Trackback Spam (Why is it Still Around?)
OK… we’re fairly new to dark underbelly of the SEO world called “black hat,” but we’re still amazed that stuff like TrackBack Spam still exists today.
Most bloggers, even techie types, don’t fully understand trackback pings and their use. So, for those of you new to this “Trackback” thing, here’s a good Trackback Tutorial that discusses the basics (particularly as they pertain to the popular blogging software WordPress).
I have to believe the reason why black-hats like trackback links is they typically don’t use the rel=”nofollow” attribute (though some are starting to now), which means the link actually passes link “juice” to the entity that issues the trackback.
Am I right that search engines have learned to recognize links found in the “Comments” sections of blog posts, and are heavily discounting these types of links even if they don’t contain the nofollow attribute? If so, then why are black-hatters are still using trackbacks to spam blogs to this day, even though this technique of spamming has been around for years?
The trackback specification intent was to spur online discussions between blogs, but certainly it’s opened a can of worms.
Comments / Trackbacks anyone?
Filed under: Marketing by admin
The reason why trackback spam exists seems obvious to me. It gets a small weight with the serch engines; with a empphasis on SMALL WEIGHT. The “blackhats” can gain a small advantage by using this form of spam, so some do so.
This sort of thing does reduce the chances of having a well functioning blogging community, which is not good.
Steffen,
Thanks for the insight! So I guess it’s just like email spam… there’s no real way to prevent it, so we’re just forced to live with.
Time to start my trackback spamming campaign!