I just wanted to bring to your attention on people hijacking your awarded links on the top commentators plugin. Stu actually brought this to my attention the other day in a comment (and I’ve known about this before as well) but I never got a chance to address it.
What Is Top Commentators Hijacking?
If you don’t know what top commentators hijacking is, its basically finding a site that has the top commentators plugin installed (made to reward people who comment on blogs with a sitewide backlink to their site) and commenting using someone elses’ name to steal their backlink.
In the example with a reader and commentator of mine, Stu, he commented quite a few times within the past few days and he made it on my top commentators list. Now, someone else used the same name “Stu” to comment on the most recent post and he took over the backlink juice.
Though, the comment didn’t even get approved as it was still pending to be moderated by me, it still took over for some odd reason.
I don’t want to point and accuse people because I’m sure there are a lot of people who use the nickname “Stu” just like tons of people I know who are also “Jay” and stuff like this can happen accidentally.
On the other hand, some people take advantage of this knowledge and use it for their own personal evil plots.
How to Avoid Top Commentators Hijacking
There is no real way of avoiding it if someone decides to be an ass about it except expanding on the name you type in. I would suggest putting in your blog’s URL or something next to your name so that would narrow down who’s trying to steal your links.
I would do this especially if you have a common name and you tend to only comment with your first name.
For instance, instead of putting in “Jay” which I know tons of people have that name, I would put in “Jay – DatMoney.com” that way if someone did try to hijack my link, it’s easy as hell to spot who is trying to do so with proof.
Suggestions to Top Commentators Plugin Creator
I’m sure the creator gets lots of suggestions as is but one of the suggestions I would ask is to possibly change the comments getting approved compared to it being pending. In Stu’s instance, this person’s comment was still pending approval, yet, it hijacked the backlink almost instantly.
Conclusion
I’m sure I hijacked a lot of peoples’ top commentators and vice versa, only because I have a very common nickname “Jay” but I’m starting to change that to “Jay – Site URL” and I think you guys should too.
Anyways, what do you guys think about this?
This must be a highly frustrating experience for people (such as Stu) to experience, especially when they are taking the time to comment, adding something of value for your readers.
I can see my name has made it onto your top commentators list (whoop whoop, lol).
Well done Stu for spotting this one!
Regards,
Karl
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I’ve never heard of that, though I don’t think I have that occurring on my blog. However, I have seen where someone will pop onto a blog and start leaving many one line messages on a lot of blogs to get to the top of the list; that’s kind of smarmy, if you ask me. I’ve been known to look at a lot of different posts and comment while I’m on a particular blog, but always more than one little line. If I can’t contribute, I stay quiet. Thanks for sharing this.
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I can see that happening, and I have seen it happen actually. “Nathaniel” is not really a name to worry about but it is a good idea anyway if I put my site name. Once over at tech-buzz there was another commentator named Nathaniel, so I kept seeing my name with more and more comments. We both commented a lot, so ended up top of the list, but sometimes I would notice another link in that. I don’t think he did it on purpose, but it took a while to figure out, and it can happen.
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Probably you right. Adding site name in your name could help make things right.
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The version of Top Commentators I use on TUK (it’s an older one, as I haven’t updated in ages) has a function where you can choose the Top Commentator by email.
So even if you have many with similar names, it’ll take the one who’s email was used most, which prevents hijacking.
I heard this rumour also … so thanks for clearing this up. It is these black hat people who have no scruples, no morals and no dignity. Sadly they make mor emoney than I do, but I am asure that will get altered in the future.
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Good that you pointed this out man. I think it also the responsibility of the blogger too to check… I mean if for example someone is a top commenter on my blog…so logically I must know or have notice his site and know what email etc he uses to comment and url etc. So its quite easy to spot those morons who hijack the plugin and delete their comment.
ya the best is to use a weird nickname.
best thing ever!.. thanks for this good advice. means a lot…I am always dying to be on the top commentator, but with someone steal my name would be such a pain. It means that someone just wanted to put our efforts into the garbage. And it sounds really awful.
That really isn’t fair to the people who really worked all the way to the top. Thanks for the headsup because I will keep that in mind.
Kai Los last blog post..How Much Is My Site Worth?
hum, i noticed that happen in my blog several times. I always thought it was the user that wanted to share more than one link. I am aware of that now, but i no longer have that problem, because my readers don’t know who is the top commentator until the end of the month…
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Man this sucks thanks for the heads up. I’ve heard that there are different plug ins for the commentators list, some of which link the username with the e-mail so the hijacker would have to know the e-mail address of whomever he was trying to hijack. Not sure if that’s accurate.
Oh dang I didn’t even know such things existed. Thanks for the warning tho!
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This really was a good article because i use Top commenter in my blog. So i thank you for this warn. GJ
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good suggestion about nick. some time i thought to put my URL very next to nick.then i thought webmaster may include this as spam and may not approve my link.so i did not do this.
I think they’ve already solved the problem (or they’re going to do it soon). But I wonder why it took this long for people to find and exploit this hole – this plugin’s already been out for a long time.
I’ve heard quite a lot about this now and I think it’s terrible. People go onto blogs, make contributing posts and their hard work is then taken away from them – not fair!
Top commentators listing blogs always get higher number of comments, and every month I am keeping my readers updated with the best blogs which have the top commentators list.
I like your way to give guide lines.but i did not get mate, how a 2nd person can do this. lets suppose if some one do this like STU you have mentioned in your post STU1 has posted comments with different website back link ‘URL’, and STU2 with different url. how STU2 could get back link juice. i did not get this thing.Please explain it.
Yup. its happen on my several blog. I hate to admit it. But its really make me angry.
This happens to me all the time. My competitors always stealing my work.
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