Cofacts anti SEO-spam mechanism

Previous discussion

• 20221019 First found
• 20221026 Initial proposal of anti SEO-spam: CIB processing

Cases

• Note: reporting conversation in spam group is not a SEO spam.
• 同一人一直推交易所相關 https://old.cofacts.tw/articles?searchUserByArticleId=1lgis9b8sl5gp&filter=all&replyRequestCount=1
• https://old.cofacts.tw/articles?searchUserByArticleId=2ker4s3fv5rv2&filter=all&replyRequestCount=1
• https://cofacts.tw/article/pjagx6j66egg

Milestones and progress

M1: data prep

Schema

• add blocked status for articles
• add migration script to fill in status for existing articles

API

https://github.com/cofacts/rumors-api/pull/293

• mutation API for articles should fill in status correctly
• can list article by status

M2: Script for setting article status

API

https://github.com/cofacts/rumors-api/pull/295

• blocking user also turns their article to blocked status
  • List blocked article URLs so that we can remove those pages from Google
• able to block individual article (optional, need reason)
  • 先不做 [name=bil]

M3: Hide blocked article for non logged-in users

Website

• Show “Login to see text” for blocked articles if the user is not authenticated
  • Page title would be just “Suspicious message”
  • This should stop server from rendering text, thus no SEO for the spammer
  • Show blocked reason ? (Optional)
    • 先不用 [name=bil]
• Do not list blocked articles in article list
  • Already done from API side
• Implement Robots meta tag on blocked articles to prevent Google Search from indexing the article (noindex specifically)
• Add rel="ugc" to all article hyperlinks
  • So that content farms don’t get their rank boosted due to Cofacts referring to their site

M4: Allow reporting SEO spammer articles

Website

• Add flag button to article
  • 「⋯」button on the right of “Share”

Report form and spreadsheet

• Make the form support article