SEO Spam at Newsarama? (Not as bad as you think)
Comments Off | Posted: May 18th, 2008 | Filed under: UncategorizedI’m catching up with my RSS feeds this morning and this entry from Blog@Newsarama pops up in my reader:
<div id=wp_internal style=position:absolute;left:-9112px><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-tramadol.html>discount tramadol</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-tramadol.html>tramadol online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-soma.html>soma price</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/soma.html>cheap soma</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-clomid.html>clomid 100 mg</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-clomid.html>clomid free shipping</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-indocin.html>indocin 50 mg</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-indocin.html>indocin</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-prednisone.html>prednisone 20 mg</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-prednisone.html>order prednisone</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-femara.html>femara letrozole</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-femara.html>femara free shipping</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-effexor.html>order effexor</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-effexor.html>effexor prescription</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/vpxl.html>order vpxl</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/generic-viagra.html>generic viagra</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-generic-viagra.html>generic viagra online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/generic-cialis.html>generic cialis</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-generic-cialis.html>buy generic cialis</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-viagra-jelly.html>discount viagra jelly</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-viagra-jelly.html>cheap viagra jelly</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-cialis-jelly.html>cialis jelly prices</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-cialis-jelly.html>cialis jelly online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-kamagra.html>kamagra prescription online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-kamagra.html>kamagra free shipping</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-viagra-cialis.html>viagra cialis online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/viagra-cialis.html>take viagra cialis together</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-levitra.html>discount levitra</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-levitra.html>levitra free shipping</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-cialis-professional.html>discount cialis professional</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-cialis-professional.html>cialis professional online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-viagra-professional.html>viagra professional without prescription</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-viagra-professional.html>viagra professional online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-cialis-soft-tabs.html>cialis soft tabs free shipping</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-cialis-soft-tabs.html>discount cialis soft tabs</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-viagra-soft-tabs.html>viagra soft tabs prescription online</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-viagra-soft-tabs.html>cheap viagra soft tabs</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-cialis.html>cialis prescription</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-cialis.html>buy cialis</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/order-viagra.html>order viagra</a><a href=http://circuitsassembly.com/dems/buy-viagra.html>viagra free shipping</a></div>
There’s a couple of likely ways this could have been done, the first being that the template designers did it and hope to make big money off of their increased Effexor sales. This is not very probably, as no other entries currently on the site’s front page or archives (that I can find) feature this code and I’ve never seen this text pop up in any other entries from Blog@Newsarama.
The second is a black-hat SEO WordPress spam hack that’s been floating around for a litle while. Whereas the spam mentioned in the link depended on setting the line height to zero to make the text “invisible” except for RSS feeds and in the source code, the code this time sets a position that’s very off-screen (see the bolded text) unless you’re reading the site maximized on the big Jumbotron NASA uses in Kennedy Space Center’s control room. Pretty clever little trick, actually, as the text would appear to be part of a blog entry made on a site with a Page Rank of 6. That’s not quite getting CNN to endorse your Cialis Jelly, but it’s better than creating your own splogs and trying to get Google to pay attention to them.
This shouldn’t affect Newsarama very much, as the site’s well established and the spam appears to be an isolated incident. Once this bit of code is removed, any penalties will be removed tout suite. My only other recommendation would be to make sure that the WordPress implementation that the site is running on be upgraded to the latest version; it’s currently on 2.0.2, and 2.5 is more stable and less hackable.
(OK, that, plus cleaning up the code. There’s a lot of salad on that page before you get to the content and it probably affects the Google rankings for a lot of the entries that should do better.)
And thus ends the latest edition of “Kevin Talks About The Internet.” Tune in next time, when I talk smack about Yahoo’s inability to decide what they do plus get in a tussle with somebody still using Hotmail like it’s 1997 or something. I probably should have just written this up in an email to JK, but I needed some content for my site, so…
