Since Google ranks sites primarily by how many other pages and sites link to them, unethical people have been trying to boost their site rankings by tricking others into creating links to them. <\/p>\n
Link exchange spam, i.e. unsolicited offers to reciprocally create links to each other’s sites, has been around for many years. Recently I came across a new twist, broken link suggestion spam. You’ll receive a personal looking email like the following that tells you about a broken link on a page on one of your sites, with a suggestion for a replacement link target (boldface added by me):<\/p>\n
Hi<\/b> Joe!
\nSorry to bother you, my name is<\/b> Kate Austen, I’m a<\/b> teaching assistant for a sociology class. I’ve been doing some research online for an<\/b> upcoming lesson on the urban legends, myths, and hoaxes, and your page was very helpful. Thanks so much!<\/b><\/p>\nI noticed that on your page<\/b> (http:\/\/www.joewein.de\/hoax.htm) you have a broken link<\/b> http:\/\/www.urbanlegends.com\/index.html (an old page about<\/b> urban legends)… May I offer a thought on a possible replacement?<\/b> http:\/\/www.costumesupercenter.com\/csc_inc\/html\/static\/btarticles\/urbanlegendsandmyths.html It has some great information about<\/b> several urban legends and myths. I found it to be a great resource during my research, and it would be a great fix to your broken link. I’ve added it to my bookmarks, along with your site<\/b> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Just thought I’d let you know<\/b> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Take Care, <\/b>
\nKate
\nkate@professor-research.org<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI plugged some phrases from the above email into Google and it found the following similar email (boldface also added by me, please compare the two):<\/p>\n
Crystal Sawyer
\ncrystal@studentresearchers.org<\/p>\nHi!
\nSorry to bother you, my name is<\/b> Crystal Sawyer, I’m an<\/b> education major from upstate New York. I’ve been doing some research online for a<\/b> class project and your pages were very helpful. Thanks so much<\/b> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\nI noticed that on your page<\/b> (http:\/\/www.apfn.org\/apfn\/mmm.htm) you have a broken link<\/b> http:\/\/www.nara.gov\/exhall\/charters\/declaration\/decmain.html (an old page about<\/b> science projects)… May I offer a thought on a possible replacement?<\/b> http:\/\/legalmetro.com\/library\/historic-us-documents-the-charters-of-freedom.html It has some great information about<\/b> teaching children how to do experimental science projects. I found it to be a great resource during my research, and it would be a great fix to your broken link. I’ve added it to my bookmarks, along with your site<\/b> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Just thought I’d let you know<\/b> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Take Care,<\/b>
\nCrystal
\ncrystal@studentresearchers.org<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe number of identical phrases is far to high to be a coincidence. Looking at the sender domains professor-research.org and studentresearchers.org, the registrant on both is hidden behind the anonymization service domainsbyproxy.com. <\/p>\n
I would say chances are good that both “Kate” and “Crystal” are the same person and that this person works for a company offering paid search engine optimization (SEO) services to boost their customers’ website rankings. They add some editorial contents to the customer website and then deceptively ask owners of sites with a high Page rank (PR) to replace broken links with links to these new pages by posing as students and researchers with no obvious commercial interest in the link target site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since Google ranks sites primarily by how many other pages and sites link to them, unethical people have been trying to boost their site rankings by tricking others into creating links to them. Link exchange spam, i.e. unsolicited offers to … Continue reading