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Webmasters Pounce On Wiki Sandboxes

Posted by simoniker on from the fold-spindle-mutilate dept.

Yacoubean writes "Wiki sandboxes are normally used to learn the syntax of wiki posts. But webmasters may soon deluge these handy tools with links back to their site, not to get clicks, but to increase Google page rank. One such webmaster recently demonstrated this successfully. Isn't it time for Google finally to put some work into refining their results to exclude tricks like this? I know all the bloggers and wiki maintainers would sure appreciate it."

8 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Cyberneighborhood Not-Watch? by raehl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the real world, there are neighborhood watch signs to "deter" criminals.

    Perhaps there could be a command in the robots.txt file which says "Browse my site, but don't count any links here for page ranking"? That would make your site less of a target for spammers, but not prevent you from being ranked at all.

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    paintball
    1. Re:Cyberneighborhood Not-Watch? by phutureboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You can also list robots.txt commands as meta tags in the [head] portion of the document. So, the wiki authors could just put them in the sandbox template, and individual site owners would not even have to know about / monkey with robots.txt to be protected.

  2. like porn by millahtime · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These seems similar to the system all those porn systems used to get such a high rank in google.

    Kind playing the system with the content not being quite as desirable.

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    Evolution or ID?
  3. Complacency by faust2097 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Isn't it time for Google finally to put some work into refining their results to exclude tricks like this?

    It was time to do that at least a year ago. It's pretty much impossible to find good information on any popular consumer product and this is a problem that's been around for a long time.

    But they're too busy making an email application with 9 frames and 200k of Javascript to pay attention to the reason people use them in the first place. It's a little disappointing, I'm an AltaVista alumni and I got to watch them forget about search and do a bunch of useless crap instead, then die. I was hoping Google would be different.

  4. This happened to me by JohnGrahamCumming · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This happened on the POPFile Wiki. Eventually I solved it by changing the code of the Wiki itself to have an allowed list of URLs (actually a set of regexps). If someone adds a page which uses a new URL that isn't covered it wont show up when the page is displayed and the user has to email me to get that specific URL added.

    It's a bit of an administrative burden, but stopped people messing up our Wiki with irrelevant links to some site in China.

    John.

  5. Re:Yes... PLEASE... by n-baxley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The system was even easier to rig back then. Back in 96ish, I created a web page with the title "Not Sexy Naked Women". Then repeated that phrase several times and then gave a message telling people to click the link below for more Hot Sexy Naked Women which took them to a page that admonished them for looking for such trash. I added a banner ad to the top of both of these pages, submitted them to a search engine and made $500 in a month! Things are better today, but they're still not perfect.

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    THIS SPACE FOR RENT
  6. Re:Why just wikis? by nautical9 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I host my own little phpBB boards for friends and family, but it is open to the world. Recently I've noticed spammers registering users for the sole purpose of being included in the "member list", with a corresponding link back to whatever site they wish to promote. They'll never actually post anything, but they've obviously automated the sign-up procedure as I get a new member every day or so, and google will eventually find the member list link.

    And of course there are still sites that list EVERY referer in their logs somewhere on their site, so spammers have been adding their site URLs to their bot's user agent string. It's amazing the lengths these people will go to spam google.

    Sure hope they can find a nice, elegant solution to this.

  7. "Finally"?? by jdavidb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Isn't it time for Google finally to put some work into refining their results to exclude tricks like this?

    I take extreme issue with that statement, and I'm surprised noone else has challenged it. Google does in fact put quite a bit of work into making themselves less vulnerable to these kinds of stunts. They even have a link on every results page where you can tell them if you got results you didn't expect, so they can hunt down the cause and refine their algorithm.

    The system will never be perfect, and this is the latest issue that has not (yet) been dealt with. Quit your griping.

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    Secession is the right of all sentient beings.