How NOT To Manipulate Social News: A Sphinn Experience
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Introduction
SEO.com is largely a lapsed domain. So much could have been done with it, and so little was. In an attempt to remedy this, they launched some modifications and the like. In doing so, they got caught(by me) spamming sphinn and attempting to manipulate the results of their news post about these changes. This will be quite possibly the first SEO lesson SEO.com has taught anyone: How NOT To Manipulate Social News. They were downright terrible at it.
Disclaimer:Alright. So I purposely did not use the website name in this title, since they eventually fessed up and were decent about their deeds. For those about to criticize me for “outting” someone, I put it up to a poll and let all you guys decide. Beyond that, I’ve stated many times that sphinn is the only site where I’m going to be vindicitive like this
- Do NOT Leave the Default Avatar On Your Dummy Accounts
On sphinn, the default avatar is a little green badge. No serious user uses it, and a story getting sphunn up by mostly these sticks out like a sore thumb.
- Do NOT Only Vote for Your Own Posts With Dummy Accounts
Ever hear of a signal to noise ratio? If you can’t be bothered to at LEAST vote for a random article or two inbetween your whored votes, it’s not worth it to get voted up obviously.
- Do NOT Register All Your Accounts on the Same Day
Seriously? I can’t believe someone smart enough to get the SEO.com domain early enough would be ..err…slow enough to register all their profiles on the same date. It shows a very concerted effort to get an article ranked. Not just not-so-active supporters all registering to help a blog(which would spread out by a day or two). It shows explicit effort.
- Do NOT Tie Any Profile Directly to the Site Your Promoting
Ok. So making any one profile tie back to your real domain via the “blog url” or “website” is a great way to make it so people can figure out you’re actually representing a site, not just trying to build a power user account using dummies to get noticed.
Examine the profile by yummytork, the main profile used in this little seo.com endeavor(it’s the only one with an avatar, and submitted their first spammy article)
Not so clever, eh? - Submit More than Just Your Own Articles
Once again, think of it this way. If you’re under suspicion possibly already, doesn’t it just make good sense to make sure that what they see when examining your profile is related to more than one site?
- Submit Better Content
Honestly, this is the number one thing. The first thing that makes me examine the votes of a story that is doing good to see if it’s someone exploiting the site is that the story sucks, or is just plain stupid. No one CARES about a new forum. There’s dozens already. And SEO.com doesn’t have a firm following that would make people vote it up. SearchEngineLand could swing that. But not SEO.com. The only successful people when it comes to gaming social news are those who actually have good content, and just use dummy profiles to bump it up and get it noticed.
That about covers the little glitches in SEO.com’s approach. Now, before everyone passes judgement, I would like to say that first, I don’t believe this is a common tactic for SEO.com. Honestly, if it was, they’d probably be a lot better at it. Also, one of the employees(after getting called out in the comments) did apologize for the action. Perhaps it was still a little..hesitant, but it was there at least.
Now, I’d like to point out to everyone that social news sites larger than sphinn have most of the things I outlined here automated. So don’t try it there. And don’t try it on sphinn, because I like sphinn, and I’ll catch you, even if you follow these tips.
Alright. That’s the entry. I would have more, but I didn’t have time to get many more screenshots.
This entry is purposely titled to not rank for SEO.com, because I don’t know if it could, or if they deserve that given that they fessed up. As always, I’ll leave it up to the readers. If I start seeing trackbacks with anchor text that leads me to believe people do want it to rank for that, I’ll change the title.
-XMCP
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Hey shady, thanks for the article.
Your approach has been flawless so far in my opinion…right and wrong…do be relative though eh?
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:12 pm
You really should have just notified sphinn about this. A while back probably over 2 months ago now at least I notified them (as well as probably other sphinners) of an even bigger scam artist than this one using the exact same scam. They promptly replied to my email saying they’d look into it and less than a week later banned the account as well as all dummy accounts associated with it.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
@James: I tried. Relative though? I’m afraid I don’t catch what you mean.
@GamerMk: I did notify them, and quickly. Thats actually why I didn’t get all the screenshots I wanted. It got taken down.
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
“For those about to criticize me for “outting” someone, I put it up to a pole and let all you guys decide.”
Shady, don’t qualify this post with a statement like that. Take accountability for your own actions here; whether you asked people “whether you should do it or not”, ultimately the final decision rested with you.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree with what you’ve done, but that statement seemed like a massive cop-out to me.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Now Mr Shady… are you saying you’ve never spammed before…? Surely not, otherwise the ’slighty’ part of your alias would be misrepresentative…
I say good on you for exposing them. Anyone with such a lack of respect for the community deserves it.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
No doubt they did all that expecting to be outed and that a blog post like this was actually the attention they were hoping to get. Of course they knew that some sphunn-up story about their new forum was worthless but a post like this is the kind of stuff that can generate some buzz for them. I wonder if they’re thanking you right now.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I don’t get what anyones got a ’stink’ about??
Schweet Shady.
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I feel like I just had a conversation that with someone that was pretty much this post verbatim. And I swear I didn’t read this first.
This is all really basic stuff. It astounds me that it isn’t more obvious to to people who use social sites for marketing purposes. You need to be a User, not just a username.
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
spelling: “pole” –> “poll”
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
LOL Well spotted Shady - total total overkill by them folks and you’re right - how not to do it.
I actually missed every one of those posts…. guess your right and they should have submitted better content!
Stumbled and Sphunn for your journalistic integrity and investigative work.
March 4th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Your the man, much respect.
I don’t understand why people are complaining about “outing them” and calling you a hypocrite for posting this. SEO.com advertises themselves as being a legit, whit hat seo company. So when they pull stunts like this (clearly spam), they deserver to be outed. If they advertised them selfs as a black hat, spam oriented company then that would be a different story (and there would be no point to this post), but that is not the case.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Look at the submissions for beanstalk. There’s a real user who’s been at Sphinn for a while, and then a greenie who signed up and submitted right away. Skeeetch.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:32 am
[…] to SEO.com were spamming social […]
March 4th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Good call out. I once caught another scammer of a different sort on Sphinn, called “gottamiller”.
It’s good to get people like this off the boards.
Anymore scams we should know about?
March 5th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Well,
To give this post credibility, I think I will put in a few pointers here. Number one, anyone who goes around titled “shady seo” can never be believed 100% when they “out” someone else for slightly shady practices.
Number two, you’re right metapilot, the point of doing anything on sphinn is not really for anything else except publicity in the seo community, and apparently it worked for us.
Number three, as the above mentioned creator of said bogus accounts, otherwise known as “yummytork”, I publicly declare to anyone reading this post and the comments in it that what I did was stupid and wrong. But it got us more publicity (bad or otherwise) than you will ever know. Hopefully this comment will stay in it’s true state and get published, because there is nothing defamatory or spammy about it.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:53 am
@Burgo: I understand what you’re saying, but I’m put in a position here of trying to write for both the blackhat and whitehat community. I included the justifications in the poll though, and perhaps I should’ve pointed people over there. Good point. I have mixed feelings on this, and I’m afraid I let it show.
@James: Yes, I’ve spammed before. But in the same way people who love stumbleupon fight spam on stumbleupon, I will do so on sphinn. Hypocritical? Probably. But none the less, it’s the reality.
@METAPILOT: I suspect mixed reactions. It was done largely for just being a post I liked vs. trying to hurt them. And a bit to protect sphinn. Heh.
@spostareduro: Outting a blackhat is a MAJOR offense within the BH community. While seo.com is obviously not blackhat, it’s still a bit of a red flag for some.
@melanie: Very true.
@Hobo: Thanks!
@I3lackI-Iat: I’m glad someone sees it this way. I’ve taken GREAT care to protect blackhat sites I’ve seen/posted about before, even blurring out the content to prevent searches. Also, I believe doing commercial SEO creates a certain responsibility. You wouldn’t believe some of the flamebait I had to moderate out here.
@Gab: There’s a new one born every minute. Shoemoney keeps duplicate accounts too.
@Sean: Just the above shoemoney reference. Although that’s not 100% confirmed, and it’s only one puppet account, it seems incredibly likely.
@Adam: I thank you for coming on here and saying your piece. However, I must disagree about me not being able to be believed. I benefit in no way from “outting”, and indeed being a “shady seo” is exactly why I’m good at spotting these things.
Second, I give you incredible amounts of credit for admitting you were wrong. I will never, under any conditions edit or delete a constructive, on topic post on my blog. It’s against everything I stand for.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am
And for the record, please take down any of my personal information from your blog post, I don’t want my personal information being broadcast like that, and if you want to live up to your high standards you apparently have, you’ll do this immediately.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:30 am
[…] An interesting guide on how NOT to manipulate social media website and what to do with those dummy accounts some spammers use. - link […]
March 5th, 2008 at 10:36 am
As much as I have a distaste for your tone there, I’ll cooperate. I didn’t notice that part.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Thanks
March 5th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
[…] Oh here’s an interesting post I came across clearly illustrating how easy it is to get caught whilst behaving badly! It covers shady seo shenanigans by a search engine optimization site that appears to be trying to get back into the game. Click the following link: SEO Shenanigans […]
March 7th, 2008 at 6:26 am
[…] employed by SEO.com. Shady deserves your traffic if you’re interested in reading about their social media spamming habits (it’s a great read). But I will give them a f#ckwit nomination for launching a spam assault that […]
April 15th, 2008 at 11:23 am
[…] some believe that they have used a few unethical ways to achieve their current success.