Red Alert! Red Alert! You bloggers had better be careful about approving trackbacks. There has been a recent rise in the amount of trackback spam that is being spread all over the internet. Be very careful and check your trackbacks to make sure that the link actually exists on their page before you approve them. You are probably thinking this isn’t that big of a deal and that it doesn’t really apply to you, but I am telling you that it does.
Link building is part of my life, so don’t get me wrong about this topic. We all need links. I just hate when people steal one way links or trick you into giving them one way super juicy links. That is exactly what is happening with this trackback spam. This stuff is polluting the web on a massive scale now. It is probably happening to you on a very small scale and you don’t even realize it.
Here is how this form of spamming works:
These spammers are sending bloggers a false (fraudulant) trackback ping to inform a post that it has a new link pointing to it. Bloggers graciously approve these trackbacks thinking that it is fair reciprocity for that person linking to their post. The problem is that when you go to look for the link back to your post, you discover that it is not even there. They are basically fooling you into thinking that they linked to you so that you would give them a reciprocal link. Do you check every trackback to make sure your link is really on that page? I doubt it.
In reality though, you are giving them a one way link that is going to help them immensely for SEO purposes. Don’t let them fool you. It is happening to my blogs like crazy. I bet if you go through your trackbacks, you are going to find someone stealing link juice from you.
Trackbacks are normally dofollow links. The black hats are smart enough to make sure that they are only sending these false trackbacks notices to relevant blog posts. When you see them come in you are going to assume it is legit. It looks legit because it looks like the link is coming from a totally legit topically relevant page.
Another trick they will use is to build a page that has a whole bunch of industry or topically relevant links on it. They put fifty links or so in a long list. When you visit the page, you assume your link is in there, but you don’t want to look through every link on the page due to the amount of time it will take. So you approve the trackback thinking that your link is probably in there. If you look more closely, you can bet that you were just tricked into giving an awesome link to someone for no good reason.
My Advice For Trackback Spam:
Never approve a trackback unless it is from someone you know. If someone is linking or pretending to link to you for the trackback alone, then you are being scammed. You might decide to just turn off trackbacks completely. That is one way to solve it.
If these people are linking to you because of your post’s quality, then they certainly don’t care one bit whether or not you approve a trackback. Don’t approve it. Besides that fact, if you approve your trackback, you are turning that super juicy one way link into a mediocre reciprocal link. You are shooting yourself in the foot for having earned a high quality link. Don’t approve it.
These spammers have been getting away with this spam technique for years. While everyone had their eyes on the blog comment spammers, these guys have been spamming the heck out of the blogosphere with their bogus trackbacks. Stop donating to their cause. Pay attention closely and you will see it happening. When you see a bogus trackback on one of your friends’ blogs, make sure you let them know. Make these black hats earn their links like everyone else does. At least make their job a little harder for them.
When you do come across them on your blog, make sure you hit the spam button. That way if you are using Akismet, it sets the spam flag on them and makes their job that much harder.
I suggest you take a half an hour to go through your comment list to look for trackbacks. Check those trackback links and make absolutely certain that they really put a link in there. If they didn’t and their site looks even a little spammy, then you can bet they did this on purpose. Flag those trackbacks as spam. You’ll be doing yourself a big favor.
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I’ve noticed a few weird trackbacks too, which I didn’t approve. Usually my links are easy to find on the page linking to me, but the page just looks weird and as if it’s only designed to automatically find content to link to, kind of like a scraper. I don’t approve such trackbacks. If it’s a link from a real site/blog, then I don’t mind.
Klaus,
You must have caught my post in a feed reader to get here that fast. Otherwise it was just a rare coincidence that you commented that fast.
If you are already checking your trackbacks to make sure the links are there, then consider my post to just be a reminder to keep checking them. I always check them too. I make sure the link is there or else I delete the trackback. I also make sure it is not a spammy site.
Whenever I open a new tab in my Firefox it loads up iGoogle where I also have Google Reader and your feed is in the category that I have displayed on the frontpage, so if you’re within the last 20-something new posts of all my subscriptions, then I’m likely to see it :)
I see. By the way, my blog does not use keywordluv. I have written about keywordluv previously which has led some people to mistakenly think that I have it running on here. I don’t. (You may have noticed I edited out the TechPatio part) The simple reason I don’t use keywordluv on this blog is because I want it to be really easy to separate the people who are reading the post from the people who are just comment dropping. Thanks for being a subscriber. I hope you like what I have to say about things.
No problem, but I don’t see “@ TechPatio” as a keyword, it’s only for branding. Since my domain name is the same, and if you google “techpatio”, it’s my site that shows up as number one, so it doesn’t matter SEO-wise for me to have it as keyword or not, it’s purely for branding.
I wasn’t sure if turning off trackbacks is considered bad mannered. I don’t really think they add much value to the conversation either. I’ve been verifying the links are on the trackback pages, but I also verify that it comes from a related website. ie if someone has a link to my Photography Education blog on their sports memorabilia website, I’m not approving it.
I don’t think turning off trackbacks is bad mannered. I like to reward people who link to me, but I would not be offended if someone didn’t do the same for me. In fact, I don’t expect them to approve a trackback at all. The thought never even enters my mind when I link out to someone else.
Akismet does a really good job of blocking most trackback spam and at least putting in the SPAM bucket, I only approve trackbacks after I visit the article and see if it is a true reference or just an RSS feed import of my post, or simple link from a related item widget.
The guys who use this technique properly do not get flagged by Akismet very often Justin. They are very good at manipulating people into believing that the link is legit. Akismet catches a lot of the irrelevant trackbacks from people who spam without any thoughtful consideration whatsoever. These guys I am referring to are taking their time to hand select blogs and deliberately target them very slowly. They target people who have approved relevant trackbacks in the past. That technique works wonders for avoiding Akismet and for getting those links approved.
Akismet will serve as a deterrent to them though.
I must not be seeing too many of these then, because wouldn’t I see a trackback as pending or approved? I have my wordpress setup to email me whenever a comment or trackback is received so other than the dozens that get caught by Akismet, I don’t see much trackback manipulation yet. I can see how this abuses a DoFollow blog for sure.
I don’t think any one person will see too many of these unless you own hundreds of blogs. They don’t over spam one blog. These guys are incredibly sneaky. They are truly link thieves and would stoop to any tactics to get you to link to them. Their very deliberate selection of blogs and topics to target is what makes them so effective. Plus they know enough not to set off spam alerts by over spamming a blog. They just get one tiny link on a relevant page and move on. You may never see them again. They have been doing that for years and notice how nobody is talking about them.
To me it is just as if they had hacked my site and planted their link on a page without me ever knowing about it.
I am just raising awareness about them so that hopefully people who read my blog will spot it when it happens to them. That way they will not involuntarily contribute to the success of one of these link thieves.
Hi Kathy, I use a combination of Akismet (not the greatest, but somewhat effective) and Typepad Antispam (another WP plugin, works better for me) and it eliminates almost all trackback spam. What I am left with, I just manually approve based on the source. Hope it helps.
Manually approving based on the source is great policy Aaron. It sounds like your system works well for you.
Thanks for the heads up Kathy. I recently disabled trackbacks because it seemed like every one of them was being auto-approved. I decided I’ll just stick to pulling off nofollow tags and enabling commentluv to reward my readers.
Interesting decision Brian and probably a good one at that. I will have to pay you a little visit and collect on some of that generosity.
Hey Kathy,
I use the Simple Trackback Validation plugin for WordPress, and it does a great job of checking trackbacks to make sure there is a real incoming link!
Check it out.
Cheers,
Tia
Tia,
I can always count on you to add real value to my posts. Thank you very much. My readers would benefit immensely from that plugin. Outstanding advice.
I’m definitely one of those people who checks all trackbacks, and it’s funny because often that’s the only way I learn that someone has stolen my content. Otherwise I don’t let most of that stuff stay on my blog unless I know the person.
Must be my readers are a savvier bunch than I give them credit for. So far everybody pretty much takes some measure to ensure this is not happening to them. I guess it is still good to be reminded once in a while.
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for your post on Trackback Spam. Now, I would like to share a tip with you. I know enough of analytics tools to know that lots of information is carried forward about the referring site when you click on a link. And since the approval of those trackback links are done from within logged in internal pages, I feel I’m sending maybe too much information about my website to an unknown link. I don’t want the target site to get any information from the internal pages of my website.
The way I check trackback links therefore is: I never click on the link from within my blog itself. I copy the link and directly paste the link on my browser and I clear my browser cookies afterward. Now am I being a bit too careful?
Now I have a question. I‘ve seen a number of trackback from websites that actually do have a link back to mine, but they are not real blogs. They are aggregator sites that mention blog posts or tweets about some specific subject. Personally, I don’t want to approve such trackbacks. What’s your opinion on that?
Ben,
I think you are being unnecessarily careful about checking the link source. I don’t see how that extra info is going to benefit them. If it makes you feel better though, I suppose there is no right or wrong way to do that.
As far as your question goes, I would not link back to any site unless I was willing to give that site my link juice. So, I guess it depends on the aggregator. If it was one I was affiliated with, then I wouldn’t mind the link back. I would not give them a link for every scrape either though. If it was one that I had nothing to do with and didn’t even ask for, then I most certainly would not give it any links back at all.
Thanks Kathy for the informative post. I have only had one trackback and I knew the person who did it. They are a regular commenter on my site and I visit their site regularly too. Something more for me to look for when my traffic increases to the level of you bigger bloggers. Great to learn these things before they happen. I will install the plugin Tia suggested. I regularly visit her blog and learn heaps from her too.
Patricia Perth Australia
Glad you liked it Patricia. You aren’t likely to see a lot of these really good trackback spammers. Just keep your eye open for them just in case.
Keep your eye on Tia too. You are wise to read and subscribe to her blog. I think she is going places.
Great advice Kathy, I usually turn of pingbacks and trackbaks in WordPress admin, and I never approve any that may come through, besides the SPAM issue, I think they make blogs look very messy.
Hey JR,
I guess turning them off completely is the safest bet. If people want to link to you then great. As far as being messy, I have seen a few posts with so many trackbacks that it did look messy. So, I know what you mean.
Hi Kathy, I never approve track-backs on my posts, but thank you for the alert. I took the time to both stumble this & tweet it. Thanks again for the advice.
I’m glad you liked it enough to promote it Rose. I do appreciate that. Thank you.
You are touching the right point! It is a so-called smart way that spammers are using now and I check all trackbacks before approval. Many autoblogs steal my contents and linkback but never got my approval too :-)
If those auto-blogs are republishing your links then they are doing you a favor. Just make sure you place a link here and there that link back to your own website.
I have noticed a few too Kathy, not approved them though, i do check everything because in the end it pay’s to do so… at least until it gets so bad or overwhelming that I can’t… then it goes off.
Like you say, it’s really only a problem if you have alot of blogs (blogger blogs were never a problem for this) or a massive trafficked blog that it gets to be too many, those pages don’t need them on yet their comments are a mess for having it. ;)
Always worth checking anyway, same as with comments and links and everything else. :)
I agree Rob. If things got out of hand with trackback spam I would just disable them entirely. No sense spending too much time dealing with that.
I used to have trackbacks enabled. It was a good way to collect links, but since then I have just disabled the feature.
Instead I try and see who links to me – I still get the notifications – and then visit their blog, or engage with them somehow. I don’t really think I’ve gotten less links since then, but I have a lot less stress.
Makes sense Chris. Same links and less stress.
I think that people will see your site as being higher quality if they see other sites linking in to it. Publishing trackbacks is one way to give social proof that other people like the content you offer.
That is definitely one aspect worth considering. I guess it depends on the type of visitors you want to engage on your site and what they look for as indicators of a good blog.
I had so much “trackback” spam that I turned trackbacks off, now if a commentator is serious about things, they can get some get some well deserved linkage from CommentLuv ;)
Karen,
If they were smart, they would take you up on that offer. People who use Commentluv are indeed very generous with their links.