Quote:
Originally Posted by stevej37
In the last year or so, there have been many, but I never see them with links in their comments.
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Steve, that's the trick. They make a harmless post, then come back a few days later and edit it to include a link to a website.
I asked a bot why they do that, here's their answer -
Quote:
The primary purpose of adding spam links to forum posts is to artificially boost the search engine ranking of a website by creating numerous backlinks to it from other online sources, often with the goal of driving more traffic to the linked site, usually for commercial reasons like selling products or services; essentially, they are trying to manipulate search engine algorithms to rank higher in search results without providing genuine value to the forum discussion.
Key points about spam links on forums:
SEO manipulation:
The main goal is to improve search engine optimization (SEO) by generating a large number of links pointing to the spammer's site, even if the links are irrelevant to the forum conversation.
Low-quality content:
Spam links often lead to websites with low-quality content or content that is not relevant to the forum topic.
Negative impact on forum quality:
Spam links can clutter forums, making it harder for users to find valuable information and negatively impacting the user experience.
Detection by moderators:
Forum moderators actively monitor for spam links and often remove them, sometimes even banning users who repeatedly engage in this practice.
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That probably isn't going to format correctly.
Adding the link later gets around the moderator detection, as often by the time the link is added, the thread has fallen off the main page. I was going to point out a user doing this, but since the posts I can remember have been deleted, I can't show you an example.
The next time you see a weird, sort of out of place post by a user with a low post count, click on their name and select "view other posts by
". Then look at some of those posts, and they will often turn some of the words in their post into a hyperlink to a website (the letters turn blue instead of black). Hover over those and you'll see a link to a site that hopefully you never would want to click on.
Edit - Turbofan would be an example of a user who posts stuff, then comes back 3 - 4 days later and adds a link.
https://forums.pelicanparts.com/search.php?do=finduser&u=88928