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.
In our conversation, Lars explained how moderators spam their subreddits and why Google’s uncontrolled ranking of Reddit discussions has corrupted them:
“A moderator of a subreddit can publish a comment of their own to any post in their subreddit. Usually it’ll be a new comment that they make to the conversation. And then pin the comment to the very top of the conversation so everyone sees it.
They can’t modify comments from other users but they can pin any comment of their own. This moderation power is there for communicating to their community, like when a conversation gets too controversial and a moderator wants to slow it down.
Some moderators have realized that their subreddit is being featured for lucrative terms in Google. So they go looking for posts that rank, then pin comments in those posts with a link that makes them a lot of money personally.”
2. Find Posts That Google Ranks
Lars wrote that another tactic spammers use is to identify posts that Google is ranking and then add a new pinned post that contains an affiliate link. A pinned post is a post that’s permanently lodged at the beginning of a discussion. That ensures that it will have maximum exposure and engagement with users who visit Reddit from Google’s search results.
He writes:
“If you were a mod of that subreddit, you could go into that comment thread, add a new comment with your own affiliate link, then pin that comment to the top of the thread. And that’s EXACTLY what someone has done…”
3. Spam A Trusted Subreddit
The next technique doesn’t even involve becoming a mod. Lars described that a spammer just needs to find a subreddit that has a history of ranking in the SERPs. The next step is to create a topic. Lars suggests using a sock puppet to answer the question with a link.