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
-
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 -
Blcoking Analytics Spam Referral Traffic
Hello, I'm starting to find some of our sites being heavily affected by spam referral traffic. I've been doing a bit of research, but it seems advice is changing all the time (or trying to sell me a service) Does anyone have any suggestions (or links to point me to) on the best way to block spam referral traffic (All our sites are Wordpress). Is there a way of blocking from past data or only future? Will blocking affect past moz data or is that permanently contaminated? I really don't quite understand what is in it for these spammers. Any advice greatly appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Why Link Spamming Website Coming on First Page Google?
As we all already know about link spamming. As per Google Guidelines Link building, Exact Keywords Anchor Link Building is dead now but i am looking most of the website coming on first page in Google doing same exact keywords linking. I think directory, article, social bookmarking, press release and other link building activity is also dead now. Matt always saying content is more important but if we will not put any keywords link in content part then how website rank in first page in Google. Can anybody explain why is website coming on first page because when i am doing same activity for quality links with higher domain authority website then we are affected in Google update.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dotlineseo0 -
How to ignore spam links to page?
Hey Moz pals, So for some reason someone is building thousands of links to my websites (all spam), likely someone doing negative seo on my site. Anyway, all these links are pointing to 1 sub url on my domain. That url didn't have anything on it so I deleted the page so now it comes up with a 404. Is there a way to reject any link that ever gets built to that old page? I don't want all this spam to hurt my website. What do you suggest?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WongNs0 -
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 -
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 -
Can i send a disavow if a detect a spam link
I have detected than one web domain is generating 2400 links to my site should a use a disavow tools, as it is imposible to have contact from webmaster and no response to your emails My web as not been warned or penalized, but i dont like this link, and i want to inform google of that,. If google acepts the disavow file, should i still see on my webmaster tools that web links, or will they desapear thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
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