There is a New Type of Spam to Worry About and its Name Spelled Backwards is TLAMES
[Se m alt] I am writing it this way so as not to assist them in any way with getting the word out about them. I am taking this “Voldemort”[1] idea from a post by Will Grundy on TheGrinningSkull.WordPress.com. He actually has a response from them on this post that is worth reading.
About the spam Tlames (their name backwards) has perpetrated, it is called referrer spam. They hit a website over and over as if they are a visitor and those hits show up in the Google Analytics (or other analytics) as a visit through a referring site. The referring site is theirs.
We went into all of our clients and put code to block this action so the client data is not skewed inappropriately.
What this company is trying to do is to get people to see them in their reports from analytics and wonder whom they are. Then they are served up a massive page saying how their software makes analytics more understandable. On the Facebook page they have (which has tons of complaints in the comments) they state:
A Tlames crawler is a technical bot of the webmaster analytics tool Tlames.com. According to the software algorithm Tlames crawler bots visit website and gather statistical data for our service simulating real user behavior: unique IP, browser, display resolution etc. This information is used exclusively within the Tlames.com project and isn’t revealed to a third party.
All of their talk about “technical crawler” and algorithms is just that talk. They use these terms to fool the unsuspecting. It is not really a web crawler and they wouldn’t know an algorithm if it ran over them. I assume they use the term algorithm to make them seem more like Google.
Ashley B. on their Facebook reported their Twitter account had been suspended. Go figure.
I am writing this post in an effort to get all to write to their Registrar, Name.com to report them. If there are enough reports, someone will be forced to listen. I am attaching a form letter that you may use. You simply email [email protected]. The following is what we sent and what we are asking our clients to send. Any who wish to use it may do so.
Our site is being overrun by Semalt.com which is using spamming attacks and trying to identify themselves as a web crawler in an attempt to mislead people. They are doing this solely to sell their analytics software. The site visit shows up in analytics as a referring site over and over with a 100% bounce rate. They claim they are doing no harm because of the bounce rate and that is wishful thinking at best.
This is very intrusive and potentially threatens our rankings with major search engines. We must ask that this action stop immediately. Please intervene on behalf of millions of sites they are affecting.
Thank you for your assistance
Hopefully if enough people take action, we can have an effect that will prevent them from continuing this type of behavior. Our best to all of you and please, if you write about them, always use their name backwards so as not to add to their notoriety.
[1] In Harry Potter books, the villain is Voldemort and everyone says “He who cannot be named” instead of using his name.
I saw this over in Moz and thought I’d follow up here. I do find it strange, it was coming up on one of our larger clients. We thought they were just getting pitched by another SEO company at first. Now we see a large portion of sites we manage and our own site pinged. I’m glad to see someone else was irritated by this.
Bill,
We have now taken it to name.com’s legal department and asked them to intervene where the “abuse team” just said, “No virus here, what’s the prob????”
Hopefully, they will get that it is a new type of spam. I am calling it crawler spam. Next Halloween I may even come up with a costume that is crawler spam!
Best,
Nice post Robert – very appropriate! I came across this “referrer” and I am glad more people are becoming aware of what they are actually doing – Expelliarmus