Irony, Defined
Tuesday, June 8, 2004 at 3:54 pm | 
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Yesterday, less than an hour after my "What's in a Blogroll" post, I received an email (that was little more than spam, really) from someone who simply went by "Jonny" which started like this:
I am contacting you about cross linking. I am interested in your site because it looks like it's relevant to a site for which I am seeking links.
He went on to say that he expected his PageRank to climb quickly. Uh, sure, but it's not going to be because he's leaching off of my hard earned PR, dangit!
Just let me know if it's OK, and I'll send you the web address for your review. If you approve of the site, then the intention is to exchange links.
How wonderful. Would you like fries with that?
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Jonny sounds like an idiot and obviously didn't really get the point of your previous post. If I think a site/resource/blog will be of interest to the people who I know frequent my site.. I'll link up. Otherwise, I may just mention them quickly in passing in a longer post mentioning many acquantinces and other sites I've stumbled across.
If Jonny is quite young then the chances are that he will not have read any of your blogs (or read only part of your last one), so maybe he's still learning the tricks of the trade.
If on the other hand Jonny is >=18 then I think he deserves to be publically savaged.
The chances are though that Jonny is quite young so maybe we should go a little easier.
Also can you post the PHP behind the preview and submit buttons, I'm interested as to how you detect which was pressed, maybe I could write an ASP version and use it on my developing blog.
"The chances are though that Jonny is quite young so maybe we should go a little easier."
No, the odds are that Jonny is just like any other spammer, though perhaps slightly more intelligent, as I could see some people falling for his little trick. On a normal day, I wouldn't have thought much of it - just found it funny that I got the letter an hour after a post on the topic. ;)
"Also can you post the PHP behind the preview and submit buttons..."
Rather than post a bunch of code, I'll just give you the logic for detecting which button was pressed. It would look something like this, though my code is different, as the code in and around these sections is obviously much more complex. ;)
<?PHP
if (isset($_POST['post'])) {
# run code for post button. "post" is the name of the submit button for post.
}
# a bunch of other code
if (isset($_POST['preview'])) {
# run code for preview button. "preview" is the name of the submit button for preview.
}
?>
Taking another look at the language used in the email I suppose that Jonny must be reasonably aware of how the world works. Your probably right about Jonny being just another spammer after all.
Thanks for the code, I'll get stuck in to creating an ASP version now, I enjoy making new stuff like this.
blackhatseo.com mentions similar techniques used by some so-called "SEO" companies - and individuals.
http://www.blackhatseo.com/html/cat5.html
Definitely nearing the bottom of the barrel. I haven't received any of these myself, but would probably enjoy writing a witty denial.
Heh heh, neat entry, although I have to admit I didn't read past the first sentence, as I was already eager to ask you a question.
Would you mind if we exchanged links? I could send you the URL for my site, and if you like it, I was kind of hoping it would be a good opourtunity to exchange links. So what do ya say?
:P
-Dan
PS: Hey Scott, just checked out that site of yours. It's awesome! I ammused myself for a good 10 minutes with that amazing non-flash banner! :D
I know of a plethora of people whom are targeted by such junk; nothing more a letter that basically says: "I've got a substandard site and I want you to link to my site so I can gain more traffic, I'll link to yours but I'll get the traffic benefit - were your born yesterday?"
Above ninety percentage of those types of letters are by fake commercial opportunists that have done a search in a popular engine and hit your site.
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June 8th, 2004
10:31 PM | #
I get tons of those. I either junk them, or I reply with something like -- "How much are you willing to pay for that link?"
As if they're linking to me benefits me much at all, especially when it's not relevant to my content. I just love how they couch their request to make it sound like you're the one getting the most benefit.
Too funny.