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What is the best weapon against this? Email google? What could/would they do? Wouldn't it be risky to make them aware of "a problem with your site"? Couldn't this lead to self destruction? If not, what's the right email adress - search-quality[at]google.com?
gb and stats spam is just showing up in backlinks for a few days then vanishes. why i know? because we tested it to clear this - a few days we had over 500 backlinks from gb and stats, then they vanished. now, we dont worry anymore seeing people doing it.
to come back to your instant issue: yes, contact google. and why not setup a page linked from your homepage that explains this situation to others (eg gb owners that may check out what sucker spams the gb)
Leave it be. G knows about I am sure :), if they dont, well they must suck. You could spend your life on a fruitless crusade or spend time checking for recent posts on WebmasterWorld or similar :)
No doubt you have seen this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
There was a hacker who was defacing websites and putting links to us! Of course we had nothing to do with it, but we had lots of irate webmasters contacting us. We put up a bold disclaimer on the index page and it seemed to calm things down.
Unfortunately it's not a competitor by its word meaning and unfortunately it's far away from free advertising what the site in question gets. The goal of the offender is to destroy image and reputation of the site. Hard to explain the situation without specifics ...
Say, the site is about kids and the offender is a pedo* who spams guestbooks with the link to the kids site, using pedo* and p*rn keywords as anchors together with tons of known pedo* and p*rn links and related texts. Get the picture? Allthough it's a example, the reall situation in fact is that bad!
Yah, a clear disclaimer is a way to inform the real world visitors. But what's with google and with google's quotes? And what if a surfer types the domain or related keywords into google's search box and gets tons of pedo* and p*rn sites and snippets? And what to do with all the sick brains that come to the site through the guestbooks and forums posts?
I fear there's no reall weapon against this ... eMail google?
Not for some of the serp's I follow.
If I were you I would just keep getting quality inbound links, because it will decrease the percentage of spammy links overall, and if nothing else it will only help you.
They use anonymizing / open proxies.
>I think Google's algo only penalizes a site that has a high percentage of their links are from shadey places ... just keep getting quality inbound links ...
Uhm, they have spammed about 3.000 places allready. Not that easy to balance this with quality inbound links ...
Nevertheless, thanks for your tips! After weeks of frustration i guess we just let them do what they do. If the site gets booted by google or by unsatisfied, misleaded searchers, we'll close the game and take the work offline. Not worth to ruin our nerves with battles against such butt heads. Sigh.
sorry can't be much help but most spammed GB are just dead pages on the Net with no admin or webmaster..
DaveN
They use anonymizing / open proxies.
dont these people have things to do, like stopping terrorists and other nasaty stuff. Cant see then giving a monkeys about guestbook spamming. :)
I recommend you contact the FBI and FTC (or whatever the equivalent is in your country) and ask if they can provide some assistance in helping track down and identify this guy.
Yeah...the FBI is just aching to finish off Al Qaeda so they can get back to the real work of tracking down guestbook spammers...
lazy webmasters help spammers
DaveN
I recommend you contact the FBI and FTC (or whatever the equivalent is in your country) and ask if they can provide some assistance in helping track down and identify this guy.
If you are in the USA contact Tom Ridge of Homeland Security immediately ;)
On a serious note: I know of someone that is going through something similar with log spamming. They are obsessed with blaming it on someone I know. My advice to Yidaki is to move on – the guestbook links cannot hurt you and the more attention you give them, the more it is likely to continue. The FBI etc. is not going to get involved with guestbook spammers – no crime has been committed.
My 2-cents
Depending on what the other party is writing and doing, it could indeed be a crime. He could even sue in civil court and get a nice judgment. Companies often ask for federal assistance in these types of matters because they have the means to track the jerk down.
DaveN
Just to give you some more background info:
Yeah, it's a reall crime what they do. But it's hopeless, and useless to contact officials since all possible investigators (international, not just FBI) are allready hunting this kind of people since ever - all over the world. They profit from a large network of hidden groups/people all over the world and obvisouly this networked people started a big spam tour last year to bring down a lot of valuable sites and destroy their image by let it look like these sites would share their opinion - the attack is still ongoing and since a few weeks also affecting the site i'm involved.
The offenders run multiple websites publishing their sick ideas - most of the sites are allready banned on google. So my guess is there could be a small chance to contact google and just tell them about this special spam attack. Maybe they have a ear for it.
It's just very very frustrating to see this kind of people know start using the "weapons of internet mass destruction". Might be a good idea to stop the discussion at this point - it's getting too difficult to discuss the thing without breaking the rules / tos of this great forum.
Thanks for your kind posts, guys!
.. sooner or later the spammer will get tired
I think your wrong seofreak, Yidaki are these people are they "political group" with very very strong views by any chance
DaveN
If not, then Im sure there's a way to redirect certain referrers to a custom page (I did it with a site hosted on IIS5).
Use that entry point to either put down these spammers (and then claim the traffic by directing them to your site) or to get rid of the traffic while ruining the credibility of the spammers.
For example - spammer_01 sends people via guest book links on site_01 to your site saying that there are illegal widgets there, when there are not.
You later redirect referals from site_01 to a custom page that explains the actions of spammer_01 and the fact that you are logging all IP addresses coming to that page looking for illegal_widgets.
Result: Illegal_widget_surfers run away and never come back, and dont trust spammer_01 as much anymore.
Spammer_01 never finds out as they are unlikely to click thru these links after the point at which they place them (ie you set up the redirect a few days after the links are placed).
The initial setup of the redirect will be a pain - several thousand referrs - and some may be legit referrers, but on the whole, you'll keep the scum out of your site, make the spammers work counter productive and have an enormous sense of well being. :)
"This house is clean" /bows
Scott :D
We're allready redirecting as much as possible and daily add new referers. You're right, it's a pain for that much referer. But your post motivates me to put even more energy into cloaking the referers!
>logging all IP addresses coming to that page looking for illegal_widgets
hehehehe ... ;)
Oooh the possibilies are endless! ;)
Scott
