Originally Posted by PM from Pram Maven
Hi Mods,
I figured out your spam problem in terms of why it is happening and how you can stop it cold. You might not want to post this in public in case I'm right and you have to admit that I'm not stupid to everyone you've convinced.
First, why it is happening: when you linked to my thread in your sigs, the resulting link juice was building up and interpreted as spam by... you guessed it, SPAMMERS!
They saw all those thousands of yummy backlinks from I-mockery to Google to mean that the I-mockery/forum was A) very popular, B) very trusted by Google, and C) very vulnerable to being spammed. In essence, they saw SERIOUS LINK JUICE to exploit, and when they discovered those links were influencing the Google SERPS, they started posting.
To fix this, all you need to do is:
1. Place a "no follow" attribute in the source code of the front page of the forum; and
2. Make threads and posts invisible to anyone not logged in. You could technically make the thread titles still visible, but spammers could still use the keywords to target I-mockery or its affiliate sites and outgoing links. As long as the "no follow" tag is on the forum but not on the site itself, it will still be easy for people to find both the site and the forum on Google.
In the meantime, disabling post SIGNATURES to posters not logged in will stop *most* of the spam. Those other two things will stop it all the way. This is what I discovered we could do on another forum I was on and it really worked.
I realize this will interfere with your ability to Google bomb me from I-mockery, but you can't have it both ways. Either torment me through your sigs, or put up with SPAM. Whether you realized it or not, Tadao's idea to massively link to my thread is what caused the spammers to target this forum in the first place (call it Google Karma), so you can blame him for the current spam problem.
To reiterate, spammers must have first seen that the signatures were hiding something, and then they saw the backlinks underneath. Their spiders might even have "hitched a ride" on them, discovered that Google indexed the links in its results and said "Wow, I-mockery is a gold mine! Get your picks".
I did not encourage this situation, it just sort of happened concurrently with my exit. Consider it "The Pram Maven Curse". Anyway, all of the above info should keep your spammers at bay.
Good luck,
Don Carlson
PROBLEM SOLVER
PS: Hit me up on Yahoo sometime when you get this working. I like to fix things and solve puzzles. It would be great if, in the process of leaving, I actually made a positive contribution to the forum you hate me on. ;)
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