Comments on: Dubious Trackbacks

By: BlogTarts makes me angry | Start Blogging

BlogTarts makes me angry | Start Blogging — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:13:55 +0000

[...] my posts from PreBlogging.com. They are even using my images too ! I’ve posted about these dubious trackbacks last week. So what can I do against people who think it is perfectly okay to steal my content ? [...]

By: Frank C

Frank C — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:13:31 +0000

A lot of these seem to be using a splogging program that a get-rich-quick ebook was selling. The thing is that unlike pure scrapper splogs these “Here’s a quick excerpt” splogs are within copyright rules and Google rules. Sad but true. The best thing is to report them to Akismet and/or use a CAPTCHA.

By: Wayne Liew

Wayne Liew — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:59:32 +0000

Apart from giving traffic to them, you might have a little chance of getting banned by Google as well if these sites are going to get banned.

As Google webmaster guideline puts it, linking to a banned site might get your site banned as well. This is why we need to remove these trackbacks.

Other than deleting and reporting them, you can install plugins like AntiLeech to go against them.

By: Preblogging

Preblogging — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:15:20 +0000

The thing is Rich, if these guys get traffic by having links on your website then they have accomplished what they set out to do. And they will continue doing what they intended to do. I would prefer to have no comments on my posts than to have those SPAM trackback comments.

I don’t think I have really gotten any more traffic from these SPLOGS. Their goal is to get their organic visitors to click on their ads, rather than to visit my or yours sites. They are in effect stealing your content and potential visitors.

By: Rich Gilchrest

Rich Gilchrest — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:40:46 +0000

Like you, I’ve been seeing a lot more of these in recent weeks. They correspond to a recent traffic boost, maybe around the same time I entered the Alexa top 200k.

I don’t approve them when Akismet catches them, but I usually let them go if they slip past the SPAM filter. I guess I’m just not that offended by their existence, and the higher comment counts make me happy even if I know it’s junk.

Of course, some of them are kind of obnoxious. I know the text is autogenerated and pulled from a list of garbage, but when they quote your post and then add that they disagree or that your blog is of little value, I have to wonder why. Why couldn’t they just create an auto-splogging program that only says nice things about the blogs they are quoting? Crazy idiot sploggers.