 | Why Forum Seeding Can Sometimes Backfire! |
When you’ve run an active forum for a number of years one thing you get really good at spotting is ’seeding’ - the crafty, sneaky and underhand way that companies and agencies go about getting some free advertising on forums whilst then claiming to their clients or superiors how clever they are abut getting the word out there without paying the sites they’ve stolen advertising revenue from!
The fact is they’re not clever, in fact most are just plain stupid.
Firstly they always post the same kind of thing, usually along the lines of “I’ve just found this website” or “Has anyone been to this site, is it genuine?”. It’s usually the first post they make too, although sometimes they might introduce themselves before launching their little advert.
The second reason why these people are stupid is because they don’t understand IP addresses - especially when it traceroutes back to their company HQ!
What we need is an example!
Our example arrived today in the form of Lucky Hammer. They’re owned by Data Media and Research Ltd, the people behind Win4Now and they’re based in Sheffield. Here’s our new friend Davros12 earlier just before being exterminated:
Now a bit of IP checking and we discover not only is the address a Sheffield IP address, but in fact other people using this IP have previously registered on Loquax - and they have email addresses that tell us that it’s the people behind Lucky Hammer doing the posting.
What to do with this kind of spam?
Usually it just gets deleted, but sometimes it’s useful to tell your users (or even blog readers) what is happening. In this case we’ve replied to the post, told our users that the company is breaking our forum rules (again) and suggested that as they can’t be upfront and honest why should anyone trust the site that is being advertised.
It’s one way to make sure that this kind of forum spam backfires on the people who continue to do it!
If you are a seedy forum advertiser in future why not contact us first, perhaps even pay us for the privilege to show your advert, but please don’t be sneaky about it - it just annoys everyone and gets you nothing, except maybe a bit of public “outing” on an affiliate blog.
on May 13, 2008 at 4:30 pm Dave wrote:
Good spot! One of my fellow mods on a large gaming forum I administer is a total IP slueth. One thing to point out is sniffing out each and every new registration can take a long time! But then the satisfaction of such a bust is pretty rewarding. I also wonder if such people will get more sophisticated in time, start using proxy accounts, etc! But that said, we find that its the opposite - for example such spammers often post with the same nicks across different forums making it very easy to call the out!
on May 14, 2008 at 10:29 am Zak wrote:
Nice post sir!
This isn’t something we do to promote Prezzybox, but we are looking at doing something similar (but not underhanded!!).
So, for example, we sell an Elvis Bathrobe which I’m sure loads of Elvis fans will absolutely love. Therefore I was planning to post on an Elvis forum and tell people about the bathrobe.
Is this a bad idea?
Or, if we do post on the forum should we be honest, say who we are and then say why we are posting?
I’d be interested to know what the best way to go about this is mate…
Zak.
on May 14, 2008 at 10:43 am jdmobile wrote:
The best way imo would be to contact the forum owner and discuss it with them - see if you can come up with a strategy that works. They may not be bothered if you post, on the other hand you might find an opportunity for a business relationship (e.g. you can offer them a discount or a competition as a tradeoff?)
The other way is to go for the long haul and become involved in the forum - but that’s not always easy.
Personally I’d say be upfront and honest though… mainly because I’ve lost count of the number of siteowners who have just discovered their own sites,.
These people shouldn’t have sites if they lose them and then just stumble upon them without realising they own it.
Jason
on May 14, 2008 at 3:31 pm Ultimate Forum Guide » Blog Archive » What do forum moderators need to know about spam? wrote:
[…] of the many blogs I read touched on a relevant topic the other day. The one little duckblog provides the story behind a “competitions” site, like many successful sites it has […]
on May 18, 2008 at 12:13 pm Blog Comment Spam aka How Not To Get Featured On Affilate Sites wrote:
[…] Jason Dale at One little Duck recently wrote about agency’s and merchants who go to extraordinary lengths to promote themselves on forums by pretending to be something they are not here is the article Why Forum Seeding Can Sometimes Backfire! […]