It has come to my attention that there is a new website in town that happens to have a URL extremely similar to mine. Literally one character different. The domain in question was registered on 3rd November 2015.
Let me first say, the site in question does not contain any of my content (*see update*) and as far as I know is not doing anything wrong from a content perspective. The reason I am writing this post is to protect myself.
It has come to my attention the owner of this site is spamming links to his site in the comments of other bloggers. It’s your typical link spam stuff, seldom any relevance to the original article, and just trying to get attention. Why do I care? In some cases these spam comments are obviously nothing to do with me, because they are posted under this guys own name. In others, it is very easy to mistakenly believe it is me spamming links to my site, because the URL is so darn similar. In fact, when it was first pointed out to me, I didn’t even notice they weren’t links to my site. My brain just auto-corrected it. 🙂
I just want to make it very clear, if you see spam links in your blog comments or forum answers that at first glance seem to point to “oracle-base.com”, please double check the URL before you get pissed off with me. It is not me posting this stuff. They are not links to my website. I’m gaining nothing out of this, but potential bad feeling from other bloggers!
To the individual in question, I have a few words of advice.
- Spamming links to your website from other people’s blog comments really doesn’t do much to publicise your content. Most CMS tools, like WordPress, give external links in the comments section a NOFOLLOW value. As a result, those links don’t get followed by the search engine spiders and don’t help with your search ranking. You are literally wasting your time.
- Content producers get really annoyed by spam comments. The more you do this, the more you get a reputation of being a dick. I wrote this post because I don’t want people to mistakenly blame me, for what you are doing.
- Choosing a URL so similar to someone else’s is either a really lazy move, or a cynical attempt to piggy-back on their reputation. Either way, it doesn’t reflect well on you as an individual. It’s cool that you are producing content in the community to help others and gain some profile. I just don’t see how the URL you chose to use will be viewed in a positive light by anyone.
- Once someone knows the domain, a couple of Google searches and it becomes obvious who you are, that you already have an existing blog. I would suggest the content you are producing would be better posted to that blog. You are obviously fairly new to the content production game, so building a reputation associated with your name seems like a much better idea from a career perspective. My website is very well know, but in comparison I am not. That is kind-of the opposite of what most people want when they are trying to build a profile to help with their career.
If you are one of the bloggers I’ve contacted about this link spam, I would prefer it if you don’t mention the domain in question. At this point I think the individual is just misguided, so I don’t want this to become a witch hunt.
Cheers
Tim…
Update: I have found one of my articles on the site. I wrote to the owner of this website and ask for it to be removed. I’ve heard nothing back, so I’ve filed a DMCA take down notice.
Hey, I recently notice that web site as well… For me was looking like badly made adibas style pair of Chinese shoes 😀 I just laught a bit and close it. I think most people will just have fun and ignore that web as well. It’s nothing serious, but yeah, that’s a bit stupid and might lead to confusions.
Nikolay: Yes. I don’t actually have a problem with the site, and if people click the link they will quickly see it’s not me or my site. My problem would be if people see the spam, don’t check it out, and just think it’s me being a dick. 🙂
Cheers
TIm…