Google SEO - handling forum spam links

[GalaxiDesigns]

Hello everyone. I just had a real quick question about Google SEO. I have a forum on my website, and there are a lot of spammers who sign up that I don't delete until 12 to 24 hours later. So I was just wondering if I will get penalized by Google for having links to adult content on my website in that time frame.

Just needing to make sure, I would rather get rid of the forum then get penalized. Thanks.

[edited by: tedster at 3:23 pm (utc) on Oct. 25, 2007]

[tedster]

If Google can index it (and in 12 hours they certainly can) then it can make trouble for you. This sounds like the exact situation that rel="nofollow" was created to handle. Can you adapt your forum software to add that attribute to outbound links?

[GalaxiDesigns]

Thanks for that advice. I have a PHPBB forum and did a quick Google search for your suggestion with PHPBB, and found this page

[phpbb.com ]

It showed me how to do it in 2 simple steps. Thanks again.

[thecoalman]

Better yet prevent them from registering in the first place. Most affective method seems to be adding a question(s) to your registration page that only a human can answer which will prevent bots from registering.

Which forum software are you using? phpbb has modifications for both the nofollow and question... there's many others as well but I've found the question to be the best. I was getting about 2 a day, now I get 0.

Edit, that will teach me to post after talking on the phone. Check the thread stickied in the support forum there. It will offer better modifications than the one you linked too.

[GalaxiDesigns]

Yeah I found it. That mod should work great. Now I just have to wait and see :) Thanks for all your help.

[edited by: tedster at 9:03 pm (utc) on Oct. 25, 2007]
[edit reason] removed link [/edit]

[LostOne]

Definately use the ask a question mod. A board that I offer was spammed to death until March of this year. The mod changeed everything dramatically. I can't think of one spammy message signature link since then.

As another resort I don't list member profiles anymore. It's just an invitation for bot spammers.

[thecoalman]

There's another mod for the profile which will allows you set X amount of days or posts before they can add a website or sinature, it will also automatically ban the IP for any registration that coantains those fields.There aren't present in the registration so only a bot that is directly submitting the POST info gets nabbed.

Irrelvant for phpbb3 because it allows for a set of permissions for bots, some links such as the memberlist aren't parsed. Pages like the memberlist or profiles give a "permission denied" page if it somehow finds its way into them.

Better to just robots.txt them but the benefit is all forums will be set up like this by default so the spammers have no reason to sign up just for the benefit of the link in the profile, they will need to post to get any benefit.