 |
Thanks to LindyShoots for calling attention to this.
Last week we were getting these weird trackbacks, following them up found, oh cool they are forcing these people to link docweaselblog’s vulgar posts, nicely done! Its a new “feature” by WordPress: Possibly related links, automatically generated. They appear out of nowhere on your blog, probably triggered by keywords. I guess this is supposed to be a good thing, but I don’t see how. However, we had no problem with reaping the benefits of free hits, its not our bandwidth.
Then they started appearing on here. This was not so good. Searching the entire Dashboard was unfruitful, because they hide it in a non-intuitive spot, and WordPress doesn’t make a big deal out of telling you how to turn it off. In fact, they never announced to users that they were even adding this “feature, not a bug”.
It seems like the perfect way for all those people setting up spam blogs to get more traffic and higher search engine rankings. You know, those weird ass blogs that quote part of your blog post, then link back to you for “here’s more” with no commentary, no hint of anyone actually owning the blog, just some robotic program that culls related blog posts and archives and trackbacks them.
What they are doing is racking up search engine cred and crosslink rankings so that they can then link their spam sites and get more hits, because part of the criteria search engines use is, how many other sites link to this one for a certain popular keyword. That’s why your post on President Bush or Britney Spears will get picked up by some generic “PRESIDENT BUSH NEWS AGGREGATOR BLOG” with no comment, they just want a trackback.
Its odd WordPress seems to think they have an interest in promoting this trend, and it also kind of makes you wonder, are they in collusion with these spammers or what? Are they in fact running some of these blogs? I don’t know the answer, but we do know how to turn the fucking thing off:
1. Go to WordPress Dashboard
2. Go to Design > Extras
3. Click “Hide related links on this blog, which means this blog won’t show up on other’s blogs or get traffic that way”
4. Click save
You won’t get randomly included on other people’s blogs either, with this dumbass feature, if you opt out, but we can certainly live with that. The worst thing about it is that it further devalues the worth of search engines in finding something in context for your search instead of dredging up thousands of bullshit sites that are just whoring the keywords for rankings on the off chance some dumb fuck will click on the link and buy whatever it is they are selling.
I blame the stupid bastards who actually must be buying fake Viagra and penis enlarging pills, because why else to people go to all this trouble to set them up? The same goes for email spam. There must be millions of stupid motherfuckers who actually read spam and act on it, and actually buy something from the spammer. Its the only explanation, unless they just exist to fuck up the internet. Legit sites have a hard time selling real, useful products. How can these assholes prosper, just on the theory that there are a certain percentage of retards with a credit card out there who, if contacted, will send money?
I think we all know the answer to that one.
