obviously spam but perhaps the trick gets by some people.


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Example of a fake signature