I’m not a coder or a security expert (at least, not so expert), so i don’t know if this is a bug or a feature (2.0), but many wikis using PBwiki have the same problem right now. In case you are wondering, PBwiki is used in a lot of websites, including the notorious BarCamp.org. And Pbwiki.com hosts tons of wikis on subdomains. And maybe all of them have the same problem. So, let’s see what’s the problem i’m talking about.
A lot of these wikis have a directory (it always has the same name letter) with tons of doorpages (ugly pages with javascript redirect). This is already against Google (and others?) guidelines (and i wonder how the hell is possible Google isn’t able to detect them automatically yet…). These doorpages rank pretty well on Google, since they are on strong websites.
Content of these doorpages goes from porn to ringtones, passing by viagra and other drugs.
Now, i’m going to point you to those pages, but before doing it i have to remember you need to disable javascript in your browser if you want to see doorpages. Otherwise, you’ll get redirected to other pages on other domains.
Done? Ok. You are ready to see doorpages on barcamp.org.
Doorpages are (often) in italian, so we know spammer is here in Italy.
If you want to find all other doorpages on other pbwikis, i’ll let you as excercise. You know all you need to find them:
- pbwiki is the platform used
- “/f/” is the path for directory containing doorpages
In the meantime, someone please tell Matt Cutts to remove all these pages from Google index. I think this asshole earned enough money I spent so much time writing and tuning this post, doorpages have already been removed. But not everything: you won’t see standard 404…
P.s. credits for this discovery goes to a SEO expert.
[sigh] I’m the founder of PBwiki. As the traffic on our collaborative sites has grown (and the quality of content at maturing sites like BarCamp has rapidly increased), these sites have been targeted by increasing numbers of spammers. We’ve had to write our own spam heuristics engine to weed them out, and the newest wave, begun about a week ago, seems to have had some candidates hurtle through. Our lead engineer spent most of the night last night improving the filters.
When we yank a spam page, we often render a 410 Gone to let indexers know that the page isn’t just temporarily offline, but that it should be expunged from their records.
hi David and thanks for your comment.
i just want to tell you to keep on with your good work. and with “you” i mean all people who work on PBwiki.
lamers can win a battle, never a war.