3 Search Tricks Spammers Use To Find Your Blog
This is a Guest Article by Gagan who gives SEO Training In Chandigarh
2 months back I started getting a lot of spam comments on my blog. I installed Akismet & Conditional Captcha plugin, the spam comments reduced a lot but still spam comments were coming on most of my articles. I copied one of the spam comment and searched it on Google and the same comment was published on hundreds of WordPress blogs. Then I checked those blogs and there was one thing that common on all those blogs. Read below what I discovered.
What I discovered
While viewing all the blogs I discovered that all those blogs was having a text in the footer and that was “Powered by WordPress”.
Conclusion
I concluded that spammers uses some type of search technique to find WordPress blogs and spam their blog via commenting. Below are 3 search techniques that spammers use to find and spam your blog.
Google search techniques
“allintext”:powered by WordPress :Spammers use this method, to find all blogs that have text written “powered by WordPress” on whole page.
“allinanchor”:powered by WordPress : This will show those blogs that have powered by WordPress anchor text hyperlinked.
intext:powered by WordPress : It will show results of pages that contains the word powered by WordPress.
Suggestion
I suggest it is good to remove “Powered by WordPress” text in the footer, so as to remain secure a bit from Spammers. I hope this little trick can save your site 1-2 percent from spammers.
Category: Blogging
About the Author (Author Profile)
Shiva Chettri is the editor and owner of Netchunks, a premier blog about Webmaster and Blogging Tips. He intends to make the web a friendlier place by sharing stuffs and articles which will help other webmasters and bloggers to becomes successful. His other interests includes Web Designing, Wordpress and Music of almost every genre. Send +Shiva an email at admin@netchunks.comSubscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Comments (39)
Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed
Sites That Link to this Post
- Blog Comment Spam (have a comment policy) | Become a Healthier You | May 21, 2011
- Twitted by CyberGanesh | August 1, 2011
Shiva,
Great tips! I know that a lot of comments based spammers do search for text WordPress blogs, and you have used Akismet & Conditional Captcha plugin. But there might be a few more plugins you might consider.
I have just istalled Akismet. Fortunatelly, I removed “powered by WP” as soon as I installed it – just don’t like it. What are the other plugins to block spam?
John, there is a check box plugin that I’ve used in the past just can’t remember the name off the top of my head, Bad Behavior, WP-reCAPTCHA and Disqus Comment System. I would still try not to make it too hard for an actual commentator.
Those search operators are used not only by spammers, but by regular SEO practitioners. Sure to remove “powered by wordpress” may help, but there are more than 20 more search operators that can discover blog which is based on wordpress and other popular blogging platforms.
You also have to add “this site uses KeywordLuv” that may be used to do the same.
Sophie recently posted..Louer une voiture à Montréal
i have noticed bloggers using and copying the popular blogs that appear more on top results . also blogs which are often updated
What a discovery, Shiva! Luckily, these text do not appear on my blog! Anyway, my blog is not that popular, so I actually gets zero spam as of now. Haha…
Jessica recently posted..Website Creation Made Easy with HostGator SiteBuilder
Even it doesn’t work, I will delete these words from the footer. I still have these words on one of my blog (although O haven’t experienced the flood of spammers
Very useful advice, I have been getting a lot of spam and will try this. Thanks
Reggae Music Man recently posted..Cherine & Chuck Fender New Release 2011 “Call On Me”
I do not know why a lot of people are doing this. It is nice to read the articles because you will learn a lot of things. They can add up to your knowledge which you can infer it to your articles and share to others.
I’m not sure I would call these methods *spammy*. I harness similar techniques to find blogs which I can comment on in my niche – it has introduced me to some really cool blogs. Unless you’re referring to automated submissions of course, in which case they can get right back to hell…
Matt recently posted..Legitimate Work At Home Jobs
Matt, I agree with you. It’s the sort of comment that you leave that determines whether you are being “spammy”. Blogs are supposed to receive comments, otherwise why not just ditch the comment box.
I’m not sure if I would call these “tricks”, even. Just because this is not something that everyone knows does not make it devious.
And like yourself, I have sometimes used this among other methods to find places where I can acquire links, and have, as a result found some great sites that I visit time and time again. Sometime, I even buy something. If the site is good, everyone is a winner.
Tim recently posted..Knee Lift Surgery
Yep. The title of this article really hooked me in though, so I guess it did it’s job!
Matt recently posted..Toshiba Satellite L655-S5158 Laptop Review
I agree with Matt too. Not all that uses footprints are being “spammy”. As an admin, you should differentiate the real spammy comments from the people who just happened to interact to your blog. Anyways, Even if you’ll remove the “powered by wp” in the footer of your blog, there are a lot of ways to find your blog.
brooks recently posted..Does your online marketing make the cut ?
Agree with Sophie that you also have to add “this site uses KeywordLuv” that may be used to do the same.It’s very effective
van025 recently posted..Fragrance of Friendship
I hope all articles are like this. You have something to read and at the same tie you will learn from them.
Great tips! I know that a lot of comments based spammers do search for text WordPress blog even if I do not know why a lot of people are doing this.
Sure to remove “powered by wordpress” may help but not only this.
Hey hi, I too faced the same problem which u faced…. thanks for the information, I got it now Why this happened to me..
Thnaks a lot..
Its really very interesting blog about spammers. If you have a lot of spammers and you want to find it or delete them than this blog is very helpful for you. This trick is very helpful to find a spammers.
There are few more tricks how they find a blog, actually the above example work well for WP blogs, but there are many other blogging platforms for example Movable Type and Blog Engine.
I’m not a big fan of askimet, but that is another story. I use wordpress for some sites as well as other scripts. They do the same thing with some of the other scripts I use. People simply search for powered by script name and come and post a bunch of links. Which is obviously very annoying and time-consuming to clean up. I’ve thought about removing the powered by line before. Some scripts seem to allow it and others do not.
Ray recently posted..Cloud online storage
Thanks for the tip! I have been meaning to remove the “powered by WordPress” for aesthetic reasons, but now I have even more reason to! I have also found Akismet to be a great resource in cutting down spam. At least at keeping it from appearing on the blog itself.
I hate spammers… it’s good to know the tricks they use to find our blog. Thanks for the info!
Jasmine recently posted..ServerFreak Malaysia Web Hosting – Best Promotional Code
Must say it is a very valuable tip. Nobody would ever think that spamming can be done like this! Will be careful in future.. Thanks a lot..
Impressive post Shiva,i am happy to know that can be quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. thanks for providing the information.
yeah i too use google queries…but to find high quality .edu links and .gov ones
Nice blog! A person essentially lend a hand to make significantly posts I’d state. This is the very first time I frequented your website page and so far? I amazed with the analysis you made to create this actual publish amazing. Wonderful task! Thank u!
I don’t know why spammers still posting spam comments even though it is not accepted by website and google. Removing “powered by wordpress” will help little bit to protect our blog against spammers.
Kevin recently posted..Microsoft released temporary fix for Kernel 0-day Security Flaw
Effective quick and dirty technique to remove lazy spammers…
Samuel recently posted..Social click streaming Data for SEO
I have installed Akismet on my blog and it blocks pretty much spam comments. If the comment seems to be suspicious and Akismet fails to identify it, I try to identify it manually.
I have installed Akismet on my blog like many other bloggers. But sometimes it fails to block spam. Then I have to identify it manually!
Yes i removed that powered by wp and it cut spam. If you want to cut spam further then ideally you want to remove the word “comment” from your posts as the spammers use link commands for quite a few different things now.
I always remove the text “powered by wordpress” every time I upgrade. It cuts spam by some degree.
Alvin recently posted..Re: Can Kalonzo Musyoka Do It?
Twitter: backupsoftwarer
says:
Spammers always have a way to find your blog, I have a new blog with just a few pages like contact, about, etc. (there is no article at all) you know spammers found my blog just a few days after I launched and they leave comments almost every day, so for a while I turn off the comment form
Radhitya recently posted..EaseUS Mac Photo Recovery Free 5.5.1
This is one trick they use to spam. But I think the biggest offender in comment spam is Scrapebox. It is a spammers dream. It goes out and grabs 1000′s of blogs and then automatically comments on all of them. It is pretty ingenious actually if it wasn’t such a pain to combat.
there are more tricks that can be use and yes kelly you are right Scrapebox is the biggest tool that irritates me too i was also using wordpress for my website before but now i have to revamp it and have to start using Joomla because there are many less chances of getting spam at joomla! but wordpress omg i just cant tell you how i feel when i have to del thousand of comments!!!
the biggest thing that could easily allow people to spam is Scrapebox at number one and then i have seen Drupal to be the moust populated spam content management system it is so easy for spammers to go there and to comment as it allows a dofollow backlink too :S