Profile Spam... bad?

[dustinthetoucan]

I've opened up a new forum and made registering a little too easy. I had 6 profiles made for spamming pop up yesterday. Numbers are rising. My question is how/why is people spamming my forums with profiles all bad?

[shulink]

I think spam in profile doesn't do much for SEO, but people still do it. You should make them verify their emails and make registration a little harder to prevent spammers.

[wariswar]

Originally Posted by dustinthetoucan

I've opened up a new forum and made registering a little too easy. I had 6 profiles made for spamming pop up yesterday. Numbers are rising. My question is how/why is people spamming my forums with profiles all bad?

sometimes profile spam can helps you to get good PR of your new forum, once you get good PR, delete last year's profiles which have 0 post.

[dustinthetoucan]

Well, two different opinions or facts. Not sure which is which.

But I was thinking about the pr... I was thinking it could help my website grow at the beginning, and I could hammer down on it later on.

[david.prk]

spamming as an open black hat seo technique you must not be spamming if you want your website to get high serps in search engines

[sneharastogi]

You should enforce them to verify their email address, before activating their profiles

[socialbookmark]

However i think this way doesn't work, many webmasters are still doing it and after some time they will know that this method doesn't work. You can check new members for some weeks and if they don't post in this period, you can ban them. Its my suggestion for solving this problem.

[Dele]

You can also specify a minimum post no. (10 or 50 or 100) only after which they can have an active signature link

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by dustinthetoucan

. My question is how/why is people spamming my forums with profiles all bad?

it isn't all bad. Helps with the member count

[maxkebarvideos]

so bad. . for spamming !

[jazbo]

Spot on Mike. You should (initially) welcome it. They won't post on the forum (mainly), will just add profile links.

But your forum membership will rise every day, which makes it look popular, which can only be a good thing.

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

it isn't all bad. Helps with the member count

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by jazbo

Spot on Mike. You should (initially) welcome it. They won't post on the forum (mainly), will just add profile links.

But your forum membership will rise every day, which makes it look popular, which can only be a good thing.

In addition, for those of us that "boost" our profile links, I always send multiple backlinks to every single profile I create. So, perhaps these forum owners should be paying me to increase their backlinks and linkjuice

Tom

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by dustinthetoucan

I've opened up a new forum and made registering a little too easy. I had 6 profiles made for spamming pop up yesterday. Numbers are rising. My question is how/why is people spamming my forums with profiles all bad?

Unless the linking is to porn/gambling/pharma type sites than no the linking isn't bad. It helps with the member count. Many of them will in fact be linking to their profile pages (whether to help them get indexed or just to backlink their backlinks), whereby increasing the backlink count to your forum. Also, the more pages on your forum indexed the better in terms of helping the overall authority of your forum.

Tom

[IndigoJack]

I have the same problem on a forum that I set up as an example for customers but now has actual users.

The spammers make duplicate posts which are essentially long lists of electronic goods and phones forsale.

I created an advertiser area and move all their messages in there deleting the duplicates.

It's annoying but as Tom Goodwin pointed out, they could be doing me a service by linking back to my forum - so I don't delete their entire input just in case.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by IndigoJack

It's annoying but as Tom Goodwin pointed out, they could be doing me a service by linking back to my forum - so I don't delete their entire input just in case.

Member count is good for a new forum if you can add activity along with it from participating members but I wouldn't count too much on the boosting aspect. I know thats all the rage to say "boosting" helps the forum owner but the facts are its mostly zero link juice being passed not real PR. That argument is really a lot of hype.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by IndigoJack

I have the same problem on a forum that I set up as an example for customers but now has actual users.

The spammers make duplicate posts which are essentially long lists of electronic goods and phones forsale.

I created an advertiser area and move all their messages in there deleting the duplicates.

It's annoying but as Tom Goodwin pointed out, they could be doing me a service by linking back to my forum - so I don't delete their entire input just in case.

Note that the OP is talking about just links in profiles I think, whereas you are talking about actual spam posts on your forum. Actual forum posts clutter up the publicly active part of forums so it makes sense to have different rules there.

Tom

[mikeroosa]

I recently opened up a forum on one of my sites as a test. Within a couple of weeks I had over a thousand users and just as many posts. I was using this as a ploy to get backlinks to my site thinking the spammers would backlink their profiles. It worked in that regards but now I'm ranking on page 1 for about 150 different terms related to porn and I don't like that at all. Because of that I deleted the forum.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by mikeroosa

I recently opened up a forum on one of my sites as a test. Within a couple of weeks I had over a thousand users and just as many posts. I was using this as a ploy to get backlinks to my site thinking the spammers would backlink their profiles. It worked in that regards but now I'm ranking on page 1 for about 150 different terms related to porn and I don't like that at all. Because of that I deleted the forum.

Seems like a complete waste to me. There are some pretty good adult affiliate products out there.

[Steve Murphy]

Originally Posted by dustinthetoucan

I've opened up a new forum and made registering a little too easy. I had 6 profiles made for spamming pop up yesterday. Numbers are rising. My question is how/why is people spamming my forums with profiles all bad?

I wouldn't worry about profiles initially. Higher member count makes you look good

I would definitely come down hard on spam posts or comments.

Cheers,

Stev

[jmaresca2005]

it all depends on which domains you are obtaining these profiles. relevancy, different ips and pr are all very helpful.

[jacksonlin]

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

Seems like a complete waste to me. There are some pretty good adult affiliate products out there.

I have to agree.

There's a lot of $ to be made in the adult industry!

[Rakesh]

Improve the verification process and make registration a little less automated. This should help to reduce the level of spammers. Though it may be considered as mentioned above that having an high number count could be beneficial for you in the start.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

Seems like a complete waste to me. There are some pretty good adult affiliate products out there.

LOL. believe it or not Tom there are actually some people in IM that won't do anything or sell anything for a buck.

Additionally its clearly not in his niche and porn association doesn't do one good thing for a real business' reputation. Thats some short sighted advice. Mind you I wouldn't delete the forum just the profiles. Enough of them will hurt your rankings (for terms he does care about) as Google identifies you as being connected to spam and bad neighborhoods.

[yanivkalfa]

If your talking about Links in profile sigs that is one way to get backlinks and its very useful as well

[nedox]

You should let them to leave links (as long as they are regular links and not porn or anything like that...) They wont harm you and they will give you increased number of registered member which will encourage other people, willing to participate in conversations to join your forum.

[Mike Anthony]

So there's something wrong with the adult niche now? It is just as viable and moral of a niche as pimping ebooks on how to get rid of panic attacks or what not

Whatever. Not the place to get into our concepts of morality including your claims of what is moral or acceptable. All that matters is that to the greater world of commerce it doesn't do anything for a reputable business to be associated with porn. Hate it if you want but those are the facts. Its clear that that was not his niche to begin with. and yes if isn't and it violates his values then it sure would be and is an anything for buck mentality. Its no waste not to want to be associated with it. No side of the issue should be pushing their morality pro or con. Not the place for it.

Furthermore you have already admitted in another famous thread that linking out to such sites can hurt your rankings on Google. And ummm he didn't state what the terms were. There are a lot of terms that even some porn business owners don't like and don't want to be associated with. Again short sighted advice.

Bottom line - there is absolutely no good reason to be criticizing his moral choices in regard to business acumen when those choices are in keeping with maintaining a good reputation with Google and with an overwhelming amount of consumers in most business niches..