Linkatopia.com News

Linkatopia and SEO

2008-05-02

Recently we've been reading a few blogs about social bookmarking, SEO, and link spam. At Linkatopia, we don't think SEO is evil and we've always encouraged people to make their own sites be the first ones they save in Linkatopia. At the same time, we won't put up with those who are simply abusing our free site.

Please Do NOT:
1) create multiple accounts with the same links. It won't help you and your accounts will be deleted.
2) post a bunch of links to the same site in your account if its just the same spam trying to sell us something.
3) sign up on 15 different social bookmarking sites and use some automated bot to spam all 15 sites with the same links.
4) create a dozen identical web sites or blogs with the same spam content and list them on Linkatopia.

Again, we encourage you to promote your original, quality content on Linkatopia. All we ask is that you respect the other members and play by the rules.

Linkatopia blocks Spam Tools

2008-04-29

It has come to our attention that sites like OnlyWire.com have become the favorite tool of spammers. Using Onlywire and similar sites, spammers can quickly and easily submit links to all of the top social bookmarking sites at once. Even if you're not a spammer, Onlywire's Terms of Service even gives them the right to spam all of your accounts with their own links!

Bottom Line:
Do not give your username and password to other sites!

Linkatopia will be actively blocking all such automated logins as we continue our efforts to remove spam from our site. We have updated our Terms of Service to reflect this change.

New Signups Enabled!

2008-04-22

Linkatopia is once again accepting all new registrations! We will be monitoring the new signup system and we'll still delete spammer accounts on a regular basis. We hope that we've made Linkatopia annoying to spammers while keeping it friendly enough for legitimate users. As always, we welcome your suggestions!

In an effort to further discourage spammers, new accounts now have the rel="nofollow" attribute added to their links.

Note:
After 30 days, we review each account and if the content is meaningful and relevant, we remove the "nofollow" attributes.

Popular Tags are Back!

2008-02-15

Most Linkatopia functionality is back online, including search and "Popular Tags". We've made some big database improvements so the site should be faster. We're still cleaning out a bunch of spam so you might still see some when you browse a popular tag.

We pleased that some of the spamming services have dropped Linkatopia from their lists. Less spam for us!

We are only accepting new members by invitation at this time. When we finish the new registration system, you'll be able to sign up once again. In the meantime, you can ask an approved member to invite you by using the "Invite a Friend" link at the bottom of their page.

UPDATE
Linkatopia has resumed accepting all completed registrations.

Limited Functionality Restored

2007-09-15

Approved Linkatopia members should find all functions of their accounts restored. New and unapproved members can still view their accounts and use RSS feeds to their links and tags but cannot add new links. Linkatopia is temporarily not accepting any new members...

Linkatopia is Fighting Spam!!

We don't know what other sites are doing but we refuse to allow our database to fill up with link spam. Despite using Captcha and other precautions, a few selfish people found ways to create hundreds of fake or duplicate accounts and flood our database with thousands of spam links. If you're a new member, we realize you might go somewhere else, but we value quality more than quantity.

SQL Server Maintenance

2007-09-12

Certain parts of Linkatopia will be disabled for the next few days while we do some major upgrades to the SQL server. Your links existing links should be available, along with all RSS feeds. You will not be able to add new links, edit tags, or edit your profile. New members will not be able to sign up during maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

More Accurate Popular Tags

2007-06-21

The code for creating the popular tags list has been updated to ignore all links or tags that are set to "private" or "friends only". Because Linkatopia lets you assign privacy to both links and tags, the script to generate a list of the most popular tags was much more difficult to develop. =)

reCAPTCHA and popup tweaks

2007-06-20

Linkatopia has just added a new tool called reCAPTCHA to the signup form in order to prevent automated account creation. reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher.

Toolbar Popup Tweak
We've made some improvements to our popular browser toolbar button that makes it easy to save links. If you have more than 40 tags, only the most popular ones will be shown first, allowing quick access to the tags you use most often. Simply click "more" and you'll see all of your tags. Your Linkatopia page still displays all of your tags.

Linkatopia Account Types

2007-05-25

Linkatopia began implementing its new account structure today. Account types will eliminate link spam while rewarding those members who consistently contribute quality links. For example, only "approved" accounts will be listed in the "recent posts" RSS feed. We'll have more details about the new account structure soon. Don't worry, anyone can still sign up and use Linkatopia for free!

Massive Spam Cleanup

2007-05-19

We just removed over 200 spam accounts and deleted more than 3000 tags!! Thanks to everyone who reported link spammers during the past few months. We are committed to keeping Linkatopia a nice, friendly place where real people can store their personal bookmarks or favorites.