Saturday, June 26, 2010

Question for geeky readers about illegitimate links

This is exasperating.

Click on this. Go to the bottom of the page. There, you will see — not one, but — two links to the post.

Ostensibly links to the post, that is. But the truth is that neither is actually a link to the post.

Here's the irritation: that brother's site does it to every post I put up. Every time I post something, eventually it has a Matthew Kratz post as linked to it.

Now, I think it isn't the first time this has happened. I wrote to the other fellow, and he fixed it. I wrote to Pastor Kratz, and he says he has no idea why it is happening. I take him at his word.

So, geeks: do you know? Do you see something in his coding that illegitimately links to every blessed post I put up, so that every blessed time I have to go and manually delete the linking to his posts? I want it to stop!

Thanks.

7 comments:

Jugulum said...

This isn't an answer, but only a partial diagnosis:

It seems to a blogspot-specific thing--both of you are blogspot. And he has template set to show a link to the first entry in each blog in his blogroll.

Calvinistic Cartoons also has two trackback links from the same guy.

I remember when blogspot added the "show the first entry" option to their blogrolls--we started seeing fake trackback links everywhere, because of it. I'm not sure what happened with that. Did the various blog providers figure out how to filter those trackbacks? Is that filtering just failing in this case for some reason? Does blogspot not filter these automatic links from other blogspot sites? Is he using an old template?

Mark said...

If it's happening to every post you put up, it sounds like he has a plugin/extension on his site that automatically generates a link. I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with blogger though to confirm that. Of course, this is why I use WordPress :-D

Rebecca Stark said...

I hate to identify myself as a geek by knowing the answer.

Way down on his sidebar he has one of those Blogger gadget thingies (See, real geekspeak!) that automatically links to the latest post of everyone on his blogroll. He'll show up in the links to every single one of your posts, and depending on when he posts and when you post he may have more than one link to your posts.

DJP said...

Thanks all.

Rebecca, you rock. I forwarded that to Pastor Kratz, hopefully he can change it.

Terry Rayburn said...

[in nauseatingly sing-songy irritating playground voice]:

Rebecca is a gee-eek
Rebecca is a gee-eek

P.S. Nice detective work!

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Oh, I'm envious. I may aspire to geek-dom, but have not achieved it. (At least not in any coolway...)

In the tech world, there are natives and there are immigrants.

I must be fresh off the boat ;D

Julie

Susan said...

I didn't see any links there, so that means it's fixed!

(Keep singing, Terry.) ;)