Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why Do People Send In Fake Form Submissions?
-
I get a lot of form submissions through my website that are clearly not actual people (unless they are insane . . ). It fills out stuff nonsensically, has an email address, and usually some stupid snippet of text that makes no sense.
Does anyone know why people do this? Clearly there can't be any SEO benefit to submitting to someones web form.
I guess if I added a "captcha" option it would put a stop to this . .
-
I have seen this lately on one of my clients' sites. The other thing I can help but wonder about is in doing research in Compete on search referrals to various sites, suddenly much of the data is total nonsense. For example, here are some of the top terms supposedly generating traffic to a popular inbound marketing site:
medical coding
tn real estate
bankruptcy lawyer ventura ca
auto detailing boston
Or could this be the result of URL masking? Some sites results are complete nonsense, so that I can't tell that they get any legitimate search.
-
Sorry, that's what I mean. Captcha programs are ineffective much of the time against Xrumer. For other software there's services such as decaptcha, beatcaptcha, etc.. some services read the screen and take their best guess, some use actual people in what I can only imagine are sweatshops to enter captchas manually for you, but Xrumer doesn't need that stuff. It's smart, it learns... and many who use it combine it's knowledge with files so that it learns even more.
That's what I mean, the only way to stay ahead of it is your own personalized captchas (ones that alternate).
-
Have you considered using a captcha program? I assume there's a cost involved to get that setup . . . I've never really looked into it.
Jeez . . . how sad/dedicated are we lurking on SEOMoz on Memorial Day . .. .
-
I would place my money on Xrumer and other such software... we get it loads too.
Some might even be hack attempts with SQL injection but probably not too often.
Xrumer is pretty good at beating captcha's (I've heard lol ;p), so you'll need to define your own actual questions if you want to stop it... i.e. "What colour the sky?" is one, but it's learnt that and others like it, so you need more personalized ones. The best are "What is the first word on the homepage of this site?" as of course it can't guess that, and it can't follow the instructions to go find out
-
I don't think it does anything other than send me a response via email, but I will check with the designer to make sure it is not allowing anything. It has a section for "comments", but that's just so they can clarify the quote info to me.
-
Ha! Somehow I don't think my site has garnered that level of interest from Google yet . . .
-
Thanks Dave.
That article surprised me. I never expected google to have robots trained to hack at forms. I wonder how many other robots are out there stuffing data into forms?
-
We are starting to see the comment spammers come out again with refined tactics because of the Panda Effect. Does your form allow comments on a blog? or deeper access? Bots and Hacks are always looking for a way in.
-
Nice Find on that article and Congrats on the Guru status
-
Might be Google knocking....
http://searchengineland.com/google-now-fills-out-forms-crawls-results-13760
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Google only show high rankings to webmasters?
Hello! I'm using Google Chrome browser. On the browser logged in with the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is ranked on pages 1 to 2. However, in the case of the Google Secret tab and other browsers that have not logged in to the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is only 10 pages. Which one is more reliable?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 1kB_man_YWH
Does it only show higher rankings to webmasters?
Or will you soon be able to see the high ranking that has only been seen by webmasters in other browsers? I desperately need your help. Thank you. I look forward to your kind cooperation.0 -
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
Best practices for retiring 100s of blog posts?
Hi. I wanted to get best practices for retiring an enterprise blog with hundreds of old posts with subject matter that won't be repurposed. What would be the best course of action to retire and maintain the value of any SEO authority from those old blog pages? Is it enough to move those old posts into an archive subdirectory and Google would deprioritize those posts over time? Or would a mass redirect of old blog posts to the new blog's home page be allowed (even though the old blog post content isn't being specifically replaced)? Or would Google basically say that if there aren't 1:1 replacement URLs, that would be seen as soft-404s and treated like a 404?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Fisher0 -
Pinging Links
Interested to know if anybody still uses the strategy of pinging links to make sure they get indexed, there are a number of sites out there which offer it. Is it considered dangerous/spamy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoman100 -
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
A Straight Answer to Outsourcing Backlinking, Directory Submission and Social Bookmarking
Hey SEOmoz Community! I've spent a bit of time now reading about SEO in books as well as online here within the SEOmoz community. However, I've still struggled to find a straight answer to whether or not directory submissions to non-penalized websites is acceptable.I suspect the reason I haven't found a straight YES or NO answer is because it isn't so straightforward and I respect that. My dilemma is as follows: I want to raise the domain authority for a few websites that I optimize for. I've submitted and gotten listed a bunch of excellent backlinks, however it still is a painfully slow process. My clients understandably want to see results faster, and because they have virtually no past outsourced link-building campaigns, I am beginning to think that I can invest some money for outsourcing directory submissions. I see more and more people talking about the latest Penguin updates, and how many of these sites are now penalized. BUT, is there any harm to submitting to directories such as the ones on SEOmoz's spreadsheet that aren't penalized? My concern is that in the future these will be penalized anyways, and is there a chance then that my site will also be de-listed from Google? At what point does Google completely 'blacklist' your site from its engine? Furthermore, I don't understand how Google can penalize a website to the point of de-listing it, because what would prevent other competitors from sending mass spammy back-links to another? What it all comes down to: At this point, are verified mass directory submissions through outsourcing still much more beneficial than detrimental to the ranking of a website? Thanks SEOmoz community, Sheldon
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | swzhai0 -
Article submission, and how to build backlinks for Ecommerce? [HELP]
Hi guys, I have a question, for high quality backlinks apparently you go to these article websites where you submit your site such as Ezine etc etc, however is it just one article you submit to these as it'll look like duplicate content? Also can I have it on my site first? How does it work? Also I run an ecommerce website, how can I build backlinks to each product, theres over 200+ products and 1.6k subcategories. I would like to rank for as many as possible but getting an SEO company to do this would cost to much. Any ideas on how I should go about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | InkCartridgesFast1 -
Using an auto directory submission
Has anyone used easysubmits.com and what's your experience with it? Any other directory submission or link building tools that help automate and manage the process like easysubmits.com says they can do? I'm just looking at it currenlty and wanted to hear others thoughts before I get taken in by some black hat method that hurts my websites instead.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Twinbytes0