Strange guestbook signing

[MPaul]

As I got home today, I noticed that someone had signed my guestbook. He told me how much he likes the site but that I should put some better links on the links page. Now I always like it when people sign my guestbook, but this was a little strange. At first, the email the person gave was a wrong one since I got a failed delivery message from the server (the guestbook sends a mail to the address entered). Now the guestbook also lets someone add their own homepage address. The person entered a porn sites address. Anyway, I decided to look at the raw log files for today. Since the guestbook gave me the exact time he put the entry, I could find what IP address he was using. Now I also found out how he got to my site, and it was by entering the following in Google: "sign guestbook url". So I'm thinking he's looking for guestbooks to sign, and put his URL in, so that he can get a higher ranking on Google. Am I right?

PS: He never even visited the links page

[Mandi]

Oh, yeah - that's a fabulous new spam method. I get them on my blog comments alllllll the time. They also go back in time and sign old comments that I am less likely to notice. Haha on them: I've got a script that keeps track of all the newest comments so I can see at a glance that weird stuff got added, regardless of which blog entry it went on .

Just delete it and ignore; that's the best thing IMO. You can ban by IP if it gets bad, or you have repeat offenders.

[smallpond]

I've seen a couple of articles on this. Try searching google
for "miserable failure" for an example. Just hit "I'm feeling lucky"

[MPaul]

Oh, yeah - that's a fabulous new spam method

That's what I suspected. I deleted it right away. I'll wait and see if it continues. Anyway, I'm going to put a no index tag on the guestbook and sign pages, sa that they'll be less likely to find them in search engines.
So I have another question, when Google finds the no index tag in a page that is already indexed, will the page be removed from their servers so that no one can find it using the search engine?

[Mandi]

You can also make a robots.txt page that tells (well behaved) search bots to stay away from the guestbook area.

[TVB]

(the guestbook sends a mail to the address entered).

And if I am a miscreant who puts the email addresses of my 500 closest "friends" into your guestbook submission, do each of those addresses get a return email?

Just some food for thought now that I realize what year it is.

Betsy

[MPaul]

And if I am a miscreant who puts the email addresses of my 500 closest "friends" into your guestbook submission, do each of those addresses get a return email?

I don't know . I'm using FQ's guestbook, so I hope they have given this thought