Innovative Spam Is Just Downright Offensive

October 10th, 2007 | writing

Help! I need advice.

Last week I started getting these weird inbound link notifications. Someone is using a robotblog to grab deckcopy from my posts, attribute them to other people, and link back to me. Presumably, this will make their blog show up on Technorati pages, I guess.

The goal is apparently to get people to click on the google ads next to each fake post. This month, the robot has already created 576 posts. Sigh. I’m not going to give you the site’s URL. I just wanted to see if anybody else is noticing this. And ask, “What can you do about it?”

I’m beginning to think Dawud Miracle is right about the evils of spam. You have to fight it like a vigilante.

(As long as we’re talking about Dawud, he posted a great video about word of mouth marketing last week.)

UPDATE: Over at Technorati, I searched their discussions and found their thread about “Spam Blogs and Links Increasing.“ The Technorati folks weigh in with this advice:

We are continually looking to improve our service and filter out Spam in our results. If you see any Spam blogs in our index, please report them by submitting a ticket from our Support Contact Form with Support Type “Other” and we can take the necessary steps to deal with them. Your help is greatly appreciated!

So any time you have an inbound link from a spam blog, send a contact message to Technorati (above) and ask them to remove the specific URL from their database. In WordPress, most inbound link tracking is based on Technorati. So removing a spam blog from their index will prevent future inbound links from that splog.

Viewing 5 Comments

L.L. Barkat 1 year ago 1 point
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I noticed the same thing yesterday with mine, except that it was attributed to me. "L.L. Barkat wrote a great post today..." But when I clicked through to the site, it was really about selling diamonds! Well, they've got the wrong blogger if they think I can afford to purchase their glitzy goods.

Mostly I just saw it as a bother. But then it wasn't like they attributed my work to someone else like Marcus Goodyear (Oh, hey, that would work out though, wouldn't it? Among friends?)

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http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com

spaghettipie 1 year ago 1 point
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I've been seeing this on my blog too. Sometimes it just grabs my post like LL said and sometimes it attributes it to a fake person like you did. I just delete the comment or linkback.

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http://spaghettipie.wordpress.com

Marcus 1 year ago 1 point
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I added an update with how to fix this. L.L., I'm not sure how blogger works, but I know Wordpress uses Technorati to measure inbound links in the dashboard.

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http://www.goodwordediting.com

heri 1 year ago 1 point
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this is a new startup,

ben yoskovitz made an interview recently on instigatorblog.com, with the CEO

http://www.instigatorblog.com/mindvalley-launch...

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http://montrealtechwatch.com

Marcus 1 year ago 1 point
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heri, thanks for the tip. I checked into Ben's interview, but alas, my blog isn't cool enough for SocialRank yet. I was just the victim of a splog. Oh well.

Thanks for thinking the best of me.

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http://www.goodwordediting.com