Today, I will talk briefly about how to identify splogs and protect yourself from losing your precious little Pagerank.

First and foremost, if you are a blogger, (and this article is intended for a blogger) you need to be aware of trackbacks left on your blog.

Now, most trackbacks will show up on your comments list. Although Akismet does a pretty good job, sometimes you really gotta keep a keen eye on things and make sure splogs don’t leave you a trackback.

Now, when you get a trackback, to protect yourself, all you have to do is check the link and make sure it’s a blog written by a human being. If it’s not, simply mark it as spam and delete it.

There is a better way so you do less work by using some Wordpress plugins.

I use Simple Trackback Validation plugin which checks each trackback to see if there’s a valid website linking to it. This won’t stop splogs but will cut down on your spam checking and filter out most of trackback hackers.

If you have a blog with a pretty good blog, I actually recommended you disable trackbacks completely. I have seen some of my big blogger friends do this, and it works. Simply by limiting the links going out, you can raise your Pagerank, especially if your blog is getting big.

To turn off trackbacks, simply go to Settings->Discussion then unselect Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).

To Google, trackbacks are nothing but links going out, it doesn’t really help your Pagerank unless you are just starting out.

Now, this probably beats the whole purpose of trackbacks but in this fast moving Web2.0 world, sometimes you gotta do what you need to do to get the job done.

I hope that helps you from losing Pagerank and next time I will show you how to protect yourself against Blog Post Theft and Splogs.

Tags: akismet, blog, blogger, good job, google, hackers, keen eye, notifications, simple trackback validation, spam, splogs, web2-0, wordpress plugins

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 9:41 pm and is filed under SEO, Webmaster's Tool, Zedomax Network News, web2.0.
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