Google now completely blocks spammed forums

Alpha1

Alpha1

Well-known member
A friend of mine received this notification:

User-generated spam
Google has detected user-generated spam on your site. Typically, this kind of spam is found on forum pages, guestbook pages, or in user profiles.

As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to domain.net/forum/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site.

Recommended action

  • Find out more about user-generated spam in our Help Center.
  • Update your site so that it meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
  • Once your site is clean and secure, submit a reconsideration request.
  • For an updated list of manual actions currently applied to your site, visit the Manual Actions page. If no manual actions are listed, there is no longer a need to file a reconsideration request.
If we determine your site is no longer in violation of our guidelines, we'll revoke the manual action.
 
xrumer can spam faster than most can clean up. 30000 posts per week is an amazing amount
 
A properly run forum can use the batch update to clean up.
They can shut down registration or leave it at manual until they fix things.

I'm fairly certain google allows some leeway in this matter - because otherwise they'd have to shut down the big media sites whenever their comments were spammed. So it's doubtful that a few - or even a few hundred (out of 100's of thousands) spam posts would shut down a board.

That said, I hope I never run into that! That would cut my traffic 70% or more.
 
Non-English, especially with non-latin letters have no problems with spam. We just configure one question-answer in our language and we are bullet-proof (unless there are really weird manual spam bots, but that hasn't happened to me for more than a year now, so I guess they aren't).
 
Last edited:
Moshe1010 said:
Non-English, especially with non-latin letters have not problems with spam. We just configure one question-answer in our language and we are bullet-proof (unless there are really weird manual spam bots, but that hasn't happened to me for more than a year now, so I guess they aren't).
Click to expand...

Yeah, Hebrew is probably safe most of the time with QA

For QA, most of the time (unless competitions are held) you only need to be worried about the chunk of people that use the application (such as XRumer). If the people that use XRumer also understand your language, they'll save the qa and it then gets shared globally across all applications (textcaptcha.txt). If you're from a county that doesn't use XRumer, QA's can often be affective for a lot longer (until a Hebrew speaking XRumer user decides to add some answers to textcaptcha.txt)
 
Last edited:
tenants said:
Yeah, Hebrew is probably safe most of the time with QA

For QA, most of the time (unless competitions are held) you only need to be worried about the chunk of people that use the application (such as XRumer). If the people that use XRumer also understand your language, they'll save the qa and it then gets shared globally across all applications (textcaptcha.txt). If you're from a county that doesn't use XRumer, QA's can often be affective for a lot longer (until a Hebrew speaking XRumer user decides to add some answers to textcaptcha.txt)
Click to expand...
The good thing about Hebrew that it's very limited in terms of people who can write/speak (unlike English or other languages). So I guess it would take some time (if ever) until someone would add stuff in Hebrew to XRumer. We can also change the Q&A all the time, or even put Captcha in Hebrew with numbers only (written numbers in Hebrew) which makes it really spam proof (this is what very large websites are using in Israel for many years and it works quite well).
 
they should block it. it's their way of limiting the effect a spammer has.

so far i've had two spammers get through and blast me with 500+ messages selling something in the wrong language.

i have @tenants anti spam addon and thankfully XF features let me delete all 500 at once, but once in a while - they still get through.

then i noticed in google analytics that a few people have found my site via searching for the default XF branding and then also the weird meds they were selling.

So if google blocks you until your spam is cleared, they're probably doing you a favor. any new visitors who see that probably WON'T return. and it blocks spammers from making a few bucks.
 
drastic said:
they should block it. it's their way of limiting the effect a spammer has.

so far i've had two spammers get through and blast me with 500+ messages selling something in the wrong language.

i have @tenants anti spam addon and thankfully XF features let me delete all 500 at once, but once in a while - they still get through.

then i noticed in google analytics that a few people have found my site via searching for the default XF branding and then also the weird meds they were selling.

So if google blocks you until your spam is cleared, they're probably doing you a favor. any new visitors who see that probably WON'T return. and it blocks spammers from making a few bucks.
Click to expand...

@drastic
If you ever find a bot that gets through FBHP (or one you think is a bot), for me it's really important you send any information about this user (see here). FBHP should (and does) stop 100% of spam bots registering, the XRumers AI is also not quite there to relate one object to another in a new unique image so CustomImgCapcha should also hold for quite some time... I believe what this is most likely to be is a dormant bot before you installed FBHP (in which case StopHumanSpam would have stopped it from spamming), but any information about this user (which sounds very much like a bot) would be appreciated (if it's in your FBHP logs). I would even consider contacting the bot user, I'm fairly certain it did not get through the FBHP registration (it might have come through a different way.. at first as a human / via facebook registration... in which case, there is an option to add customImgCaptha there too), but I really need to see the user in the FBHP logs (This user in the FBHP logs would be like a diamond in the rough to me, but I suspect it is not there, since it almost definitely registered before FBHP was installed)
 
Last edited:
I'm somewhat concerned about this. I commend Google for trying to crack down on spammed forums, but sometimes owners are away from computer and can't ban those spammers [on time].

I think the timing of xenForo's implementation of anti-spam measures was bulls-eye. We don't have to see this happen often.

But this can cause problems - a disgruntled user goes on a spam rampage, and gets the site in question delisted, like someone else mentioned:
Freddie Agricola said:
So now to get someone's forum off Google, just spam them until Google delists them!
Click to expand...
Once again, I commend Google for doing this, but this also invites trouble.
 
The Sandman said:
True that, but if you're getting so much spam you can't clean it Google isn't your biggest problem.
Click to expand...
Absolutely right. I have been amazed to see how easy spammers can get through the xenforo anti-spam measures on registration (which I thought was really good). One more reason to get bad behavior for xenforo.
 
The Sandman said:
True that, but if you're getting so much spam you can't clean it Google isn't your biggest problem.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Google are providing the site owner with an alert that something is drastically wrong; this isn't so much a penalty, as a good (and free) service! (y)

Better to know about it and have the opportunity to deal with it, than be blacklisted from Google without knowing why.

Out of curiosity though I'd be interested to know the scope/scale of the spam content ... and the time scale the spam was submitted over? It could be a site that has been "left to rot" with six months of accumulated spam, or it could have been hit one day and dropped from Google the next. That would make a big difference as to how much time a site owner has to correct it before being blocked!!!
 
Clickfinity said:
Out of curiosity though I'd be interested to know the scope/scale of the spam content ... and the time scale the spam was submitted over? It could be a site that has been "left to rot" with six months of accumulated spam, or it could have been hit one day and dropped from Google the next. That would make a big difference as to how much time a site owner has to correct it before being blocked!!!
Click to expand...

Giving the ubiquitousness of spam posts it seems to me that Google would be shooting itself in the foot if they suspended a site for spam that was properly dealt with in a timely manner. Their algorithm probably includes both ratio of spam posts to non-spam posts and a mechanism for checking to see if a post flagged as spam persists after some time has elapsed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom