If you use TLA read this..

28.03.08

you know that Google is hunting and killing sites…

do this search : Google

so you can see 2,800,000 blogs wp-content folder ( this is a standard googledork )

how hard would it be for Google to write a script where basically do this…

open folder : http://www.blogherald.com/wp-content/plugins/

fuzzy logic search for TLA_ which would return http://www.blogherald.com/wp-content/plugins/tla_44565.php

yep thats the TLA plugin … banned !

DaveN

18 Comments

  • 1

    Anything that is public has always had the risk of being fooked. Under the table and with big budgets it where it will be in the future and in reality those in the know find it that way now.

    Get your crash hats on folks, the pain is coming!

    ukgimp
    http://www.ukgimp.co.uk

    29th March 2008 @ 00:47

  • 2

    that does not prove the plugin is enabled, does it :) Also I think TLA makes you name the plugin something different now anyways.

    ukpimp

    29th March 2008 @ 01:03

  • 3

    Will Google doing this keep people from buying paid-links? No. Time to grow up! ;)

    sj

    29th March 2008 @ 01:14

  • 4

    That is why I have a index.html document in my folder which redirects you to the blog page. Go to http://blog.waltdesign.com/wp-content/plugins/ to see it in action.

    There are other ways, setting up an index.php page, .htaccess, etc.

    If you are going to use TLA or similar things (I don’t) then you need to be smart enough to not get caught.

    walter wimberly
    http://blog.waltdesign.com

    29th March 2008 @ 03:47

  • 5

    for starters if someone is selling links with TLA and leaves /wp-content open for crawling, they should get banned! for being an idiot.

    second, there is no way Google will ever use such a crude methodology to weed out link sellers. *they* are NOT idiots. consider how many people, little people (my dad), that (recently) stopped selling links on their one money making blog, but never deleted the TLA plugin (just deactivated it).

    Just because you find the plugin, does not mean it is active. Google is surely a lot more link-spam-killing ninja than that!

    JB
    http://findfreestuff.com.au

    29th March 2008 @ 04:28

  • 6

    gotta love that GHDB… nice find!

    Adam Moro
    http://adammoro.net/

    29th March 2008 @ 05:34

  • 7

    Some bloggers just use TLA for the feedvertising bit. Google would need to flag people for manual review if they wanted to do a proper job of it.

    Patrick Altoft
    http://blogstorm.co.uk

    29th March 2008 @ 08:54

  • 8

    yeah - again some stupid bitching …

    in google i found 4 hits for inurl:/wp-content/plugin tla_

    just stfu, daveboy

    jusack

    29th March 2008 @ 10:46

  • 9

    Well the problem is that:
    1. TLA allows you to rename the plugin file
    2. a blank index.html solves the automatic detection

    That method will kill only the blogs that haven’t updated their plugins. And they haven’t done that for the simple fact that they are not using it

    Anonymous Coward

    29th March 2008 @ 17:24

  • 10

    Just upload an empty index.html file to /wp-content/plugins/ ;) thats all

    Regards,
    Karthi

    learn hacking
    http://secureslash.com

    29th March 2008 @ 18:47

  • 11

    If you download the new TLA plugin, you can name it whatever you want. Will google still find it eventhough it has a completely different name?

    Jens P. Berget
    http://www.slymarketing.com

    29th March 2008 @ 19:32

  • 12

    I think paid links work in googles favour, they should just leave it alone and let the free market continue. The more expensive organic SEO becomes the less viable it is for the masses, in turn they get to sell more adwords right?

    fireblade
    http://www.fireblades.org

    30th March 2008 @ 00:52

  • 13

    They can forbid Google to visit that folder in cpanel.

    Xianhong
    http://www.xianhong.net

    31st March 2008 @ 03:22

  • 14

    Another good reason to restrict indexing of any wp folders. Robots.txt or such like, amazing people don’t think about these things.

    Anonymous

    31st March 2008 @ 09:42

  • 15

    My site has the TLA plugin, and I don’t sell text links. It’s there for the feedvertising bit. Also, I don’t even have it active as the thing I want to put in my feed isn’t complete yet.

    Gab
    http://seoroi.com/

    31st March 2008 @ 23:15

  • 16

    Unless google plays naughty by not following robots.txt this is what I’d use for multiple reasons: pagerank siloing, privacy, dup content issues etc:

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /cgi-bin
    Disallow: /wp-admin
    Disallow: /wp-includes
    Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
    Disallow: /wp-content/cache
    Disallow: /wp-content/themes
    Disallow: /trackback
    Disallow: /category/*/*
    Disallow: */trackback
    Disallow: */*/trackback
    Disallow: */*/feed/*/
    Disallow: */feed
    Disallow: /*?*
    Disallow: /*?
    Disallow: /docs
    Disallow: /docs/
    Disallow: /docs/*
    Allow: /wp-content/uploads

    Dev Basu
    http://www.devbasu.com

    2nd April 2008 @ 00:39

  • 17

    [...] Dave did a better guess in finding out how easy is it for Google to find out all the websites that sold text link ads. [...]

    » How will Google find out if you are selling links? | DailySEOblog.com

    2nd April 2008 @ 11:07

  • 18

    [...] Dave did a better guess in finding out how easy is it for Google to find out all the websites that sold text link ads. [...]

    How will Google find out if you are selling links? » Seo Tool Tips

    3rd April 2008 @ 14:05

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