Social Bookmarking Spam Has Started

Within the last one month you may have heard of the buzz surounding Wu’s book “Tag and Ping - The Next Generation of Blog and Ping”. In Wu’s book he teaches that you can gain high pagerank backlinks on demand in just 2 minutes by tagging pages of your website with high ranking social bookmarking websites.

He makes specific mention of a few social bookmarking sites to use this method with and he promotes abusing these sites by signing up for hundreds of accounts to give the appearance that many people are voting for your links to give them “popularity” and drive them up in the rankings on certain sites to gain more traffic and backlinks.

This book is being promoted by some of the top "gurus" in internet marketing.

guess what? Spamming of social bookmarking sites is now underway.

Just today, Jots.com was hit so hard by a user named "Richiz" that the entire first page was taken up by his results

 

So Google will soon start to devalue these links as well as forums and guestbooks. Sad really.

 

That Wu guy needs to learn about website design. His site is shit.

Tagging and pinging is pretty simple and you don't need some scammer like Wu to explain it. If his ebook is the same as his website then you won't be able to read it anyway.

Basically you write a blog post and include a link at the end called a tag. Then you get your blog to ping popular sites to let them know its updated.

More information:
http://www.technorati.com/tags/ping
http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html

 

I think google is already on to sites like technorati and del.icio.us where there is no "editorial control." Guestbook, indeed.

 

IMO the sites like digg & technorati are the hardest to spam and therefore the most valuable to google.

You can trick a computer easily but you can't fool 100,000 digg users.

 

Is there a system for helping people find content in which they are interested that can't be abused?

Though I suspect that the social bookmark sites run by the folks with the best technical abilities will find or already have a way to throttle links to sites that rise instantly into high popularity.

Richard

 

Wu has made a lot of money out of his book, their are over 550 members who have signed up at his forum which only opened 3 days ago....and you had to buy the book to be able to join the forum.

Yes I bought the book (it is overpriced by about $100) but I do find it very useful, not so much for PR purposes (most use nofollow anyway) but the traffic it brings. It's a lot better than trying to fit into Googles algorithm and brings the traffic virtually on demand.
Unless social bookmarking gets totally abused and rendered useless I think it could give the search engines a run for their money within the next 18 months.

 

I too realized when the information on Tag & Ping was sent out it would soon be abused. Leave it to someone to take a good thing, make a quick buck and then leave the rest in ruins. Don't get me wrong, its a good idea, just not one that should have flooded the market. A Non-guru friend of mine told me about what was to come with the Tag & Ping. I like Tecnoradi because you need to verify and claim your Blog to Ping it. Think that keeps a lot of people honest and reduces the Spamming.
Cheers

 

Sites like digg are actually starting to get dogged for a few instances where editors are overhyping their own content (much like at DMOZ), so even sites that have controlled content aren't that hard to take advantage of.

I started seeing people taking advantage of Technorati last month; every now and then I'll look at who's linking to my site and I'll come across a site that's clearly spam or has nothing to do with my topic.

 

No. I firmly believe that the only reason social bookmarketing is so relevant is that it's not mainstream enough. Once it is, hardcore spammers will flood it with junk. Where there are eyeballs enough, a way will be found.

I agree, I think it's due to be the next big thing. It's still possible to find very relevant sites through social bookmarking.

 

Totally agree, Myspace is becoming nothing more than a massive opt-in spam list.

 

So how do you actually "Tag" and "Ping".
mad4 said "Basically you write a blog post and include a link at the end called a tag. Then you get your blog to ping popular sites to let them know its updated."
..
Please elaborate..

 

Hope someone will give us the book for Free , or is it already there ?

 

That's the point, we have to do something or Google will chnage his alogarithm again!

 

I was going to say, "what, this is news?", then I see the date way back in 2006. Nothing is safe from spam, cannot general a certain platform because it is what it is. A strong human or a great program are the only solution to spam filtering.

 

Good, I hope all the spammers get busted. I'm glad he wrote the book. Throw everyone who does this under the bus for promoting CRAPPY websites and NON stories.

 

There are no shortcuts with Internet Marketing.. not if you want sustainable results and care about your credibility.

Sadly, any system can be gamed and there will always be these kinds of "thought leaders" spreading ignorance and laziness around. It is disappointing yet it is to be expected. Just look at all the companies trying to sell you quick-fix solutions like link pyramids and bulk "quality" backlink packages.

This sort of stuff discredits those of us that are doing things the honest way. =o/

 

Technorati is way to cool to get spammed and to be honest, tons of people are really doing what you just have said, can't do anything on that.