Deciphering an odd link plea
November 15, 2010 9:29 AM Subscribe
Can you help me decipher this odd email I received? It involves my college Web page and a request to link to terrible content from a random web site.
I am a community college English instructor with a college page I use for posting assignments. Last week, I received this email:
Hello [trarnoir],
I hope this email doesn't come as a disturbance, but I wanted to compliment you on your page [URL of a page I created]. I really enjoy poetry and reading, and I found your page while searching for information on Edgar Allan Poe. Your page has some great literary resources, thank you!
I also wanted to let you know about a problem link that I encountered on your page: http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/. Your page is such a great resource, so I thought I'd let you know about a great article I found: http://www.clickinks.com/Edgar-Allan-Poe.html . The article is all about Edgar Allan Poe, so it may work well as a replacement for your problem link, or even as an addition to your page. Thanks again for sharing your resources, and I hope you find this article useful!
Take care,
Kate Jones
The page of mine the email refers to is not a “great resource.” It is just an assignment from a previous semester, and the broken link was to a site that had texts of short stories.
The link the emailer suggests goes to a page about Poe with dozens of other links. What intrigued me is that page is one of many random articles (see this list) hosted by a web site that sells printer ink (http://www.clickinks.com).
I have two questions. Why would a printer ink business have this page of random articles? Is it just a way to increase traffic to their site? Is this a common tactic with legitimate businesses? Second, who is the person that emailed me? What is her role? Her email address is from a sorority. Do businesses pay college students to try to drum up links for their random content pages, perhaps even to create the content? I didn’t respond to the email, but I might.
I am inquiring mostly because sometimes students of mine try to use content from awful pages like these, and I am interested in how they come to be.
I am a community college English instructor with a college page I use for posting assignments. Last week, I received this email:
Hello [trarnoir],
I hope this email doesn't come as a disturbance, but I wanted to compliment you on your page [URL of a page I created]. I really enjoy poetry and reading, and I found your page while searching for information on Edgar Allan Poe. Your page has some great literary resources, thank you!
I also wanted to let you know about a problem link that I encountered on your page: http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/. Your page is such a great resource, so I thought I'd let you know about a great article I found: http://www.clickinks.com/Edgar-Allan-Poe.html . The article is all about Edgar Allan Poe, so it may work well as a replacement for your problem link, or even as an addition to your page. Thanks again for sharing your resources, and I hope you find this article useful!
Take care,
Kate Jones
The page of mine the email refers to is not a “great resource.” It is just an assignment from a previous semester, and the broken link was to a site that had texts of short stories.
The link the emailer suggests goes to a page about Poe with dozens of other links. What intrigued me is that page is one of many random articles (see this list) hosted by a web site that sells printer ink (http://www.clickinks.com).
I have two questions. Why would a printer ink business have this page of random articles? Is it just a way to increase traffic to their site? Is this a common tactic with legitimate businesses? Second, who is the person that emailed me? What is her role? Her email address is from a sorority. Do businesses pay college students to try to drum up links for their random content pages, perhaps even to create the content? I didn’t respond to the email, but I might.
I am inquiring mostly because sometimes students of mine try to use content from awful pages like these, and I am interested in how they come to be.
We get these daily at MeFi. Everything FM says is true as I understand it.
posted by jessamyn at 9:34 AM on November 15, 2010
posted by jessamyn at 9:34 AM on November 15, 2010
Sketchy SEO spam. Delete and ignore.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:35 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Happy Dave at 9:35 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Yep, SEO spam. I get similarly written emails constantly.
posted by me3dia at 9:35 AM on November 15, 2010
posted by me3dia at 9:35 AM on November 15, 2010
Response by poster: Does anyone have an idea of who writes the form letter or who tracks down the sites to send them to? I'm just curious. Thanks for all the responses so far. My guesses were pretty close to right.
posted by TrarNoir at 9:57 AM on November 15, 2010
posted by TrarNoir at 9:57 AM on November 15, 2010
I get variations on these through the contact form on my websites all the time.
I would imagine they just Google keywords related to the site they're trying to promote and work their way down the list. My understanding is the Google gives extra weight to links from university sites, so it doesn't surprise me that you would get one.
posted by meta_eli at 10:03 AM on November 15, 2010
I would imagine they just Google keywords related to the site they're trying to promote and work their way down the list. My understanding is the Google gives extra weight to links from university sites, so it doesn't surprise me that you would get one.
posted by meta_eli at 10:03 AM on November 15, 2010
Does anyone have an idea of who writes the form letter or who tracks down the sites to send them to?
Spammers write them and spammers track them down. Sometimes they use Google, more often they use their own search crawlers. All they do is look for keywords and an email address (or guess names@yourdomain.org), then send the appropriate spam.
posted by rhizome at 10:22 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Spammers write them and spammers track them down. Sometimes they use Google, more often they use their own search crawlers. All they do is look for keywords and an email address (or guess names@yourdomain.org), then send the appropriate spam.
posted by rhizome at 10:22 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Does anyone have an idea of who writes the form letter or who tracks down the sites to send them to? I'm just curious.
They're kind of boilerplate, usually. It'll come up as "Hi, I noticed your page about (subject), it is such a great resource regarding (topic) that I also wanted to draw your attention to (page)."
No one is actually typing these beyond whatever it takes to create the template initially. Ditto the finding of sites to send them to - it's all automated and is usually done by an unwitting user's computer which has malware installed on it.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 10:31 AM on November 15, 2010
They're kind of boilerplate, usually. It'll come up as "Hi, I noticed your page about (subject), it is such a great resource regarding (topic) that I also wanted to draw your attention to (page)."
No one is actually typing these beyond whatever it takes to create the template initially. Ditto the finding of sites to send them to - it's all automated and is usually done by an unwitting user's computer which has malware installed on it.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 10:31 AM on November 15, 2010
Best answer: Links from educational institutions give very high page ranks (e.g. PR 5). Linking to this site would likely raise it in Google's search results.
posted by Sutekh at 5:40 AM on November 16, 2010
posted by Sutekh at 5:40 AM on November 16, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
The email sounds like a form letter.
The chances are pretty good that the sender of this email - or more likely, someone who has the sender of this email in their address book which enables the malware on their computer to appear as if it came from them - does not know she sent it to you.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 9:32 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]