Naughty, Naughty SEO Agency

Andrew Burnett — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:04:29 +0000

I have long suspected that such things go on, but it is only very recently that I have actually found proof. An SEO agency spamming social bookmarking and spamming it incredibly badly.

SEO

SEO, or search engine optimisation, agencies are tasked by clients to improve their search engine visibility. A large part of improving search engine visibility involves getting links to whichever page it is that should be more visible. There are literally millions of articles online dedicated to this. I won’t do them the disservice of rewriting them here, but if you don’t know about it (and are interested) there’s plenty out there for you to read.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a collective term for services such as stumbleupon, digg, mixx and a thousand other services. All of them allow users to both bookmark webpages which interest them and share them with their friends, the majority of these services have some sort of algorithmic sorting mechanism to sort the shit from the shit hot. Another thing they all have in common is that they are “social”, users can “follow” other users, comment on other users links. You know, social.

Evidence

I literally stumbled upon this particular instance of social bookmarking spamming by one particular SEO agency. I have blanked out everything which identifies either the username or the clients of this agency:

I have a damn fine way of finding more SEO agencies doing the same, and I am convinced there are loads to find. For the time being I’ll keep that to myself, though people with a decent idea of how the web works will be able to fathom it out for themselves too. This particular SEO agency has been particularly obvious in that they’ve used the same username across a huge number of social bookmarking sites, here’s a screenshot of a Google search for their username (with the identifiable bits removed):

Why would an SEO agency spam social bookmarking?

“Every link counts” might be one explanation, though I really need to ask “really? REALLY?”
Has this agency not considered the potential implications of their actions?
Why does this agency bookmark pages which nobody else deems worthy of bookmarking?
Why doesn’t this agency create astonishingly great content for their client and bookmark that?

By abusing social bookmarking in this fashion they are, in effect, linking each of their clients with a spammy footprint. Search engines reference social links as an indicator of quality! Anyone, but especially SEO agencies, considering spamming social bookmarking with spurious and mediocre bookmarks should consider these questions:

Will they also use spammy signals to punish rankings?

Is that a gamble that you should really be taking with your clients and their reputations?

Is that a gamble that your clients should be funding?

Thank You Twitter Spammers

Andrew Burnett — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:56:39 +0000

Somebody somewhere is “teaching” people how to “build massive networks overnight” I just know it. Well with love from me to you, *thanks.

I started seeing profiles following me [ @andrewburnett ] which disturbed me. I have only been on Twitter since May 2008, since then I have seen some disturbing things, but not like this! Things that may put me off following back are the content of tweets or the website a follower has listed on their profile. There is a freshly laid dog-ploppy on my doorstep of late.

The Nature Of The Beast

These are devilish wee blighters, I’ll give them that. To start with I wondered how they did it, 1000+ followers with under 50 posts. It doesn’t matter HOW they do it (essentially what they do is add roughly 2000 people overnight, wait a couple of days and unfollow most of them again). What matters is WHY they do it: By getting huge networks of “blind followers” they have a larger target audience to unleash their nonsense on.

The Nature Of The Web

A prime example is plying her (or his) trade as I write – I’m making screenshots of the progress s/he is making. I took screenshots at 18:02, 22:41 and 23:32:

18:02 1999 following 1717 followers 22 updates.

22:41 105 following 1653 followers 22 updates.

23:32 1912 following 1906 followers 35 updates.

The Nature Of The Web Pt. II

As I write this there is a phishing attack appearing on Twitter, you may have seen it. Direct Messages are sent from friends saying “hey! check out this funny blog about you… h**p://jannawalitax.blogspot.com/” [link broken on purpose] the page you land on redirects you to another page inviting you to sign in to twitter. The sting is the page asking you to log in is very, very, VERY bogus. [Further post to come.]

What Next?

This twitterer will build up a following of however many thousand and over time become more difficult to spot. Then again, someone who wants to “build a massive network overnight” isn’t interested in the long term and will give up.

*thanks because the more intelligent of these halfwits have given up but didn’t stop following people. This inflates my number of followers making me seem more important than I really am.

Thanks again for following me mister/missus spammer but don’t expect a follow back :)

AndrewBurnett.com» spammers