Ghost members

se4b4ss · 01-21-2005, 06:19 PM

I didn't know if this was the correct place to post this...

Does anybody here running a forum site get what I call "ghost members"? I have seen folks who sign up with as their product name and never post, etc. What is the benefit of this and what do others do about it?

SVB · 01-22-2005, 06:47 AM

I get automated bots sometimes signing up, with the aim of getting their link spidered from the user profile and memberlist pages.
To stop that, simply disallow spiders to crawl those pages.

UKZJ007 · 01-24-2005, 09:31 AM

IF they start with something like "!" then they are trying to get to the top of the memberlist which usually has a high PR

randfish · 01-27-2005, 04:26 PM

If they only realized how valuable a few hours spent on the forums can be for promoting their site and getting members to contribute to their efforts. It's really a shame. I hope John knows about it and is 'nofollow' tagging them