Interesting spam: Wikipedia trackbacks
-
I've been getting some very interesting spam on my wordpress blogs lately: trackbacks on wikipedia articles that are obviously spammy. By that I mean that the comment on wikipedia are obviously spam and the link to my blogs are removed before I even arrive at the page or get the notification. The trackbacks are posted on valid wikipedia entries.
My concern is that this is a move by an unsavory competitor to try to get my sites in trouble. I can't really see how this would be effective though. All I can come up is that it might eventually get my domains banned from being linked to in wikipedia. I can't think of any problems this would cause in google or other SE's.
What could be the purpose behind such a spam campaign?
Any feedback?
-
This is by far the most likely explanation as far as I can see. Thanks for checking it out Takeshi!!
-
Hi Ryan,
I hope you are well.
I had the exact same thing yesterday, by the time I got to the page it had been edited. Well, I'm sceptical it was ever there actually because I could not find it in the edit history.
Funny thing is, is that it was that exact same wiki page! I just deleted it, perhaps Takeshi Young is right then
Someone must be experimenting with that page.
-
I did some research, and apparently trackbacks are really easy to fake (they just ping your blog with fake info). The comment "we arrived across a neat internet site that you could possibly like. Just take a look if you need..." sounds like there might have been a link there, that got cut out.
So basically spammers send these trackbacks that look like they're coming from legitimate sites hoping that they'll get approved so they can get their link posted on your site.
-
I looked at this page and others that have come in like it, and cannot find the links.
-
Weird, do you know when you received the trackback? You can see the edit history for the page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fort_Dobbs_(North_Carolina)&action=history
-
Yes. A trackback as if its a link from Wikipedia. I can't find any record of the link being on wikipedia however. Its all very confusing.
Edit: Added a screenshot of the (temporarily) approved trackback. At the bottom the link "North Carolina" points to the wikipedia article mentioned above.
-
Ok, so a trackback is generated when someone links to your site from another site. This will show up on your site as a trackback.
Are you saying that you received a link from Wikipedia? Or that the trackback includes a link to Wikipedia? Or something else?
-
Example:
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Dobbs_(North_Carolina)
Comment: Awesome web sites...
we arrived across a neat internet site that you could possibly like. Just take a look if you need...
It looks like a comment, but when I approve it goes under trackbacks. I'm assuming wikipedia doesn't have an army of blackhat spammers hitting up blogs to increase their rankings
-
Do you have any examples? You should be able to see the edit history of the page to see who added the link to your page and in what context.
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
-
spam score
I start blogging a few months ago and start SEO by watching some tutorials and start making backlinks now I realize that I made backlinks on some spammy site which increase my spam score from 1 to 7 now I remove my links from that spammy site but my spam score is still 7.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lorosing
can someone assist me to decrease my spam score site URL
https://lbctracking.net1 -
How to Reduce the spam score of the website?
Hello, My Website Spam Score is 60. how can I reduce the spam score of the website. plz give me suggestion
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jyhkgkkkkkhkjgj0 -
Spam Score & Redirecting Inbound Links
Hi, I recently downloaded a spreadsheet of inbound links to my client sites and am trying to 301 redirect the ones that are formatted incorrectly or just bad links in general (they all link to the site domain, but they used to have differently formatted urls on their old site, or the link URL in general has strange stuff on it). My question is, should I even bother redirecting these links if their spam score is a little high (i.e. 20-40%)? it already links to the existing domain, just with a differently formatted URL. I just want to make sure it goes to a valid URL on the site, but I don't want to redirect to a valid URL if it's going to harm the client's SEO. Also not sure what to do about the links with the --% spam score. I really appreciate any input as I don't have a lot of experience with how to deal with spammy links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
Massive Spam attack against my domain - automate disvow of tld?
We've been getting hundreds of new links from unique domains every day - all the domains follow a pattern like this: www.someword-1f4163e1.space/wiki/Someterm Hundreds... every day. What techniques exist to deal with a prolonged negative seo attack of this type. By the time we can detect and disvow, the damage is done.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sonar0 -
Massive Google Search Spam
We have come to know that one of competitors of our client is spamming Google search results on massive scale. If we search with keywords like "iphone spy apps" , "text messages spy " etc then most of results from 3rd or 4th page onwards show totally irrelevant sites but when we click on those results/pages then all redirect to either http://topspysoft.com/ OR http://www.mspy.com/ . They have been doing it on massive scale for last few months against hundreds of queries and populating hundreds of search results. If use some country specific Google site then again hundreds of results come from totally irrelevant country specific domains (au,nz,uk etc) and they all redirect to topspysoft.com or mspy.com. Can you please tell how they are doing it and how they are able to do it on such a massive scale without getting noticed by Google ? Is there any way to report this issue to Google as the current only allows one link ? Following are some of the spam urls to give you an idea www.crcincva.com/doc/20-best-iphone-spy-apps/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shaz_lhr
chefitupkids.com/top-10-spy-apps-for-iphone/
jarestaurant.com/text-spying-apps-iphone/
www.lisamishler.com/qn/phone-spy-apps-uk
tigerdenus.com/spy-apps-for-iphone-no-jailbreak
palmhousestl.org/templates/phone-location/iphone-spy-apps-uk.html I'm also attaching couple of images which show that almost 80% of results on those pages are actually spam pages WlpJshL qtuLdHp0 -
Have I created link spam.....
Howdy fellow Mozzers.... Since Googles Penguin Update I am overly cautious when reviewing our link profile. I spotted 2 domains linking to us yesterday, 80+ links from each domain to our homepage. This looked superstitious, site wide links effectively. At first inspection I couldn't spot the links....they turned out to be two individual comments, but as the site had a plugin with "most recent comments", 1 link became 80. The link is an exact match of the individuals name who made the comment. And is a result of filling out the comment form. Name: Website: Comment: By filling out the name and website the name becomes the anchor text for the link to the website. Long story short...do you think this is penguin esq. link spam? Is it not? Or is it just not worth the risk and remove them anyway???
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0