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
-
Drastic surge of link spam in Webmaster Tools' Link Profile
Hello all I am trying to get some insights/advice on a recent as well as drastic increase in link spam within my Webmaster Tools' Link Profile. Before I get into more detail, I would like to point out, that I did find some relevant MOZ community posts addressing this type of issue. However, my link spam situation may have to be approached from a different angle, as it concerns two sites at the same time and somewhat in the same way. Basically, starting in July 2017, from one day to the other, a multitude of domains (50+) is generating link spam (at least 200 links a month and counting) and to cut a long story short, I believe the sites are hacked. This is because most of the domain names sound legit and load the homepage, but all the sub-pages linking to my site contain "adult" gibberish. In addition, it is interesting to see, that each sub-page follows the same pattern, scraping content from my homepage including the on-page links - that generate the spammy backlinks to my sites - while inserting the adult gibberish in between (basically it's all just text and looks like as if a bot is at work). Therefore, it's not like my link is being inserted "specifically" into pages or to spam me with the same anchor text over and over. So, I am not sure what kind of link spam this really is (or the purpose of it). Some more background information: As mentioned above, this link spam (attack?) is affecting two of my sites and it started off pretty much simultaneously (in addition, the sites focus on a competitive niche). The interesting detail is, that one site suffered a manual penalty years ago, which has been lifted (a disavowal file exists and no further link building campaigns have been undertaken after the cleanup), while the other site has never seen any link building efforts - it is clean, yet the same type of spam is flooding that websites' link profile too. In the webmaster forums the overall opinion is, that Google ignores web spam. All well. However, I am still concerned, that the dozens of spammy links pointing to the website "with a history" may pose a risk (more spam on a daily basis on both sites though). At the same time I wonder, why the other "clean" site is facing the same issue. The clean sites' rankings do not appear to be impacted, while the other website has seen some drops, but I am still observing the situation. Therefore, should I be concerned for both sites or even start an endless disavowal campaign on the site with a history? PS: This MOZ article appears to advice so: https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin "In most cases, sites that have a history of collecting unnatural links tend to continue to collect them. If this is the case for you, then it’s best to disavow those on a regular basis (either monthly or quarterly) so that you can avoid getting another manual action." What is your opinion? Sorry for the long post and many thanks in advance for any help/insight.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hermski0 -
Do Ghost Traffic/Spam Referrals factor into rankings, or do they just affect the CTR and Bounce Rate in Analytics?
So, by now I'm sure everyone that pays attention to their Analytics/GWT's (or Search Console, now) has seen spam referral traffic and ghost traffic showing up (Ilovevitaly.com, simple-share-buttons.com, semalt.com, etc). Here is my question(s)... Does this factor into rankings in anyway? We all know that click through rate and bounce rate (might) send signals to the algorithm and signal a low quality site, which could affect rankings. I guess what I'm asking is are they getting any of that data from Analytics? Since ghost referral traffic never actually visits my site, how could it affect the CTR our Bounce Rate that the algorithm is seeing? I'm hoping that it only affects my Bounce/CTR in Analytics and I can just filter that stuff out with filters in Analytics and it won't ever affect my rankings. But.... since we don't know where exactly the algorithm is pulling data on CTR and bounce rate, I guess I'm just worried that having a large amount of this spam/ghost traffic that I see in analytics could be causing harm to my rankings.... Sorry, long winded way of saying... Should I pay attention to this traffic? Should I care about it? Will it harm my site or my rankings at all? And finally... when is google going to shut these open back doors in Analytics so that Vitaly and his ilk are shut down forever?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seequs2 -
Common passwords used for spam accounts?
This is a bit of a longshot. I know that many of the spam forum accounts, blog posts etc that have in the past been used for SEO are generated automatically. Does anyone know of any common passwords that are often used when setting up these accounts? I only ask as, trying to clean up the backlink profile for my website, I found myself in desperation keying in random passwords trying to access the spam accounts created on various forums by our former SEO agency. Eventually I got lucky and worked out the password for a series of forum accounts was, not very imaginatively, 'seo'. Having worked out this, I was able to delete the spam signatures on about 10 forums. But there are many other accounts where I have no idea of the password used. I guess I'm just wondering if there are standard stock passwords used in the past by many SEOs? Not likely to get an answer to this one, I know, but worth a shot.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mgane0 -
Spam backlinks
Hi there, through Open Site Explorer I've found 5838 links (across 1458 domains) with the anchor text 'new porn' pointing to a site I manage. Someone's been busy! Most (99.5%) appear to be created as Pingbacks with rel="nofollow" on them. As a precaution I submitted a file through the Google Disavow tool which has had the status "You successfully uploaded a disavow links file" for the last month. I'm wondering whether I should be concerned, or whether Google and other search engines will be clever enough to know this site is about electricity and not scantily clad people?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | originenergy0 -
Spam report duplicate images
Should i do a spam report if a site competitor as copied my clinical cases images and placed as their own clinical cases. That site also does not have privacy policy or medical doctor on that images. My site: http://www.propdental.es/carillas-de-porcelana/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
I am experiencing referrer spam from http://r-e-f-e-r-e-r.com/ (don't click) - What should I do?
It amazes me that every day in search marketing is filled with something new that I don't know or never heard of. Most of you are probably familiar with referrer spam, but I hadn't ever heard of it before. I am currently experiencing referral spam on my personal blog. What's the best way to get rid of this pest? Shall I ignore them? Block them in my robots.txt file? Use Google's Disavow? or should I just plain holler "Curse you referral spam people!!!" ? Thanks all!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | danatanseo0 -
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 -
Penguin Update Seems To Benefit Wikipedia Etc
I was updating product info on my site which was apparently hammered by Penguin. As I was updating I was "Googling" the products. I noticed that every single product I carry, Wikipedia held the #1 position in search results. Anyone else noticing this? I previously held the number 1 position on 2 of my products but I was knocked down to 60+...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chronicle0