Help > Trawling for link spamming

What does this trawl type find?

It is a frequent occurrence that users will post multiple copies of identical or similar hyperlinks to their web site in order to increase their search engine ranking. Although effective this strategy annoys other users. This trawl type allows you to identify and remove these copied links.

This trawl type can be configured to search for identical links only or multiple links to the same domain. It is also possible to ignore links to the same domain as the page being trawled. You may also select the maximum amount of similar / identical links which are allowed on one page.

How to use this trawl type

You should make sure this trawl type is switched on. There should be a green tick next to this trawl type in the Trawl for... tab. If there is a red cross instead, click the cross to toggle the trawl type on.

This trawl type has several options contained in it's settings dialog. This can be accessed by pressing the Settings link to the right of the trawl type in the Trawl for... tab. The dialog is shown below and its options are explained beneath...

Above: The link spamming detection settings dialog

The first drop down box allows you to set the maximum amount of times a link may appear on a single page of your site. If this number is exceeded, a problem will be flagged.

The Only match identical URLs option instructs this trawl type to only find repeat URLs which link to the same page.

The Match URLs which have the same domain name allows you to find multiple links to the same domain name. This could be useful if you wish to stop users from posting long lists of the pages on their site, or if a spammer has got smart and started posting many links to slightly different pages on their site.

The final option allows you to ignore any links which are to pages within the same domain name as your web site. It is recommended that you keep this option selected, otherwise you may get many problems flagged for links you have posted yourself.

How to solve the problems found

If you find a user of your site has been posting a link more times than you wish, you might consider blocking this user if your site allows this.