Yesterday, I got a surprisingly clever bit of spam in my comment section. So I thought I would blog about it just to help fellow bloggers realise about it. The comment itself looked like this :
Hi, I left you a DOFOLLOW backlink on my website. This isnt a spam message, i actually did leave you a backlink on my site. If you check the top of the page you will see “Sites we like” and there will be a link to this site. Would you be kind enough to leave me a backlink? If so my website is CENSORED please use the anchor text “CENSORED” for the link and add it to a post or as a widget. Then please send me a email at CENSORED@CENSORED – If you want me to change your links anchor text let me know. Thanks
On clicking this link it took me to a page containing a “Sites we like” section, with the only link on it being mine, along with a browser based game under it. Oh wow, I’m the only site they like, lucky me! So, I decide to open the page in a different browser, because something didn’t feel right. Lo and behold, there is an empty “Sites we like” section.
Sneaky fecks. Basically, when you follow a link, your browser sends a bit of information to the link saying what page sent you. This is known as an http referrer. So this person had a script that if it detected an http referrer, it would automatically construct a link back – to fall the visitor into think there is a link back. Absolute rubbish when it comes to link exchange or SEO – it is a sneaky trick to try and get one way links.
I’ve left the site details and things out of the above, but other than that the comment is word for word – so please feel free to check your own comments for back-handed comments similar to this. If you do find a site that claims to link to yours – go visit it in a different browser, going directly to the page rather than heading back to it – this way if they have been super sneaky and used a cookie to store the originating site ( which would have been a simple thing to do, so no idea why the lame site didn’t do it ) then you will see that there is no back link.
That is all for now folks 🙂
lamentconfig