An ingenious way to deal with my spammers...

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   ryankettposted 13 years ago

   On my site Excerptz that is.
   
   I get the occassional flurry of posts from people using article spinners, a couple at a time. They get trashed as soon as I notice, and the erased from the trash.
   
   The likelyhood is that they then use an automated backlink tool of some sort to build backlinks to the article. I deleted a few which had been left for a couple of days.
   
   They are getting a bit of search engine traffic, in one case a hell of a lot, but that is now going to a 401 page which is not really monetized and has only links to an archive. As such the bounce rates are 95% or something.
   
   Now, they say that 401's are bad. So, I don't want any 401's. I just replaced the ranking post, on the same URL, with this post:
   
   Sorry the article *title keywords here* has been removed from Excerptz having breached our terms of service. We only allow quality content on Excerptz, it is believed that the post *title keywords here* was produced with an article spinner. Text links anchored with the keywords Relevant keyword here and Relevant keyword here within the post were included in a fashion which made no sense and thus compromised the quality of the article.
   
   If you are the author of this article then consider rewriting in coherent English, tastefully using links. We value all great content at Excerptz but will remove any articles which we feel compromise the overall quality of the site. It is our policy to replace deleted URLs with a post which explains the removal of the content rather than produce a 401 error page, this helps prevent crawling errors which will in turn devalue the site in the eyes of the major search engines.
   
   If any Excerptz writer, or indeed the original author, wishes to reproduce the article to a higher standard and reclaim the URL they are more than welcome to do so by contacting Excerptz directly. We will always accept high quality original material on any subject other than those that contravene terms of service.
   
   If you have stumbled across this page whilst searching for reviews of [b]keyword here/b] then please do consider browsing our other posts by visiting the Exceptz homepage or alternatively, for your convenience, check out Google results for xxxxxxx. (link back to Google search there, rather than a 'back').
   
   
   Thank you Mr black hatter for a) your keyword research, b) your backlinks. I will now leave spun content for a few days, giving any black hatter the false sense that their article has been accepted on the site, before hijacking the URL. I'm not even deleting their accounts, just their sh*t content.
   
   I have a few more to do the same for. If they want to rank the site for something, and give some backlinks, then great. But they aren't getting the backlink from my site to theres.

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   TerryGlposted 13 years ago

   Excellent Ryan, and I completely agree with you on this one. You are 100% right that the marketer will continue with the backlink campaign and I like the idea that someone can reclaim the url.
   
   Not only that but the rss and pinging of the new article is surely to help your site.
   
   There was a wso written along the same lines. Throw up a forum on your tld, have all the spamers hit it hard to build the links to the tld. Once your satisfied with that, drop the forum and enjoy all those free backlinks.
   
   I know the software that can "try to" autopost on your powered by site. The flurry will come from when a coder adds your site into a packet.
   
   I think though, it would be great for you to keep the url the article used so you make the most of the subsequent link building campaign.
   
   Nice site too, by the way. Great concept.

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      ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Cheers Terry, not sure how the site will hold up with the algo change, but it is growing at a stupidly fast rate so far. CTR is low, so I will have to play with the ad positions at some stage.
      
      The reason that I have allowed people to reclaim the URL (even the spammer if they are cheesed off with the effort expended) is solely because I didn't want the honest users feeling that I was out for 100% of impressions of valuable keywords. In fact, I even have the homepage ads set to randomize so that 80% of those are shared out completely randomly, which is why I am trying to redirect traffic to the homepage(other similar sites retain 100% of the homepage ads).
      
      In other words, if somebody wants to come along and take 80% back from me for the an already indexed page then they are more than welcome
      
      As it happens, they looked to use really good spinners (the type that you would use I guess ) but they simply then worked in keywords in a way that didn't make sense at all.
      
      If they had found a way to make it fully legible then they are more than welcome on the site. I haven't even removed them from the userbase, they can use their high quality spinners, just so long as they don't f*ck it all up with the inappropriate use of keywords.

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         TerryGlposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         So true. I know with Sick Submitter, when we do a run we put spinnable content in each field. The software will then go out and submit the one spun article.
         
         I unlike many others, do what is called a super spin. That is I spin up to 300%. That way I am not wasting my efforts. Now when others spin up to say 35%, they are producing rubbish.
         
         Now what is good for you, is the software also builds links through ping and rss feeds. I have seen sites do what your doing, then swap the script over to a shopping mall or other high income earner. The software users have helped you already before you start by getting your site exposure in the serps.
         
         I think your onto something quite big here and has huge amounts of potential.

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            ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            I am inspired partly by Snipsly.
            
            To be a little more precise, I am envious of their Alexa ranking.  To be completely honest, I think that they can be doing much more with their traffic.
            
            Let's just say that I see the potential for subdomains, if I were Snipsly with that much traffic I would probably have deals.snipsly.com, coupons.snipsly.com, classifieds.snipsly.com, freebies.snipsly.com, news.snipsly.com and a whole host of other subdomains by now.
            
            Once you have broken the top 10000 you can do what you want, and whilst I will always retain the Adsense revenue sharing aspect to the site, any site with a sub-8000 alexa ranking should really be growing outwards by now.
            
            So thanks, for showing me that my vision isn't entirely insane. This is stage one of the plan, win the traffic. How to turn that traffic into serious money is the next bit in the medium term. If I did get to the top 8000 (like Snipsly) I would be making enough money through alternative means to give 100% AdSense to any contributors for the content sharing bit - so yep, I do see the bigger picture
            
            I do need to get my own server sorted though, bluehost won't be fulfilling my needs by then.
            
            The possibilities are endless. I believe that the owner of Snipsly gets informed when her site is mentioned, so expect to see various Snipsly subdomains emerge soon

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   ryankettposted 13 years ago

   I will hastily add that the site won't be as gung-ho as Snipsly, I suspect that their duplicate content ratio is extremely high and that will hold them back.

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