4 replies to this topic

[BugFinder]

Hey Drew!  Is this community considered a public blog network?   

 

Thanks!

[dspdrew]

Nope, it's just a forum owned by me.

[BugFinder]

Well, something odd happened, and I'm not sure how.  I'll fill you in on the details.  

 

As I bet you are aware, about 4 years ago, unexpected changes in my life lead me to stop keeping ants, and severely limit my access to the internet, and for that reason, I don't think I had been on the forum at all during the last 4 years, until today.  

 

4 years ago I was real active here, and I had in my signature links to ant journals and other tiny journals I had been keeping up on for fun.  Most of those journals are threads on this site, but a few of them were hosted on a website I had at the time, but about 3 years ago, it went down due to a dispute I had with the host of that server, so at that time moved to a new server and had a new website built at a brand new URL.

 

This morning my marketing company called me and asked me if I had been paying for a backlink service.  Of course  I had not, I don't like blackhat SEO tactics.  When I said no, they asked me if I knew what what formicuture.com was.  I said yes, my friend drew operates a forum where people talk about ants, it's a great forum, but I haven't been over there in a long time why?  

 

She told me there were backlinks adversely impacting my SEO score, and that they were links from this forum.  I couldn't believe that because I hadn't been here since I purchased that URL, so I logged into my SEO portal and looked at my backlinks, and saw that formiculture was in fact pointing links to my new website.  I followed the link, and searched that page for the anchor text, and discovered the links were in my signature on posts I had made 4+ years ago.

 

So I deleted those links from my signature of course, but the real mystery is how those links ended up being changed from the old url, to the new url.  I guess I could have been sleep walking or intoxicated, and logged in several years ago and changed those links, but I can't imagine I did.  I just can't figure out how those links ended up pointing to my new website.

 

So that's why I asked the question.  It's great to be back in here poking around again.  I miss it here

[dspdrew]

I have no idea. I'll have to get more information from you in a PM.

[BugFinder]

Mystery solved! Thanks for your help bud!!