Topic: Growing SEO spam on Bitcointalk (Read 1055 times)

And i thought it's relative new SEO spam trick. While i agree such profile information won't get wiped by admin, simply adding rel=ugc on either all profile or limited to both new/banned account should reduce such SEO spam.

Years ago, when downloading all old profiles, I found (if I remember correctly) 30k profiles with similar URLs. Most of them are probably proxy banned, but even if they get a real ban, that profile information won't get wiped.

Today i found someone perform another way to perform SEO spam by including spam link and description on profile page. Here's an example.



In addition, there's no rel="ugc" tag which makes the URL would have higher position on search engine result. Take note i manually remove "https://www." and replace "." with "dot. I would suggest admin to add rel=ugc for link shown on profile page to discourage those spammer.

Yeah, they should only create only 1 thread/topic for their website/service. Although today there are 2 changes from my previous update.

• 2 Good, 1 Unhandled and 1 Bad into 3 Good and 1 Bad.
• This user got nuked, https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/karimu-2716490

It is unexpected that they weren't left having one single topic per user for their ads. Not banning is something expected as their topics are in the correct section, but having so many topics per each looks like spam. If they had just one per one web site, it would look more expected... And these examples is just the tip of the iceberg...

I'd just treat them as SEO spam. In addition, many of thread/reply they create are extremely similar. Anyway, i reported all of them and let's see whether moderator nuke them.

Edit: Here's current report result. 2 Good, 1 Unhandled and 1 Bad. None of them got banned or nuked. If we want to see those user got banned or nuked, i expect we'll need separate thread which contain more detailed report/explanation.

I'm not sure if this case should be considered as SEO spam, because all topics are in a Digital goods section, but how many topics is it okay to open for some different goods presented on the same site of a same project? Clone script sellers are among those who open multiple topics again and again. And they are not the only ones. Is it what should be reported or is it okay?

And nearly forgot to show examples of what do I mean.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bellascott-3580198
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/karimu-2716490
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/parkerbeleaf-3564921
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;threads;u=3120410;sa=showPosts

As for me all that looks like spam, but there are so many examples that it looks like a legitimate practice.

New shill spam wave, now it is "N3 coin on INNODEX". They make multiple accounts at the moment.

sooun22 is already banned
Others are reported, all their posts are Innodex spam, all posts are made today:
niceyoo
qwer8023
luckyday1

I guess they can make more and more shill accounts. If you'll see someone with several topics/posts with N3 advertising, I guess it will be good to report it.

It won't change anything it doesn't matter where google puts the forum in search results. If ppl want to discuss cryptocurrencies they'll find their way here.

There isn't malware here so when it's about google how much difference does deleting spam make to results? Bitcointalk's still the main forum for bitcoin because ppl find their way here from word of mouth even if google's lowering bitcointalk.org in their results.

Added a few more things. If you find anything else, feel free to send me a private message.

They now came with new links, it is on mega.nz and doesn't contain the name "PhoenixMiner" in the link. It is just of a letter-and-number combination. I've reported them, but maybe to check not only in the link, but any post with these words which contains an outgoing link?

Thank you for tagging my bot. I've added the URL

The name "PhoenixMiner" is often (ab)used to spam malware. Notify @Mitchell, so MindlessElectron can wipe them.
They're already marked on my Finding spam and scams by keyword site. Maybe MindlessElectron currently doesn't delete posts if the keyword only matches part of a word.

We have some strange activity. I found already 6 newbies (yikeoplotir, Udinatoer, SAULpetiko, Judartens, warternito, qelepotyj) who leave the same text in different topics to promote something on github. Of course I'll report all these cases, but probably some other measures can be needed. Or if you'll see the came text from a newbie just report it as well. At least it can be considered as plagiarism as there's no link on the source and all post the same (link deleted not to promote):

I'm pretty sure Bitcointalk is compliant with every Google update, all website administrators link their accounts on Google Webmaster Central so they will have updates of any incoming updates so they can take all the necessary actions, the moderators are actively deleting spam and ban people who posted malware on the forum so the forum is clean from being reported as hosting a malware.
I believe Bitcointalk is still the authority when it comes to the Bitcoin community.

Just one Google update and this could change in a blink of a second.

I wish this never to happen though. I like the forum because of the awesome members present here.

AFAIK rel="ugc" sends the same signal to Google as the old rel="nofollow" - "I don't endorse or vouch for this website". The only difference is that the signal has more granularity (identifiying the particular reason as to why the website doesn't vouch for the URL). Anyone still spamming with the effective nofollow-like links on their SEO spam is most likely doing one or more of the following:

• Doing it as a hired marketing agency and partially deceiving their client who expects dofollow links.
• Hoping to rank up to where their links become dofollow
• Are fine with getting nofollow backlinks (e.g. if the link is visible, to entice potential visitors)
• Havent bothered figuring out or monitoring if their links are dofollow

There's other reasons, but in general, those that are still spamming links that have been nofollow for 2 years now are probably not going to stop as those who do care have already figured it out and directed their efforts elsewhere.

While the discussion seems to have expanded beyond just site-wide technological solutions (to detecting, catching and discussing larger cases of SEO / link spam), rel="ugc" attributes on links posted by Newbies (so essentially anyone without any merit points) are already being added since around January, 2021:


Someone did notice the rel="ugc" attributes on signature links but I haven't seen the change to newbie links mentioned here (hence this post). Nevertheless, do keep reporting any cases of SEO spam you notice - especially if posted by non-newbie users. Also, the age of the post doesn't really matter if it's SEO spam.

I don't know what just happened but I clicked that link of yours. In that patrol page, everything is massed up, overlapped.  Maybe because of extension.

Well, posts of two most active shillers were deleted by my reports and by someone else's reports, so let's fight with spam shillers further.

Usually there's no need in reference post to report, but this time I need rather big explanation about why do I suppose that there is a group of shillers or a shiller farm.

Accounts involved:
nennanem
frank07a
n0tailbg
Mart1ncrypto
aria.newman

All these accounts were used for spam shilling cryptogeek website. Usually their posts have no content, only motivation to follow the link. One of the posts for example, not to advertise the link I'll show it with a picture:



Later frank07a and n0tailbg woke at once after about a year of inactivity just to start to shill xgo exchange. Others, except nennanem, woke at the same time after a year of inactivity, and aria.newman to quote one of a xgo shill posts of n0tailbg.

As many shillers usually do, this group is using AI bot for their posts.

copyleaks AI Content Detected
hivemoderation 99.9% likely to contain AI Generated Text

copyleaks AI Content Detected
hivemoderation 99.6% likely to contain AI Generated Text
sapling.ai Fake: 100.0%

There are several more users mentioned xgo several times this year, but I'm not sure they are also shillers, so will report these 5 accounts for first.

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.

That is all organic engagements and traffic. The forum is pretty active and I am sure we get a lot of backlinks from other websites which will give it a pretty good rating on keywords relate to bitcoin and crypto.

The admin does not actively try to improve the ratings through directed approach or pay directly to search engines to give the forum higher results in search pages.

- Jay -

I haven't seen SEO spam so didn't know it's a growing problem. I've noticed hidden texts yesterday but they weren't SEO spam they're private messages between users. Just because SEO spammers posting hidden text doesn't mean it's going to work. It's done pointlessly because it doesn't work.

The forum is doing great when it comes to relevancy and keywords dominance Bitcointalk is still on top
With a Pagerank of 6/10 they are on top of keywords researches



And with over 368,000 pages indexed, I don't see their value going down



And they still hold the number one spot on the keyword Bitcoin forum



A site that existed for 10 years does not just lose its authority.

This happens on forums which give dofollow links for added links. I do not think theymos would have allowed that for this forum. Nofollow links from this forum might carry some small weightage for which these spammers are spamming the forum.

This could work. The edited time could also be moved up to when the post or reply will not be likely seen by others.
For example, a post that was edited after 15-20 minutes is still very much new and does not need to be added to such a patrol list.

We are still very far away from the frequency of spam links that will hurt the forum's SEO ratings from google or any other search engine.
For most cases you will have to actually as a forum be encouraging such spam links and to a very high degree for it to affect the website.

The admin also seems to not care much about the rating of the forum om search engines nor take any professional action to improve it.

- Jay -

I saw the same post as this a month ago or so it is just a plain white to me I thought it is just a bug on the forum but if you do right click and "select all" the text you can see the hidden text.
I'm sure Google hates this SEO strategy it could affect also our forum it must be reported to mods.

Well, it took a little more time for these posts with spam quoting to be deleted, but they are deleted as well. Great! So we can report them too.

But unfortunately, and you are right in this, catching SEO spam in quotes is harder, because it can be in several posts from the original spam. So even if it would be deleted by report, it can be missed because links in quotes are not as visible.


I remember I reported a bunch of Bitget promoting posts as AI written. I don't know if this can be considered as SEO spam, but as to me this type of spamming, when there are multiple posts "as natural" from newbies with promotion of some project (so called virus spam) should be considered as spam, because they are not natural. But how to report them?

Unfortunately, creating a post that counts for a signature payment is more important to many members. They're literally helping spammers this way. What they should have done, is Report the post.

Can rwaltz.coom be considered as SEO spam. I tried to report these topics but they are deleted on the basis of topics, not account. For example, @cyrilmorris^[1] created 36 posts, all of which contain a rwaltz.coom link.
The same thing with Bitget^[2], which now has a signature campaign, but in the past there were a lot of accounts that created topics for nothing but promoting this service.

What is the appropriate reporting format given that not individual topics are deleted but banning the account.

[1] https://ninjastic.space/search?content=rwaltz.com | https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/cyrilmorris-2594741
[2]

If you find such examples in the Russian section, you can send reports without paying attention to the term of the post or the topic. I personally process reports regardless of the date of the post or topic. And not only spam, but any violations of forum rules. Most importantly, you don't need to cross the 2018 boundary.

Well, let's try. I just reported all the posts I mentioned in my post, including with quoted spam. Let's see what will happen. Hope even spam aged with several years will be removed, including that in quotes.

Upd. What is direct spam is already deleted (took several minutes), what was quoted is not yet. If it will not be deleted from the posts with quotes we have another one problem: if someone will help a spammer with quotation it could stay. Don't quote spammers!

I still report old spam, and it still gets deleted. The Old post warning isn't meant to keep spam:

Sometimes not. Here we can see a message left three and a half years ago (I deleted link in a quote not to help a spammer):

Several months after we can see that someone even quoted this spammy message:


And this was more than 6 months ago, so it's not advised to report it anymore... And we have:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.53728158 by the same author
and also quoted https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.53728368
and what we can find in just one single topic for years:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.59997154
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081 and quoted https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-anyone-here-a-writer-1547081

I'd say that SEO spam is not always deleted fast and I don't think it should be discouraged to report this if it is older than 6 months.

Those are hard to find, but it has been going on for years. I report them with "Spammer. Nuke please.".
But they're hard to find, and I only find them when I stumble upon them. MindlessElectron can't find them, as it only sees new posts.

One way to find them all would be if Bitcointalk creates a page like patrol, but for edited posts only.

First of all, here's definition SEO spam for those who're not aware of such term.

---

While SEO spam usually removed on this forum in short interval, in past few months i notice higher frequency of SEO spam on some boards on this forum. In addition, i notice some technique which used to evade removal/report such as,

1. Using white color and small font size.

Example of the BBcode was taken and modified from https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/electrum-server-on-windows-fulcrum-5441463. Backup link available on https://loyce.club/archive/posts/6271/62717802.html.

2. Use AI generated text to make it less spammy.


Screenshot taken from https://loyce.club/archive/posts/6266/62660310.html

3. Create reply which contain generic response/AI generated text. But later it's edited add SEO spam link, which wouldn't be noticed by most member.

4. Make reply/thread which actually engage some discussion, but padded with non relevant link. An example was mentioned on How are the rules on "link dumps"? Should this be forbidden?.

Those technique has some success where some of those SEO spam post/thread manage to last few months to years before i accidentally notice and report those. So i'm here with following suggestion,
1. Improve bot/tool which detect spam (such as MindlessElectron) to include post which combine URL with small text size or unusual color.
2. Member should report post which contain non relevant link even when the text/content doesn't look spammy with reason "SEO spam".
3. Agreeing with @NotATether post, all links posted by user should have rel="ugc" attribute.