Danny Sullivan: How Link Spammers Killed My Wife’s Web Site
daggle.com
daggle.com
*Edit: just typed "drupal ak" in Google which auto-completed and took me to just such a plugin. I'm sorry, but if you can't figure that out, you have no business on the web.
"I’m not naive. I understand that sites should have anti-spamming filters in place. Lorna’s had some. It could have more. But I’ve also seen spam get through anti-spam filters on my own Sphinn social news site. That site employs multiple-CAPTCHA barriers, along with an array of other deterrents. It also has human moderators. Link spammers still attack it. Link spammers will attack ANYTHING out there, and nothing is foolproof. The first programmer that tells you they have a perfect anti-spam solution will soon after encounter another programmer who will blow that fallacy out of the water."
His experience pretty much mirrors my experience. Just using any of the main CMSs out there (drupal, joomla, wordpress, etc) will give you an entry in a bunch of databases of people that will 'visit' you with gifts from time to time.
Sounds to me like whoever they hired to do the site didn't have much of a clue.
She could, if she wants, get this latest huge barrage of spam cleared out on Boudica and improve spam filters going forward, if she choses. She’s currently debating this. It just may be, as I explained above, that this was the thing that tips her toward closing the site, something she was already considering because of low usage.
In a way it's probably not a bad thing if low traffic me-too style sites are discouraged a little - if there's something worth keeping then for the cost of a meal for two you can hire someone to install a captcha (or whatever) and strip out the spam. If the content isn't worth that then, does the web need it.
The story sounds more like the tale of someone who didn't have time or resources to do anything with there not-especially-unique website and then got annoyed because it attracted more bad attention than good.
The link-spam is an excuse, IMO, to close the site and not lose face. Sure it's annoying, sure it shouldn't happen (like people putting flyers on your windscreen), but don't lose sleep over it.
I'm using a hacked version of MyCaptcha specifically to avoid that problem.
Some people walk in to this web thing totally unprepared for the assault by the bad guys and that can be psychologically enough to push someone to the point of saying forget about the whole thing.
Even with all the countermeasures in place I still find myself being very selective with the sites where I enable comments by anonymous users, even the best solutions are not 100% effective and when you get a few thousand or more attempts to spam shite some of it will get through. So it will always need a manual step to avoid things getting out of hand.
And in spite of all that, it's not rare to wake up to 1,000 or more comments using some new loophole that get posted in one night.
If his wife isn't capable enough to remove these from the database programatically then I can see how a few of those episodes would be enough to throw in the towel.
Spammers are seriously destructive.
Take a look at the 'new' page of HN with showdead on to see how much of it gets posted here. And quite a few of those are removed manually.
But what it's taught me is to be a better developer, and to learn new anti spam techniques. I feel bad because the site probably meant a lot to her. He should have helped her out more.
I fully agree with that. I would do that for strangers, not doing it for your wife seems rather rude. It would take less time to put a 90% solution in place than it would take to write that blog post.
It's possible she wanted to do it for herself without his help. FTA:
>She assembled the site entirely on her own, finding a programmer, working to develop the features and watching over the small community that made use of it.
Obviously blatant link stuffing on non-related topics is spam.
Obviously on-topic paragraphs of text on-topic without links is not spam.
What about on-topic posts with a link back to my affiliate sales on on-topic products?
What about on-topic posts with 5 links back to my affiliate sales page? (check out my favorite 5 workout videos on a post about womens health).
How substantial does the content need to be? "I really enjoyed this post, and I think that you are right on about XYZ. I read this book <amazon affiliate url>".
Basically, the problem with web spam is that the obvious stuff slaps you in your face as obvious. The gray area is really wide in some cases.
Also, the whole post was predicated on the fact that people have an obligation to provide you value when you put up a web form. That seems pretty presumptuous. I decided to send an HTTP POST with my content. You decided to post it up to the world.
How about this: any comment posted by an automated process and not a human is spam?
That means it doesn't matter if its no follow or not, you're still getting benefit. You may not be getting a direct benefit to your own site, but at the least you're hurting a "competitor".
In other words, link spammers didn't kill the site. They just pushed a decision she was already contemplating.