So Much Spam on Ezine Articles Lately??

by A Bary
16 replies
I made a "late night check" on a number of the "most viewed articles" in several niches on EZA for a kind of "niche testing".

Most of the articles that got thousands of views in a matter of weeks seem suspicious!!

My check depends on several factors:

-Checking the keywords the given article "is supposed" to be ranking for...and to my surprise...90% of the 4000-8000 views a month articles are not showing on the first 2 pages of the 3 major search engines!!!...so...from where all these "views" are coming?.

-When I click on the link in the resource box of some of these articles, in most cases..I got a lame page with very poor statistics in compete, seorush...etc

I know these statistics may not be reliable...however...when you check a site that is linked from an EZA with thousands of views...you expect to see at least a sort of figures..numbers...not big zeros that indicate the isolation of this page and lack of visitors (even with an average traffic level, I usually get positive figures for my sites from compete, seorush and alexa..not zeros...and within a matter of days).

-Upon checking authors of these "4 or 5 figures of views" articles, I was surprised to find that the "expert" author had just published 2-5 articles in the targeted niche, and have other "2-5 clusters" of articles in several niches...logically, if I have the level of expertise that brings such a number of views to my articles in a given niche..I will stick to it and publish more!!! or maybe I am wrong?

I got the feeling that "spam hits" services are plaguing ezine articles in a way or another...

Don't you think so?

A. Bary
#articles #ezine #spam
  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    The only things that have changed at EZA is that now buying hits to articles is against the TOS, and EZA now has 7 ad blocks with an average of 42 individual ads on the same pages as each article....

    They are still letting others manipulate their rankings within EZA to manipulate the system, and EZA is now making it nearly impossible for its authors to get any traffic from EZA, since only 1-2 or the 45+ ad links on a page are for the author, while the remainder is for EZA's profit...

    This leads to more junk articles on the site, because EZA is making it clear that the only value they really want to give back to authors is the link juice...

    What may happen in the future is one day, authors may wake up and pull their collective heads out, beginning a revolt against EZA that causes its management to give a little more value back to those authors who have made them as big, powerful and profitable as they are...

    LOL
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    Bill Platt, Oklahoma USA, PlattPublishing.com
    Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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  • Profile picture of the author Andrew23
    Scrapebox has a feature to automatically get more views to your EZA's. This might be one of the reasons why some of the views are so high. You just hit a few buttons on it and POOF, tons of page views instantly.
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    • Profile picture of the author A Bary
      Originally Posted by Andrew23 View Post

      Scrapebox has a feature to automatically get more views to your EZA's. This might be one of the reasons why some of the views are so high. You just hit a few buttons on it and POOF, tons of page views instantly.

      I didn't know that, but this makes sense...it's not only about spam hits services.
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    • Profile picture of the author tpw
      Originally Posted by Andrew23 View Post

      Scrapebox has a feature to automatically get more views to your EZA's. This might be one of the reasons why some of the views are so high. You just hit a few buttons on it and POOF, tons of page views instantly.

      Andrew: Please forgive my ignorance on this topic...

      Can you explain more about how Scrapebox actually works...

      When I looked at it in Google, it looked like a Link Harvester and Article Syndication tool...

      I don't see how either of those activities can actually generate more page views on the EZA website...

      Any elaboration on what it is and how it works would be appreciated...
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      Bill Platt, Oklahoma USA, PlattPublishing.com
      Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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      • Profile picture of the author wizozz
        Originally Posted by tpw View Post

        Andrew: Please forgive my ignorance on this topic...

        Can you explain more about how Scrapebox actually works...

        When I looked at it in Google, it looked like a Link Harvester and Article Syndication tool...

        I don't see how either of those activities can actually generate more page views on the EZA website...

        Any elaboration on what it is and how it works would be appreciated...
        I think he is talking about "ping" feature of scrapebox. Here is what it says in sales copy of the program (ScrapeBox – Harvest, Check, Ping, Post) :

        Send Hits to Referrer Logs
        Ping Mode allows you to send referrer hits through proxies and leave your domain as the referrer. This is extremely useful if you want your domain to show up in the referral logs of other sites, the recent visits widgets on sites, artificially increase your traffic to show affiliate programs and many other uses such as drive up "views" on your articles so they appear on most popular lists and receive more exposure.
        You can ping a list of sites with as many URL's as you wish, this all runs through proxies to appear like the target page is receiving traffic from all over the world. This is great for getting exposure, traffic and links!
        So you set the program up, it uses random proxies to ping the URL you enter, for a couple hundred or a thousand of times.

        I think this software is a total SPAM tool. Might work for a while, but will be discovered and slapped soon.
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        • Profile picture of the author tpw
          Originally Posted by wizozz View Post

          So you set the program up, it uses random proxies to ping the URL you enter, for a couple hundred or a thousand of times.

          I think this software is a total SPAM tool. Might work for a while, but will be discovered and slapped soon.

          Thanks for the explanation...

          Clearly it is a spam tool... I despise those people who send fake pings to my referrer logs... LOL

          It looks like it will be harder to identify as spam, but yes, clearly spam...
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          Bill Platt, Oklahoma USA, PlattPublishing.com
          Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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  • Profile picture of the author waken
    There are indeed software that rotates ip addresses to increase EZA views in very fast manner. Not easy to identify.

    Given this fact and the increase in their ads, I pull away from them a lot and focus more on my own sites. (Should have done this earlier...this is my greatest regrets in my article writing venture).
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  • Profile picture of the author Vishal Mahadik
    There are some IP blocking software available in the market. You can install them on your web server which will block any suspicious IP addresses which are already on IP blocklists.

    They basically monitor your network activities in real time and set blocking points in between your website and certain IP addresses.

    I think these types of programs can help us in blocking the visits of proxy addresses and we will be safe from any harmful attacks.

    Ezinearticles.com should install these types of blocking programs to avoid such proxy traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author A Bary
      Originally Posted by im2010 View Post

      Ezinearticles.com should install these types of blocking programs to avoid such proxy traffic.
      Maybe they cant afford it
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  • Profile picture of the author snapcontent
    Originally Posted by goldmind123 View Post

    Don't you think so?

    A. Bary
    Yes. I was very disappointed when I found out that if you give ezinearticles some money, they will allow you to publish almost anything. It's a shame, as they used to be the best directory on the web.

    Trying to be impartial, some of these new attacks come from botnets, so they are almost impossible to trap with simple IP blocking - it looks just like real traffic. Maybe hueristics could catch it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fun to Write
    Just because those articles are getting lots of views, doesn't mean their website is converting into sign ups or sales. Most experienced marketers know that views are not the most important thing.

    It's conversion into sales.

    So, just focus on making your own articles the best they can be. Make sure your landing page actually converts for you. This is the best way to measure success from article writing.

    I personally, don't pay any attention to those EZA articles with a gazillion views, unless a title grabs my attention.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      I've seen many complaints about the increased ads on EZA and I honestly don't know if they affect the articles or not.

      I'm in the first week of submitting articles for sites where EZA submissions in the past have been quite effective. Will be interesting in a month to look at the results and compare them to the last article campaigns for these sites.

      If similar quality articles targeting the same sites have stats lower than previous submissions - then I'll know if the increased ads are a problem or not. I waited till now to try this in order to be in the same season of the year and have the playing field as level as possible to test this.

      kay
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Yes, being on the most viewed lists adds exposure, but I don't think that's why people are doing it. If it was, the quality of those articles and the landing pages they generally lead to would be higher.

        My guess is that their objective is to land on the list long enough to get the backlinks spidered. Get on the 'most viewed' list in a section with a few thousand articles, let the spiders feast, and suddenly you show thousands of links from an authority site...
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        • Profile picture of the author Kay King
          I agree with the comment above about "parasitic marketing".

          However, I've never pursued those methods yet have continously had good results from EZA articles. I think some of the methods used were developed by those who use EZA as the first hop to get to an affiliate link with a stop at a quality website along the way.

          Nothing wrong with that method if it works for you. But I still find my articles under several pen names being syndicated on other good sites with full resource box and link included. That gives me lower initial article results but the results I get are for a longer period of time.

          I still get visitors from a few articles I wrote years ago - how great is that?

          kay
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          Please do not 'release balloons' for celebrations. The balloons and trailing ribbons entangle birds and kill wildlife and livestock that think the balloons are food.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ldimilo
      Originally Posted by Fun to Write View Post

      Just because those articles are getting lots of views, doesn't mean their website is converting into sign ups or sales. Most experienced marketers know that views are not the most important thing.

      It's conversion into sales.

      So, just focus on making your own articles the best they can be. Make sure your landing page actually converts for you. This is the best way to measure success from article writing.

      I personally, don't pay any attention to those EZA articles with a gazillion views, unless a title grabs my attention.

      The issue with this is that if a marketer can get into the "most viewed" section on EZA within their niche, it means that their article will have, in the very least, a chance to be seen.

      Article marketing is much more than article directories these days. In many cases, you can rank just as easily using other parasitic hosts with authority. And many of these hosts not only allow you to place your links where ever you want on the page, they are willing to revenue share with you as well.

      Just something to chew on though. Article marketing has changed. The model that EZA is currently using will eventually get swallowed up by more savvy websites that are willing to give more for the created content.
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  • Profile picture of the author ContentYogi
    Some use cheap PTC traffic to up their view count to increase exposure. But I doubt increasing exposure to an article helps increasing the click through rate. One needs quality articles to generate interest and influence click through. So I don't know how any of these dirty tricks can help anyone.
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