5 ms·
Why are they posting random text in Gitlab?
by csdreamer7 6y ago
Why are they posting random text in Gitlab?
- riffic 6y agogetting that sweet sweet seo backlink juice
- gkop 6y agoIsn’t that why we add rel=nofollow to low friction user submitted links on our platforms?
- ivank 6y agoGoogle changed the interpretation of those a year ago. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify.html https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-...
- nurettin 6y ago> Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns. It appears as though they want to mark these links in order to prevent inorganic SEO, not help it.
- nerdponx 6y agoI don't get it. They post all this spam in the hopes that people click on the links therein, thereby boosting the ranking of those sites? Does that actually work at all?
- rudedogg 6y agoIt doesn’t actually require anyone clicking on the links. Google sees inbound links and uses that as a factor when calculating the ranking of the linked page.
- IggleSniggle 6y agoI thought that was how it worked like a decade or more ago, but not today.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- technion 6y agoRegardless of whether it works, people still pay for it. I have a Facebook ad right now that says "Get over 500,000 backlinks for $29.99". No doubt it's someone with a bot that spams comment forms.
- gramakri 6y agoI am not entirely sure. See https://forum.cloudron.io/users https://forum.cloudron.io/users, if you go to say page 10 or something you will see all sorts of nonsense. I am still trying to figure what the best way to fight this spam (because captcha is enabled and required to even create accounts). But these are real people and not bots. I know this because they even post new messages all the time.
- fancyfish 6y agoDefinitely the SEO backlinks- for example one profile I see is linking to an Indian escort service in the profile.
- coder543 6y agoMaybe GitLab needs an option to disable external linking, and filter any comment that contains an external link automatically
- csdreamer7 6y agoOr a nofollow option (add rel=nofollow)
- dnsmichi 6y agoThat's a great idea. We have discussed ways of getting a trust level, and enable this for specific groups. Discourse uses the same system for preventing spam. "Good" bots detect the rel=nofollow and do not come back. See my proposal here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14156#note_258252735 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14156#note_258...
- dnsmichi 6y agoIterating on my original thought, here is a smaller feature request for self-hosted GitLab instances. This can help GitLab.com too: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/273618 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/273618
- grey-area 6y agoThis is a typical spam profile. Usually they contain links, which search engines follow. https://forum.cloudron.io/user/cardioaseg https://forum.cloudron.io/user/cardioaseg
- edflsafoiewq 6y agoThe link contains rel=nofollow.
- leipert 6y agoI don’t know for sure, but I think our Markdown implementation adds nofollow.
- brlewis 6y agoI used to think that spammers would stop if their spamming didn't win them any results. But they don't care. They spread their spam as widely as possible without trying to prune out the places where it does them no good.
- grey-area 6y agoThat doesn't matter, see other comments below on Google's changing treatment of this attribute. Also you'll find spambots posting on any open form on the internet even if it doesn't do them any good, because much of it is automated, so even if you hide the results the spam will still come in.