Have you ever checked out GSA's random url's it inserts into articles?

I decided to have a look at what the url's are and do a bit of editing them and look what I found as the last 3


I don't mind them giving themselves a bit of a plug - but why bring Matt into this?

It doesn't effect me and my keywords but anyone who's using GSA to promote SEO sites may want to edit this selection.

Ha. Thats kinda funny. Spamming matts site. Nice Punch GSA

Did you find those strings in a file? Which one?

LakeForest said:

Did you find those strings in a file? Which one?

Click to expand...

generic_urls.dat


they are the url's GSA uses when you select "Insert up to (number) random urls for random words"

*thank you for saving me from a bump *

Putting those strings in is something that no one in their right goddamn mind would do. This is something everyone doing SEO avoids, only to have a piece of software do it via a backdoor? Is this a joke?

The strings are at the bottom of the generic_urls.dat in the Engines folder, btw

The question now is, why would GSA willingly create GIGANTIC footprints like that?

Who the FUCK do they think they are to self-promote like that like it's adware/spyware?

If GSA turns out to be Google, considering the acronym also refers to a Google product...... ha...hahaha...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

wowwww

As soon as someone posts, I'm going to post to keep this at the top.

Look at all the generic urls..

Imagine seeing the link on your article submitted to some site as bing.com/search/?q=YOUR ANCHOR TEXT

Not only could that be feeding traffic to your competitors who are already at the first page, it, once again, creates a footprint so big it has a gravitational pull

LakeForest said:

*thank you for saving me from a bump *

Putting those strings in is something that no one in their right goddamn mind would do. This is something everyone doing SEO avoids, only to have a piece of software do it via a backdoor? Is this a joke?

The strings are at the bottom of the generic_urls.dat in the Engines folder, btw

The question now is, why would GSA willingly create GIGANTIC footprints like that?

Who the FUCK do they think they are to self-promote like that like it's adware/spyware?

If GSA turns out to be Google, considering the acronym also refers to a Google product...... ha...hahaha...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Click to expand...

These are some pretty broad conclusions based on the default template (that is recommended by the developers to be changed) for a function that 99.9% of GSA users don't use.

myownhero said:

These are some pretty broad conclusions based on the default template (that is recommended by the developers to be changed) for a function that 99.9% of GSA users don't use.

Click to expand...

Good job completely ignoring the issue and going at the conclusion. Tell me, what was the broad conclusion exactly?

There is no reason for a developer to tell the user to change a thing. That's their job, unless we're doing their job?

You're not looking too good right now, neither is s4nt0s

Then by that logic you should also be condemning them for having a default spintax blog comment in the template page. It's a huge footprint - and afterall, users shouldn't have to change a thing.


And the broad conclusion was "If GSA turns out to be Google, considering the acronym also refers to a Google product...... ha...hahaha...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA".


And I think you took what I said personally or something. I'm not sure how but I think we're on two separate pages right now.

myownhero said:

Then by that logic you should also be condemning them for having a default spintax blog comment in the template page. It's a huge footprint - and afterall, users shouldn't have to change a thing.

Click to expand...

The spintax is openly visible.

generic_urls.dat is not.

There is no comparison.
edit: not to mention that spintax is a far cry from system files...your defense of GSA is getting interesting.

Kinda funny that GSA is a term on the keyword list that pings surveillance.

Pings surveillance? Don't leave me hanging here.

myownhero said:

Pings surveillance? Don't leave me hanging here.

Click to expand...

The big list, you can find it on sites talking about the recent surveillance exposures.

I don't know if I'm more livid about the matt cutts links or GSA's self promotion like it's adware/spyware.

Does SENuke ever do stuff like this? Does Licorne?

Like the Edward Snowden thing? I think I'm just gonna leave this thread, I wrote like two sentences and now I'm being labeled a sympathizer.

Maybe not the biggest deal in the world though maybe? I mean, spyware? That's... a little... hyperbolic... maybe...

myownhero said:

I wrote like two sentences and now I'm being labeled a sympathizer.

Maybe not the biggest deal in the world though maybe? I mean, spyware? That's... a little... hyperbolic... maybe...

Click to expand...

It was more how you said it than what you said, and I'm pretty sure you know that. The word choice was so dismissive and taking responsibility away from the developers and blaming the user.

"Not the biggest deal"? "hyperbolic... maybe"? Are you new, or just hourly? Why even put in the effort to make these double-talk statements?

Let's get weird:

Say, you only use generic URLs. Only. Not only are you screwed yourself, but your screwing up everyone who would post to that site you're posting to.

SEO is an industry where if you cannot have a certain degree of trust, it does not work. Trusting any type of software or anything is so tricky that when something as preventable as this comes along, it is unacceptable and ridiculous.

Can you think of any reason why these generic urls might be a bad idea?

This has been explained already on gsa forum. Visit here:


That file is editable, just erase.

It might be editable, but still it is a childish move the means danger for inexperienced users. Other defaults would be speaking more for a serious software.

Does anyone really care if it can be edited, like that's some justification? Think about what that's saying, including basically, "Yeah, the factory sparkplugs in your engine are going to make it explode, but all you have to do is change them". (how about that for an inflammatory statement?)

I'm learning a lot about how some people deal with customer service and privacy now.

It hasn't been addressed yet as to why it's the user responsibility to edit any file that could have been edited or prevented through any update.

There is no reason for those links to be in that file.

All this does, plus the fact users have to edit it, is make the new and inexperienced user create a huge tracking footprint, but it doesn't just take them down, it takes down everyone. The new and inexperienced users, because they don't know to edit, post these bad links, and the entire SEO done on the site that link is published goes down, then other people wonder wtf is going on with algorithms or whatever.

If you're starting out in SEO, do everything manually I guess, because you're being targeted by the software you use as well as search engines.

edit: not to mention using their users servers' as an advertising platform without their knowledge. what to do. what to do.

i think you just don't understand how this function works and its more or less an example how to use it. you won't be effected by this unless your anchor text (exact match!) is something of
1) GSA Search Engine Ranker,GSA SER,Search Engine Ranker,SER,SEO,Website Submission, ... OR
2) SEO,Search Engine Optimization

for the rare case that your anchor text in one of the campaign is "SEO" or "Search Engine Optimization" then it will hyperlink to the sites of "majesticseo" or "mattcutts". but thats the links you like to put into your articles anyway or not?

for the even rarer case that your anchor text is "GSA Search Engine Ranker" than it will built additional links to gsa-online.de if you use the "insert random links" feature for your articles. but again, if you promoting that keyword than you like to add the url of the software site anyway, right?

for the case that your anchor text is "payday loans" than none of the urls will ever be used in your articles.

LakeForest said:

Does anyone really care if it can be edited, like that's some justification? Think about what that's saying, including basically, "Yeah, the factory sparkplugs in your engine are going to make it explode, but all you have to do is change them". (how about that for an inflammatory statement?)

I'm learning a lot about how some people deal with customer service and privacy now.

It hasn't been addressed yet as to why it's the user responsibility to edit any file that could have been edited or prevented through any update.

There is no reason for those links to be in that file.

All this does, plus the fact users have to edit it, is make the new and inexperienced user create a huge tracking footprint, but it doesn't just take them down, it takes down everyone. The new and inexperienced users, because they don't know to edit, post these bad links, and the entire SEO done on the site that link is published goes down, then other people wonder wtf is going on with algorithms or whatever.

If you're starting out in SEO, do everything manually I guess, because you're being targeted by the software you use as well as search engines.

edit: not to mention using their users servers' as an advertising platform without their knowledge. what to do. what to do.

Click to expand...

As Ozz stated, you might be confused on how this works.

The user would have to check that option and use the anchor text, "GSA Search Engine Ranker" for it to put the GSA link. All of those are examples and should be edited to fit your campaign if you plan on using that option. It's the same as the default spun comment text - it should be edited as mentioned in the tutorial videos. You don't want to use the same spun data examples as everyone else and you should modify the generic URLS.

That's why its there and easy to modify. If there was some type of self promotion going on it wouldn't be right there in plain view.

None of this is ever "injected" automatically.

You could even use any of that anchor text normally, SEO, website submission, search engine optimization, etc. and its going to use what you have in the URL field.

Keep in mind Sven is 100% a developer and SER has grown and become what it has because of customer suggestions. Probably 80% of what you see in the software is from customer feedback. Platforms, options, settings, etc. So Sven isn't the most knowledgeable on SEO he just add's what users are requesting and he put those URLS in there as examples without thinking much of it.

I can see how it can be alarming to customers who don't understand how that feature works.

For me personally, I think those aren't the best examples to have in that file so I'll talk to Sven about having those removed when he gets back from vacation (Oct 3rd).

Just know that under no circumstances will those links automatically be "injected" into your campaign unless you happen to check that option and use that exact anchor text as shown in the file. If anyone is using this option, please modify the file to fit your campaign.

Sorry for the confusion folks.