[Sam Bauers]

Their “personal” blog is just a link-feeder to other “blogs” which feed to others. The scam works like this…

Pick a few uncommon terms and create a bunch of blogs/sites that cross contain those terms and cross-link each other, this will give you high page rank at Google on a simple term. Now add links to your paying SEO clients sites on those blogs…. step 5 – Profit!

Well that’s the theory anyway. Who knows if it would actually work in practice.

Check their blog-roll, it’s 90% sites that are the same but at different domains. The abbreviation SEO is part of the site name etc.

Anyway, their posts are clutter – I don’t think they are legitimate – even if it was a person posting them.

[fel64]

Yeah. The way I see it, bozo is anyone you don’t want posting – spammer, serial troll or bot – anyway, so I wouldn’t mind marking him that way.

Trent, do you have to lock the thread? Either the discussion is over, in which case no-one will post anyway, or it’s not and you just stopped it.

[Trent Adams]

Sam I never read the entire blog and didn’t realize that is was a link farm site. There is no bot that posts personal replies even if they sometimes seem out of place and in my experience there are sometimes comments that are made that are irrelevant, but not in vain. This might not be that case though if they were trolling for links.

@fel64, I locked the thread because if the user is not a bozo, there is no need for further flaming and the disucssion should be over. In this case they most likely were a bozo and I appreciate you and Sam for bringing this up and using the modlook tag

Trent

[fel64]

If you don’t mind me going into this, the discussion being over isn’t a reason to lock a thread. Even if you think (probably rightly) you just settled it, there’s a chance you haven’t or there may be something new, like this thread. It’s not like we were spamming or flaming the kid. Just like you don’t lock threads where people got their problem fixed, why would you lock them at all?

Okay, so using modlook might be good in some situations – spam bot or troll or whatever, when it’s clear cut – but without threads and talking about it you wouldn’t know it was a link farmer, for example.

[Trent Adams]

I don’t mind if you go into this, no. A topic with a username referenced as a bozo is asking for problems if that user is not indeed a spammer. Forums sometimes are not a ‘pretty’ place and this is definetely the case over at wordpress.com. Ultimately, it is mdawaffe, Matt or I that has to deal with the issues in these forums and we all look at the modlook tag, so it is easier for us to be alerted to these disucssions when we don’t have a chance to read “all” threads.

It seems that you and Sam were most likely 100% right that the user may be at fault here, but realize that if you are not right on this one it can cause someone hard feelings. Discussion is obviously a great thing and encouraged and closing the thread, while premature, is damage control. Clear as mud?

[fel64]

I’m glad these still are a pretty place.

I don’t know, closing it isn’t going to save his feelings; although closing it would be appropriate if it looks like a fight. It’s a matter of opinion I guess. Yup, clear as mud!

[Trent Adams]

Sorry, I was just trigger happy….force of habit….

Trent

[Sam Bauers]

I’m getting all warm and fuzzy on the inside just reading this. I wasn’t trying to be officious by the way, I just don’t like that sort of pollution on this or any other forum – it decreases it’s value. Thanks for sorting it out. I didn’t mind starting a new topic by the way. It allowed me to use more comparison operators! Woot!