Spam in blogs

Last updated

Spam in blogs (also known as blog spam, comment spam, or social spam) is a form of spamdexing which utilizes internet sites which allow content to be publically posted, in order to artificially inflate their website ranking by linking back (also referred to as backlink) to their web pages. Backlink helps search algorithms determine the popularity of a web page, which plays a major role for search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing to decide a web page ranking on a certain search query. This helps the spammer's website to list ahead of other sites for certain searches, which helps them to increase the number of visitors to their website.

Contents

It may be done by posting random comments on other blog websites (usually by an automated process), or by copying other websites' content and using it on free-to-use publishing services like Blogger and WordPress or publicly accessible wikis, digital guest books, and internet forums.

Note that blog spam also has another meaning, specifically when a blog author creates posts without adding any informational or educational value solely for publishing them on other websites

History

This type of spam originally appeared in internet guestbooks, where spammers repeatedly filled a guestbook with links to their sites and irrelevant comments, to increase their search engine rankings. If an actual comment is given it is often just "cool page", "nice website", or keywords of the spammed link.

In 2003, spammers began to take advantage of the open nature of comments in the blogging software like Movable Type by repeatedly placing comments on various blog posts that provided nothing more than a link to the spammer's commercial web site. Jay Allen created a free plugin, called MT-BlackList, [1] for the Movable Type weblog tool (versions prior to 3.2) that attempted to alleviate this problem. Many blogging packages now have methods of preventing or reducing the effect of blog spam built in due to its prevalence, although spammers too have developed tools to circumvent them. Many spammers use special blog spamming tools like trackback submitter [2] to bypass comment spam protection on popular blogging systems like Movable Type, Wordpress, and others.

Application-specific implementations

Particularly popular software products such as Movable Type and MediaWiki have developed or included anti-spam measures, as spammers focus more on targeting those platforms due to their prevalence on the Internet. Whitelists and blacklists that prevent certain IPs from posting, or that prevent people from posting content that matches certain filters, are common defences although most softwares tend to use a combination of the variety of different techniques documented below.

The goal in every potential solution is to allow legitimate users to continue posting their comments (and often even add links to their comments, as that is considered by some to be a valuable aspect of any comments section, when the links are relevant or related to the article or content) whilst preventing all spam links or irrelevant comments from being viewable to the site's owner and visitors.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spamming</span> Unsolicited electronic messages, especially advertisements

Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose, or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps, television advertising and file sharing spam. It is named after Spam, a luncheon meat, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant that has Spam in almost every dish in which Vikings annoyingly sing "Spam" repeatedly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blog</span> Discussion or informational site published on the internet

A blog is an informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Spamdexing is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as link building and repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Link farm</span> Group of websites that link to each other

On the World Wide Web, a link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlink to other sites in the group for the purpose of increasing SEO rankings. In graph theoretic terms, a link farm is a clique. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a web search engine. Other link exchange systems are designed to allow individual websites to selectively exchange links with other relevant websites and are not considered a form of spamdexing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movable Type</span> Blogging software

Movable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on September 3, 2001; version 1.0 was publicly released on October 8, 2001. The current version is 7.0.

A trackback allows one website to notify another about an update. It is one of four types of linkback methods for website authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to their articles. Some weblog software, such as SilverStripe, WordPress, Drupal, and Movable Type, supports automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of linkback.

A backlink is a link from some other website to that web resource. A web resource may be a website, web page, or web directory.

b2evolution

b2evolution is a content and community management system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. It is distributed as free software under the GNU General Public License.

A pingback is one of four types of linkback methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Some weblog software and content management systems, such as WordPress, Movable Type, Serendipity, and Telligent Community, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. Other content management systems, such as Drupal and Joomla, support pingbacks through the use of addons or extensions.

A permalink or permanent link is a URL that is intended to remain unchanged for many years into the future, yielding a hyperlink that is less susceptible to link rot. Permalinks are often rendered simply, that is, as clean URLs, to be easier to type and remember. Most modern blogging and content-syndication software systems support such links. Sometimes URL shortening is used to create them.

Comment spam is a term referencing a broad category of spambot or spammer postings which abuse web-based forms to post unsolicited advertisements as comments on forums, blogs, wikis and online guestbooks. Related topics include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Personal web page</span> Web page created by an individual to contain personal content

Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created by an individual to contain content of a personal nature rather than content pertaining to a company, organization or institution. Personal web pages are primarily used for informative or entertainment purposes but can also be used for personal career marketing, social networking with other people with shared interests, or as a space for personal expression.

In blogging, a ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent from the weblog to one or more Ping servers, as specified by originating weblog), to notify a list of their "Services" of new content on the weblog.

This is a list of blogging terms. Blogging, like any hobby, has developed something of a specialized vocabulary. The following is an attempt to explain a few of the more common phrases and words, including etymologies when not obvious.

The Sandbox effect is a name given to an observation of the way Google ranks web pages in its index. It is the subject of much debate—its existence has been written about since 2004, but not confirmed, with several statements to the contrary.

Akismet is a service that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages. The filter operates by combining information about spam captured on all participating sites and then using those spam rules to block future spam. Akismet is offered by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.

nofollow is a setting on a web page hyperlink that directs search engines not to use the link for page ranking calculations. It is specified in the page as a type of link relation; that is: <a rel="nofollow" ...>. Because search engines often calculate a site's importance according to the number of hyperlinks from other sites, the nofollow setting allows website authors to indicate that the presence of a link is not an endorsement of the target site's importance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LifeType</span> Blogging platform

LifeType is an open-source blogging platform with support for multiple blogs and users in a single installation. It is written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. LifeType is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Forum spam consists of posts on Internet forums that contains related or unrelated advertisements, links to malicious websites, trolling and abusive or otherwise unwanted information. Forum spam is usually posted onto message boards by automated spambots or manually with unscrupulous intentions with intent to get the spam in front of readers who would not otherwise have anything to do with it intentionally.

XRumer is a piece of software made for spamming online forums and comment sections. It is marketed as a program for search engine optimization and was created by BotmasterLabs. It is able to register and post to forums with the aim of boosting search engine rankings. The program is able to bypass security techniques commonly used by many forums and blogs to deter automated spam, such as account registration, client detection, many forms of CAPTCHAs, and e-mail activation before posting. The program utilises SOCKS and HTTP proxies in an attempt to make it more difficult for administrators to block posts by source IP, and features a proxy checking tool to verify the integrity and anonymity of the proxies used.

References

  1. "MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin". Jayallen.org. Retrieved 2012-01-09.
  2. 4.1kreads (2006-09-26). "Beware of Trackback Submitter : Wordpress Blog Spam". Search Engine Journal. Retrieved 2021-09-29.