A new type of backlink spam.
Just at the end of May, post Penguin 2.0 I noticed a flurry of pingback notifications. If you one wordpress site creates a backlink to another wordpress site, the site creating the backlink sends a notification automatically in the form of a comment to the site it’s linking too. If you have auto publishing of comments switched on the pinback or backlink is then publish. So the post that you created, publishes a comment with a backlink to the site that gave you a backlink. No big deal?
It’s a big deal
Most SEOs would consider a reciprocal link as a harmless activity and not a bad way to share content. However the flood of pingbacks that I’m seeing to this blog is insane. 20 – 30 a day. At first I thought someone was trying to negative SEO our site. When I went and checked these sites though there was no backlink. Mmmmm. In this situation I think the spammers are using automated software to find blog posts link to them and then remove the backlink. In this way they get a percentage of one way backlinks to their properties.
It’s A Horrible SEO Technique
Most of the backlinks I was getting were from the usual spammy suspects. Pharmaceuticals, Ug boots etc. Then yesterday I got this one.
The above pingback is referencing a blog post where I was conducting an experiment on the phrase “SEO Consultant Melbourne”. Check out the source of the pingback. A page with SEO Consultant in it and unlike the others there is a link to us from that page. The page is a piece of junk though. Default old WP theme with low quality content. There is anchor text for one SEO Consultant though. A jonathansearle.com . Not sure if he has anything to do with that page as the domain is privately registered.
Is this happening to your blog?
I’d love to know. What is the software they are using? The moral of this story though is to always have auto publishing of comments switched off.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
