Doing a search on Technorati tags for Error Messages<\/a> was quite enlightening. First off it linked me to a site called RegSpyWareCleaner.com (which I refuse to link to but you can see it’s profile on Technorati<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The main thing to notice is the spelling mistakes: For example, posts have titles like “Kill spywrae,” “Spywarei nfo” and “Daware se” (I assume that is something to do with Adware – which the site often calls Addware). Now I am not doing a spelling offensive here, but it is interesting that a supposedly professional site, trying to sell its product to English speakers doesn’t spell check its content.<\/p>\n

The more important thing is when you realise what is basically a Google Ad site has six backlinks on Technorati. That is surprising. Who in their right mind would backlink? There really is little on the site you could call content, and at first I though the links were just other blogs laughing at the site (as this one nearly was). However a second search on Technorati<\/a> shows who the culprits are.<\/p>\n

Now there is nothing wrong with getting backlinks, until you see these are from dodgy looking spyware sites which make the same spelling mistakes. The most recent is a post titled “Spyg ames” (I am not going to link, they have enough backlinks already) which is from a site that has 67 blogs linking to it. A quick visit shows it has almost no content (and what it does, seems to be by accident). That is amazing. The site has six times as many inbound links as this blog, which produced over 120 quality posts last month<\/a>! Checking on Technorati again, shows that these 150-odd links from 67 blogs (this time all the linking blogs have zero links of their own) are from yet more scrap sites which do very little other than show Google ads.<\/p>\n

I get the sinking feeling that if I carried out the same checks on each of the other blogs which have backlinks, I would find pretty much the same story.<\/p>\n

So much for the power of the social web and the value of backlinking.<\/p>\n

Tags: Technorati<\/a>, Web 2.0<\/a>, Useless<\/a>, Technology<\/a>, Rants<\/a>, Backlinks<\/a>, Social Networking<\/a>, Backlink Spam<\/a><\/p>\n