Memory lane
Internet years. Whew. They go by so fast.
I was working on a new set of sites over the weekend. I haven’t done anything in this niche before, so I looked up a few neat keywords. Decided on which ones looked to pay off best and made some pages.
Then it was time to get some links pointing in the right direction. I was very close to pulling the trigger on the automagic spaming machine, but I didn’t.
I decided to look over the serps for some specific kw combos. I found some places that I haven’t spammed before, so I looked at the individual sites.
Here’s the memory lane part of it. I used to do this every time I got ready to drop some links. The old way of looking at the site and trying to judge the merit of dropping a link allowed me to insert a captcha if it was required. It also allowed me to register if required. The auto system I developed doesn’t do those things.
So, I’m looking at the place. I’m looking at the spam that is already present. Using purely subjective judgement as to the quality of the sites that have spammed this place.
Reading the comments/trackbacks that have been dropped in there. Some of them are pretty funny. Some of them are pathetic. A lot of them don’t use the anchor text capacities. ‘Course, they’re all spam.
A quick count on one of them says that it will probably work well enough. Less than 100 comments. So I drop a link there. Manually. It is accepted. Cool. I verify the link in another window. Yep. It’s there and waiting for the spiders.
I go back to the original search and select another suspect. Similar procedure, similar results.
Back to search and the next one would probably result in major damage. The post is about catching spammers in the act. The first couple of replies are encouraging the OP to share IP’s and such. More posts about the expected results, etc.
Reading down the comments and trackbacks I see an abundance of “The Usual Suspects” (viagra, cialis, hoodia). There also appear to be about a thousand comments and trackbacks. Too many for my taste, but obviously not for those who had done it.
The interesting thing about this (probable) honeypot is that the title of the blog doesn’t give a clue that it is, or could be, a spam trap. My auto spammer wouldn’t have been able to discard this blog and I could have been outing myself instantly.
A trip down memory lane now and then can be a good thing. This trip reminded me to be extremely careful before I pull the trigger on the automated stuff.
Do you have sufficient filters on your auto spammer?
~dink
Comment by What is svchost?
Hey Dink -
like you but am always looking for ways to make it more efficient.
I was just wondering what you look for when doing your link drops on blogs? DO you have a tool that enumerates the top N results in Google for ‘keyword phrase’ and returns those that are viable candidates for dropping? I’m just curious as I do most of my linking manually (as can be seen from this post
Nick
Comment by Dink
Hi Nick,
Ya, I have some tools that I use for the blog spamming. I mostly do trackback spamming for gobs of links. I’ll do some comment spamming for good staying power in the serps.
For my automagic set-up, I use a four step process.
1. I scrape G for my keyphrase. That gives me a list of sites in my niche. This will return the top 1k sites.
2. I scrape the sites linking to the sites from step 1, looking for the term ‘trackback’ on the page.
3. I record the URL for all pages that get a positive in step 2. I then run some regex stuff to get rid of the blogs that I don’t want to mess with (MT, and those with captcha) for whatever reason.
4. I spam the fish out of what is left. I record all successful trackbacks for future use.
That system was developed over several months of hand spamming. It got to where I could take a look at a target site’s backlinks and get a feel for how easy or hard the spamming would be.
That’s pretty much it. Was that what you had in mind?
Comment by Windows Processes
Hey Dink -
Ya, thats kinda what I was looking for. Honestly, I’m just brainstorming for ideas on how to promote a new set of WH sites that I’ve created, quickly and easily. I’ve used Joseph Tierney’s Comment Spammer a while back for some of my splogs and eventually created my own php script taht could do the same thing, but ran from a cron and only did short bursts of spamming to try and stay under the radar. I always ran into the problem that you mentioned though…spamming on a site that I shouldn’t and getting my domain banned the next day. This is something I really want to avoid with my new set of sites so I’m trying the manual, hand to hand method (so, 2003, I know :). You have any WH sites that you mess around with, or just disposable bh sites that you don’t care if they get banned?
Nick
Comment by Dink
Ya, I have quite a few wh sites. Well, they’re more like gray than white. Pretty spammy sales sites. Matter of fact, I lost about a third of my network this past summer. They aren’t banned, just so far back in the serps that they’ll never be seen. I didn’t even use any ‘real’ bh methods on them either. G stopped passing trust, or rank, or authority, or whatever, on a whole slew of backlinks.
Which brings us to this: You can only count on links that are under your control.
If you can control the links, then you can control the anchor text. If you control the anchor text you have the fate of your target in your hands.
So, I guess what I’m saying is this: Build your own network of semi-wh sites. Blogs, fora, directories, whatever. Keep them clean and update the content frequently.
You already know how to use anchor text effectively (heh), so you shouldn’t have any problems giving your wh sites all the link love they need.
That’s my recommendation. Build a network that you control. Get the network ranked and crawled frequently. You’ll make a fortune. Send money. LOL.
Comment by What is dllhost.exe?
Alright thats basically what I have been shooting for. I guess my biggest issue is that I get anxious and start stat-watching and wanting to turn that site thats making 2 or 3 bucks a day to a 5 or 6 dollar site. Getting blinded by the actual prospect of being able to create an actual sustainable income off this stuff, I guess. Ah well, back to building.
Nick
ps: I included my gtalk account in this one if you wanna chat/swap war stories off-page
Comment by Dink
Glad to help.
You forgot to send the money. LOL
Comment by taky
Dink, I do trackback spam almost exactly the way you do
Comment by Gab
Dink, I’m really enjoying your site and was wondering whether it might be possible for us to chat on MSN?
If you’re interested, shoot me an email at the address listed with this comment and we can swap IM addresses.
Comment by Dink
Hi Gab. Ya, we can chat. Glad you’re enjoying too. I’ll shoot you an email right now.