Four Links to Who-Knows-Where
Today I was alarmed to discover that one of my older posts on WordPress had a list of four links at the foot of it. The list was headed ‘possibly related posts’. The first link was to one of my own posts; the other three was to posts by blogs I didn’t even know. I saw it as a type of advertising spam, and I didn’t want it.
Investigating, I found that some bloggers were reporting a rise in the number of trolls visiting their blogs, as well as bloggers whose views were radically opposed to their own. Some of the links led to inappropriate sites, and there was nothing to point to the fact that the poster wasn’t endorsing these places. A quick look in my stats showed that I was receiving referrals from sites I didn’t think had any interest in my blog… turns out they had my posts in their ‘possibly related links’.
The good news is that I could opt out – and I did. I wish I’d known earlier it was happening, as I wasn’t seeing any of those links at the foot of recent posts. I won’t be receiving any of the traffic generated by this exercise, but I was happy enough the way I was before.
Meanwhile, the latest ScribeFire update still wasn’t working for me; in particular I was getting login errors when I tried to reconnect it with my blog… so I downgraded to the version I was happy with. It’s like going home.
Living in Scotland, UK; I work from home as an editor and pet-minder. I was born profoundly deaf and am no stranger to agoraphobia. I began renting out my house and have moved upstairs at my mother’s place. I used to have an Oriental Ticked Tabby (
