A search marketer named Lars Lofgren felt exasperated by the avalanche of spam hitting Reddit and decided to expose the tricks that spammers are using to exploit Google’s preference for ranking Reddit discussions.
Reddit’s Spam Problem
Lars wrote that the reason he decided to expose how spammers are exploiting Reddit was because he’s a Redditor who is appalled by how spammy Reddit has become which in turn is infecting how spammy Google’s search results have become.
I spoke with Lars by email and he explained his motivation:
“I’m in the SEO industry and I believe in producing great content. That’s always been what motivates me. Produce great content, make Google users happy, Google features my stuff, and everyone wins.
Starting last fall, Google has begun featuring Reddit everywhere. In theory, this can be good. Reddit has tons of authentic conversations. But it’s anonymous, not moderated well, and has no accountability. So great content across the internet is getting buried below spammy Reddit content.
I want to be able to search Google and reliably find great content again, not spam. And a lot of business owners that run great websites have had to do layoffs or even shut down their websites because of this.”
How Spammers Exploit Reddit
Lars wrote an article that exposes six ways that spammers are using Reddit to promote affiliate sites and getting rewarded by Google. In our discussion I asked him if links were commoditized on Reddit and he speculated that it wouldn’t surprise him.
“I wouldn’t be surprised at all if moderators are selling links. …I’d be shocked if it wasn’t happening somewhere on Reddit. Or a company could just buy the link outright, lots of companies do this with blog posts that rank.”
1. Become A Moderator
Moderators have the power to pin a comment to any post. If anyone objects to the spammy activity the moderators can simply ban the users and make them go away.