Why Do People Send In Fake Form Submissions?
-
I get a lot of form submissions through my website that are clearly not actual people (unless they are insane . . ). It fills out stuff nonsensically, has an email address, and usually some stupid snippet of text that makes no sense.
Does anyone know why people do this? Clearly there can't be any SEO benefit to submitting to someones web form.
I guess if I added a "captcha" option it would put a stop to this . .
-
I have seen this lately on one of my clients' sites. The other thing I can help but wonder about is in doing research in Compete on search referrals to various sites, suddenly much of the data is total nonsense. For example, here are some of the top terms supposedly generating traffic to a popular inbound marketing site:
medical coding
tn real estate
bankruptcy lawyer ventura ca
auto detailing boston
Or could this be the result of URL masking? Some sites results are complete nonsense, so that I can't tell that they get any legitimate search.
-
Sorry, that's what I mean. Captcha programs are ineffective much of the time against Xrumer. For other software there's services such as decaptcha, beatcaptcha, etc.. some services read the screen and take their best guess, some use actual people in what I can only imagine are sweatshops to enter captchas manually for you, but Xrumer doesn't need that stuff. It's smart, it learns... and many who use it combine it's knowledge with files so that it learns even more.
That's what I mean, the only way to stay ahead of it is your own personalized captchas (ones that alternate).
-
Have you considered using a captcha program? I assume there's a cost involved to get that setup . . . I've never really looked into it.
Jeez . . . how sad/dedicated are we lurking on SEOMoz on Memorial Day . .. .
-
I would place my money on Xrumer and other such software... we get it loads too.
Some might even be hack attempts with SQL injection but probably not too often.
Xrumer is pretty good at beating captcha's (I've heard lol ;p), so you'll need to define your own actual questions if you want to stop it... i.e. "What colour the sky?" is one, but it's learnt that and others like it, so you need more personalized ones. The best are "What is the first word on the homepage of this site?" as of course it can't guess that, and it can't follow the instructions to go find out
-
I don't think it does anything other than send me a response via email, but I will check with the designer to make sure it is not allowing anything. It has a section for "comments", but that's just so they can clarify the quote info to me.
-
Ha! Somehow I don't think my site has garnered that level of interest from Google yet . . .
-
Thanks Dave.
That article surprised me. I never expected google to have robots trained to hack at forms. I wonder how many other robots are out there stuffing data into forms?
-
We are starting to see the comment spammers come out again with refined tactics because of the Panda Effect. Does your form allow comments on a blog? or deeper access? Bots and Hacks are always looking for a way in.
-
Nice Find on that article and Congrats on the Guru status
-
Might be Google knocking....
http://searchengineland.com/google-now-fills-out-forms-crawls-results-13760
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Fake" market research reports killing SEO
Our robotics company is in a fast growing, competitive market. There are an assortment of "market research" companies who are distributing press releases about their research reports (which are of less than dubious quality). These announcements end up being distributed through channels with high domain authority. The announcements mention many companies in the space that the purported report covers - including ours. As a result, our company name and product brand is suffering since the volume of press announcements is swamping our ratings. What would you do? Start writing blog postings on topics and post through inexpensive news feeds? Somehow contact the firms posting the contact and let them know they are in violation of our trademarks by mentioning our name? Other ideas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | amelanson1 -
How does google know if rich snippet reviews are fake?
According to: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/rich-snippets/reviews - all someone has to do is add in some html code and write the review. How does google do any validation on whether these reviews are legitimate or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wlingke0 -
Can i send a disavow if a detect a spam link
I have detected than one web domain is generating 2400 links to my site should a use a disavow tools, as it is imposible to have contact from webmaster and no response to your emails My web as not been warned or penalized, but i dont like this link, and i want to inform google of that,. If google acepts the disavow file, should i still see on my webmaster tools that web links, or will they desapear thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Where can i see ejemple of disavow files to adapt mine in order to send to google
Can i send a disavow file to google as CSV file. Where can i see ejemple of disavow files to adapt mine in order to send to google
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
How to transform an excel file on a txt file to send the Google Dissavow
I have a disallow file made on excel with lots of columns off information. I want to transform to txt file saving it from excel, but the result file seems understandable Can someone helpme on how to transform an excel file on the Google Dissavow file format for the final import
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Infographic submission sites potentially offering paid links....
Good Morning/Afternoon fellow Mozzers, I recently created an infographic and am now looking to get it distributed via as many publications as possible. I discovered some great sites with collections of infographics.However I have discovered a multitude of sites offering to review and feature the infographic, or "express" submissions so the graphic features faster for a price..... links below. http://www.amazinginfographics.com/submit-infographics/ http://infographicjournal.com/submit-infographics/ 2 questions 1. Is this considered as buying links? My instincts say Yes. 2. Some sites offer mix of free and "express" paid submissions. If the answer to Q.1 is yes, should I avoid them all together even if my graphic gets picked up free? Thanks in advance for the feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Fake PageRank scam?
Had someone offering to place a link on their site for a monthly fee, claiming their site is PR8 - I checked the PR and it seems to be real, with no 301 redirect, but by looking at the site and their presence in google results, I highly doubt their PR is legitimate, but cannot find out how they faked it, and whether having a link on their site will have a negative effect on my site. Their domain is articledomination(dot)info Can anyone shed some lights into this ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gamblingau0 -
Is it possible that since the Google Farmer's Update, that people practicing Google Bowling can negatively affect your site?
We have hundreds of random bad links that have been added to our sites across the board that nobody in our company paid for. Two of our domains have been penalized and three of our sites have pages that have been penalized. Our sites are established with quality content. One was built in 2007, the other in 2008. We pay writers to contribute quality and unique content. We just can't figure out a) Why the sites were pulled out of Google indexing suddenly after operating well for years b) Where the spike in links came from. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dahnyogaworks0