Topic: Growing SEO spam on Bitcointalk - page 2. (Read 1174 times)

Well, I want to bring up this topic once more. Are there any ideas what to do with all that shilling? I still see sometimes posts with Bitget shilling and I'm not sure what to do with that.

Now we have a started wave of 0xfutures shilling. I tried to report one of them (NFTflow8545) for AI posting but my reports are still unhandled. Today we have someone with the closest name NFTking84530 who pretends to be not knowing much about 0xfutures. And we have also Eugene_1, John306 and CryptoFit99055 who shill 0xfutures also.

If not to delete all that shilling, there will be lots of spammers with it, but how to report that effectively?

And then users who will use it as a report model will quote spam posts to that topic helping spammers and there will be a need of explaining that it shouldn't be done, each time. Maybe in exceptional cases explanation of why is it SEO spam can be left even here, but I don't think we should motivate to collect spam posts. Moderators usually see when you report them (it's not so long message for a report form) and delete messages or ban spammers basing on exact case.

We have dedicated threads for reporting plagiarism and AI spam - perhaps you should start a thread to collect SEO spam reports to use as references in case moderators for one reason or another do not see the reports in the mod section. It would probably do better in the Meta section though since there's a unanimous consensus that posting SEO spam has nothing to do with "reputation" but is really just bot activity.

On markets focused on SEO services, you can often see offers xy backlinks from guest posts, comments, forum posts... I think that in most such cases such an active link is only needed for a few days, the delivery of the report on the service performed and the payment for it represents the end of the need for that spam post with a link.

---

Is there any consensus on how to report these SEO spammers? Since a ban is requested in such cases, I assume that just reporting the posts to the moderator is not enough.
For example, this user and his new post

If to go deeper I guess there could be several times more. But it takes time and I hope even this hunt can a bit demotivate spammers: they can see that their work for many months has been deleted so it's not as interesting to spam here as previously. If their new spam will be reported as soon as appears, there will be less those who want to spam on this forum.

P.S. And sometimes I'm not so sure... for instance this guy is definitely promoting his site in several posts, but... is it useful or should it be reported?

If classical SEO spam is inserted in rather short posts, nowadays some spammers make long AI written posts for a several paragraphs. But the idea is the same, to put a link in it. AI detectors work good for this kind of spam, because their main idea is to place a link and not to rank up. So easy to report as well.

Those who use AI to rank up is harder to catch. They don't place links, they usually edit posts, etc. But it is another topic.

If they aren't reported it's encouraging them so we don't have options. I've said I haven't found them but I'd report if I did see them. If SEO spam's a problem isn't it possible to catch offending posts earlier. It'd make life difficult for SEO spammers if they're banned they'll be creating increasing numbers of brand new accounts.

I'm not exactly sure if what OP presented is the same as this example:

Because I've definitely seen shit like the link jokers10 pointed out, but not the AI-generated post with that code OP described (that I know of anyway).  Have we got a new form of link spam here or what?  I ask this as someone who is not a coder and is basically an idiot amongst geniuses when it comes to this kind of stuff.

I do agree that bitcointalk has been the stomping ground for all sorts of spammers for years, though.  I've seen all kinds of it, and a few years ago there was some group (or an ambitious individual) that was posting advertisements for mens' products and other garbage, and I recall doing a lot of reporting back then.  I'd support anything to cut down on this shit, because the quality of most discussions is lousy to begin with and we definitely don't need SEO spam being inserted into posts and going undetected, thereby encouraging spammers to keep doing it.

I once thought I would do this when I was an active blogger. But my moneysite blog has nothing to do with crypto so I don't spam SEO with links in this forum.

I think every attribute linked to a site has an impact on Google's crawling. Either dofollow, nofollow, or dead address (text only). In my opinion, the safest way to overcome this problem is to use short links, if want to be even more secure, make dead short links (not direct links). so everyone who wants to open the link must copy and paste in a new tab. However, this may be inconvenient and discourage people from reading related references

edit:
Or if possible there are new rule that accounts with a certain level can attach a link. If the level is insufficient then the link will become a dead link

I decided to spend some time for this problem recent days. The result of this hunt is a bit less than 200 nuked spammers (of course not all caught, just small part of). So now I have some representative enough sample for some conclusions.

1. Main problem is that users for some reason don't want to report spam when they see it. Some spammers had several dozens of SEO spam posts for months or even years. If they were reported, they'd be nuked with all that dozens of spam posts. I guess those who read this topic know how to report already, so no need to urge for reporting here. But if not to urge users to report spam we'll stay with this problem.

SEO spam is not so intensive, it's just not reported.

2. Mostly all spammers have 0 merit, very few have 1 occasional merit. I guess if you are hunting on spammers you can ignore users from member rank and up.

3. I see no way of automating this process. Human eyes should see posts before deleting. Legit and natural posts with links can look technically the same way as SEO spam. Human will see the difference easily, but technically it is just a post with a link. Of course it can be helpful for a spam hunter if there will be a list of posts with links from newbies and juniors, but only if someone will decide to look through them all. And I think that much more than a half will be natural or legit posts.

So if users will report SEO spam as soon as will see it, this problem can be easily solved. Moderators promptly nuke spammers and all their spam posts when reported.

Of many SEO spammers accounts I saw majority is newbies and there also were several Jr. members. They don't get merits so they hardly will grow. If to turn off text decorating links will stay, but they will lose an option of changing the color to black so that the links looked like the rest of the text. So it will be easier to see them and then to report.

This is the link and this is also the link.

Of course spammers are nuked then, but to catch them we should see SEO spam links.

If SEO spammers actively dwell in numbers you've said action's got to be taken. Turning off text decorating for newbies won't give permanent solutions because they'll avoid getting caught. Their Activity's going to grow over time so they'll post with high ranks. It's sensible to let them make posts to get caught. They should have accounts nuked they've been reported.

There is a statement from theymos above why he hardly will like to do so. But I walked down some posting of SEO spammers today (and there are really many of them, probably many hundreds or even thousands) and I think there's one thing which can be done for easier visibility of SEO spam: turn off text decorating for at least newbies and better for Jr. members as well. Those who report will easier see where spam is.

Next is that if someone quoted spam there should be no surprise that a post with such quote could be deleted (some are still not and I'm not sure they will be; I hope mods at least will modify those posts and delete a spammy link).

It will not solve the problem entirely, but IMO at least will help with reporting, deleting and banning.

Spammers often won't see things like this and will continue to do the same. I want to say that this kind of improvement will not reduce the spam rate on the forum.
I would suggest a different type of change, that is, Newbies (maybe even Jr. Members) cannot leave a clickable link in their post. Something like restriction in signatures, they can write a link, but it will be just plain text.
Certainly, this type of SEO spam comes from accounts registered only for the purpose of that post. If they cannot do that, it will discourage them, because they certainly have no intention of participating in the forum and building accounts. Higher-ranked members generally do not engage in this method of spamming, so that would be enough from that side.

When he did it did you should've asked why he posted his link on your quote. Deleting posts isn't a solution but posts can't stay after being reported. Banning or having stricter procedures won't stop ppl they'll find ways. If they're banned they'll make new accounts.

Because I haven't noticed SEO spamming doesn't mean it doesn't happen. If you didn't create the thread I wouldn't have learned it’s a problem. I'll report it if I'll see it. I'm saying SEO spamming's pointless because if they're promote a scam Double bitcoin scam websites by posting hidden text in Fun & learning Bitcoin blockchain downloaded on 1TB Silicon Power 2.5 SSD how's SEO spammers gaining in on topic threads. If it's topics about casinos spammed with referrals it's more attractive for spammers but we don't know success fail ratios in indexes.

This applies:
If spammers can't post links, they'll just spam a bit more until they have enough Activity to edit their old posts and add spam links. But a new user with a technical problem who can't post a link will just give up.

This problem happened to me once in the forum, when I wrote a post containing a link, and I was surprised the next day that a member quoted my post with his own link, I reported immediately and the post containing the suspicious quote was deleted.

Reporting such spam is completely healthy, but deleting posts is not a solution. There should be stricter procedures with members who publish such spam, such as banning or at least preventing them from having the power to include links.

Well that means that nofollow is no longer effective enough to completely shut out link building by spammers. However, there's two new attributes I've read about which can help in this case:

rel="sponsored": To be used for advertisements and has no effect on Google page rankings

rel="ugc": For all user-generated content (e.g. forums), also prevents the links from being used in page rankings.

(You can check https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/07/24/what-google-says-about-nofollow-sponsored-and-ugc-links-in-2020-does-it-affect-your-seo-rankings/ for a more detailed explanation.)

So in this case, I believe that Theymos should change the attribute to rel="ugc" to solve this problem.

I'm sure Bitcointalk is a NOFOLLOW site, prior to March 1, 2020, all links on NOFOLLOW sites have no effect on indexing and ranking.


But after March 1, 2020, Google treats links on NOFOLLOW sites as a hint to index or rank a site


So SEO spam is now being used to try to index or crawl a site, especially a new site.
But I don't think Bitcointalk will be penalized for those Spam links but its recommended to be take these down



https://searchengineland.com/google-to-treat-nofollow-link-attribute-as-a-hint-after-march-1-2020-321664

https://moz.com/blog/nofollow-sponsored-ugc

Note: I have the same response to one of your posts and this is the reason why there is a high frequency of SEO spam.