I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate spam. It’s reddit marketing gone awry.
The post blew up and got a decent amount of attention.
Then I got a front row seat to how deep of a spam filled porta-potty Reddit has become.
The State of the Thread When I Posted
Here’s the original thread that ranked #1 for “best standing desks” in Google:
That pinned comment at the top is affiliate spam. It was posted by a Reddit moderator. After a few hops, the link went to their horrible affiliate site:
It didn’t stay that way for long though.
The Failed Thread Cleanup
After I published my post outing the Reddit mod, I assume they went into a panic. Because a few days later, the pinned comment was gone. GONE! Along with a bunch of deleted comments.
But the mod did a super shitty job at covering their tracks.
See that comment from u/Evativeny with the link? It pointed here:
This is a post on the subreddit r/fitnessflock. As of right now, it has about 120 members. It’s either a neglected subreddit that others use for spam or a subreddit specifically created to insert spam posts into more popular subreddits.
So u/Evativeny linked to another post in a completely different subreddit. In THAT post u/Evativeny also had the top comment with another link.
Any guess on where this link went?
Back to the original spam affiliate site!
Yes, the Reddit mod tried to clean up their tracks after I outed them. But they used another user account and a second subreddit to link back to their original affiliate spam site.
Not the most subtle clean up job.
Reddit Mod Gets Banned
After another week or so, I checked the thread again:
CARNAGE.
The original post, the Reddit mod pinned comment, all the top comments. PURGED.
Even better, the original Reddit mod (u/munnada/) and their puppet account (u/Evativeny) are both suspended:
VICTORY. Feels good. I made an affiliate spammers life miserable for about a week.
But that wasn’t the end….
New Reddit Affiliate Spammers Arise
I was really close to calling this done. And then I thought to myself “what about the other links further down the thread? Wouldn’t it be funny if they were blatant affiliate spam too?”
Turns out I was wrong, IT’S NOT FUNNY.
Here’s the new top comment in the best standing desks thread:
So Vari is a legit standing desk recommendation, I have one. I’d gladly recommend it.
But let’s check where the link goes:
This is a post by u/Fancy-Reindeer-2862 in r/deskstand (wow, that SURE does sound like a legit subreddit!). And you guessed it, EVERY link on that post is linking to an affiliate site. Each link points to this post on the domain reviewsbyleo.top:
All the links on the post are using the Amazon affiliate account mani-superman-20.
The affilaite site has posts on all sorts of products like curling irons, protein powders, and water filters. I assume that Leo is a busy busy bee. Hey Leo! Maybe stop spamming Reddit. K, thanks, bye.
As an aside, the footer in Leo’s site points to a banned subreddit for web hosting:
Looks like Leo was also working on building up a subhosting subreddit at some point before it got banned too. Betcha the plan was to shove more Reddit spam down our throats.
What about the 2nd link on the standing desk thread?
SURPRISE, that’s also junk. u/Hopeful_Gene_6905’s link goes here:
God damnit. ANOTHER affiliate site. Same story as the rest, affiliate links all the way down. This one’s for the affiliate Amazon account homeworkout02-20. There’s also an affiliate link for a program with SecretLab.
At least this site looks halfway decent.
I checked the rest of the post and there are two MORE spammers in the same thread: u/LOLED_AKAASI and u/CutPale7070.
That’s a total of 4 users that still have affiliate spam in this thread. Plus the original spammer mod for a total of 5 spammers in the same thread.
What I Learned Fighting Affiliate Reddit Spam
Reddit isn’t just full of affiliate spam, it’s a spam hydra.
I cut off one of the heads of the hydra. Not only did the other hydra heads continue to spew affiliate puke at me, the original head immediately grew back.
After I got a MOD banned from Reddit, nothing fundamentally changed. All it did was send traffic to different affiliate spammers.
The craziest part is that I should have checked the entire Reddit thread from the get-go. There were at least 5 different affiliate spammers all in the same thread.
And these are just the confirmed affiliate spammers. If any of these users are marketing on behalf of standing desk companies and aren’t using links, I’d never be able to tell. If you show just a little bit of restraint with Reddit, you can stuff your product into any thread you want.
That’s wild.
In case you’re wondering, it’s been a few weeks now and that Reddit thread still ranks #1 in Google:
What an embarrassment.
How I’d Spam Reddit with Affiliate Links
If I was an affiliate spammer, I’d follow this playbook to insert my affiliate spam wherever I wanted:
- Hang out in subreddits that often have product recommendation requests and are also favored by google.
- Post real recommendations immediately after posts go live. Use my alternate fake accounts to give my response some momentum. By moving fast, I can get more upvotes to my responses and hopefully become the top comment.
- For a pro move, post replies from multiple accounts. That way if one gets burned, you have other comments in the same thread that already have a bunch of upvotes.
- Wait until one of these threads gets picked up by Google and I’m one of the top responses.
- Go back to my original comment, then edit it to include a link. No one can tell that I edited my response.
- Don’t link directly to my affiliate site, that’s too obvious.
- Link to another post on a neglected or fake subreddit. That post will have my top comment with a link to my affiliate site.
In just ONE reddit thread, I found FIVE different people using this playbook.
If I did this for a year, I could probably get to $100K in annual revenue. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.
Yeah, Reddit content is legit. Totally. Nothing to worry about. It should absolutely rank everywhere in Google. Yup, no downsides to that.
