Are autosubmitters true evil?
 

It's just been pointed out to be by a reliable source that using an assisted submitter such as Advanced Submitter may get me blacklisted from the bigger link lists.

Well, I have a confession to make - I've been using one. Possibly not my best business move saying that here but I'm an honest chap and I'm prepared for the consequences.

Bearing in mind that I DON'T autosubmit, (I use it mainly as a form filler and as an organisational tool for my LLs) and that I use my own custom database (ie. I don't list the big guys with tiny LLs), should I stop using it altogether from this second onwards?

From a logical point of view, LL owners souldn't care how they get a submission as long as it sticks to the rules and there are no mistakes on the submission form. However, I have not owned a LL and not been subjected to the masses of cheaters autosubmitting hundreds of sites a day so I can't say what happens beyond logic....

Cheers,
Dave

I don't think it's a problem if you use submitter software just to fill the form out and then check it manually.

Form filling software is considered fine by most, as long as you take the time to make sure it's filling in all the form fields correctly.

I can only speak for myself as a very minor player in the game but I do not have much of a problem with autosubmitters themselves. The only thing I expect is that every once in a while someone will bother to go back and check the rules AND that people read the rejection messages they get and fix future submits. Unfortunately, this appears to be too much to ask sometimes. :(

I know this is very much against the grain but I think autosubmitters are nearly a complete win-win situation for everyone, especially the submitter. LL owners get more submits (assuming they need them!) and submitters of course can do more in less time. The only major downside from the LL owner perspective that I can see for when people act reasonably is that it means less eyes looking at the webmaster pages (where you can promote sponsors, etc). That cuts into $$$$.

I would like to see some sort of standard worked out with autosubmitting. For example, have the autosubmitters check for a certain string which indicates when the rules were last changed. Compare this to a local record and if it is newer, pop up a display informing the submitter so that they can make sure the rule change does not effect them.. Or better yet, some sort of standard machine readable format (that we can all use) for the rules which is integrated with the submitter itself and updated regularly. Something like this would address much of the problems with autosubmiters.

Yea, form fillers are fine...I think most folks use those as they're a huge time saver |thumb

I've never looked at AS so I don't know how it works. But, as long as you're being responsible with it...making sure the fields are filled correctly AND checking the rules page for updates...you're probably okay.

I use Roboform... costs 30 bucks and WELL fucking worth it...

Here is the deal: Autosubmitters create a bunch of problems if they are run in full auto or near full auto mode:

1 - people don't read rules, rule updates, news, or information regarding the link site.

2 - forms are often not filled properly, sites are often placed in either non-existant cats or the wrong cat... fields are filled out with guessed information (field name is name, so they put their personal name rather than the name of their site).

3 - autosubmitters are often slow to adapt to new forms, new submit page locations, or other.

4 - a drunk monkey with an auto site builder and autosubmit software can build and submit hundreds of useless, unlistable free sites every day, taking away hours of valuable time from hundreds of link sites and TGPs left to deal with the shit that these programs spew.

5 - I review by hand. If my traffic and being listed on PR2-pr4 pages isn't enough to make it worth it for you to take a few seconds to actually fill out the form and verify the information, I can't find the few seconds to review your site. It's all about respect.

Alex

Right, but the discussion was about Manual Submission Tools like AdvancedSubmitter, not Autosubmitters.
I actually see the problem with autosubmitters, and I consider autosubmitting at all as a bad move for Site owners and submitters, exactly for the reasons you've mentioned.

That's why I never enable autosubmitting for any of AdvancedSubmitters Databases, they're all prepared to setup recips properly, and to work as a form filler. And if I take the numbers of LinkList databases that were sold during the last 6 months I'd say they get used quite frequently, and I've never heard that any site owner would have a problem with it. :)

I have zero tolerance for "oopses" one time and you are history. Like Alex said I check them all by hand and expect my submitters to do them by hand. I know I have one or two using a script to submit but so far no oopses :)

I think a form filler, such as Roboform, is an excellent tool in the hands of an experienced and intelligent submitter. But if you are a tool yourself, it will get you all kinds of fucked up. A reviewer isn't going to accept mistakes such as seeing an URL in the title field or your name in the addy field very often. When I see those types of mistakes, it tells me that the submitter is either too fucking lazy to verify the form before hitting submit or they are firing on auto and not using a simple form filler.

Yeah, I totally agree about fully autosubmission. It's stupid as you can't check the forms before you enter it.

I'm talking about manual submit though, where the forms are filled for you and you check them and then submit. I think the problem probably stems from people not checking before the submit.
I however do check.... and if I'm honest, with TGPs at least, I made more mistakes before I used a form filler - the form filler doesn't make typos and if it's correctly set up it doesn't put things in the wrong box, both things I have done when submitting to TGPs.

So, while I think it's been established that you will get blacklisted from some places for making mistakes and for using full autosubmission, does anyone actually blacklist for using manual assisted submission/form fillers?

Bacially, I don't want to take any risks so if there is anyone who doesn't want me using any kind of submitter in anyway, then I will do that. I submit manually to the hun and a couple of other TGPs for this same reason.

One of the reasons I use Mozilla instead of Firefox is the more sophisticated form auto-fill function. It remembers the details from the last submit and prefills the form. However, if I'm not careful it can get me into trouble. If I get distracted I can easily forget to change all the fields pertinent to the new submission.

My point, any tool has to be used properly and with care or it will leave you bloodied.|chainsaw|

I think aided manual submits are fine. I don't think it makes you a better submitter by typing in your email 100 times and I can guarantee the person that does that will make more mistakes than someone that uses something like Roboform or AS to submit, but properly understands how it works and what they have to do to make it work. It's a novel idea, but read the tutorial for AS, Roboform, etc...this isn't something you want to just learn by doing, lol.

It is a tool, you have to be attentive to its use, you should always check that the forms are filled out properly before hitting submit...but as I said it doesn't make you a better submitter because you typed in your email 100 times, that's just nonsense.

I review my tgps daily, one gets about 1000 submits a day, the other is partner only but still gets around 150 submits a day. As long as the person doesn't do any of the big intentional type sins (viruses, redirects, etc) I'm not going to get my shorts in a bunch over the occassional error.

Autosubmits are a different beast though...if you're not looking at the form before you hit submit, that's just a bad idea.

Here is my perfect example: Guy comes to my submit form (now partner only so the problem solves itself) and uses roboform or whatever. Too many of those people allow the program to fill out all of the form, and then they just click "submit" without looking at what they are doing. More often than not, I would get 1 or 2 submits per day with the person's name in the sitename field - and I know that is a submit helper because they make the same mistake over and over.

Like any tool, it can be used for good or evil. A hammer can build a house or break heads. It all depends on how you use it.

I would NOT recommend any submit assistance for anyone who hasn't been submitting by hand for a few months first.

Alex

What I have found is, the type ahead thingie in IE or FF is a lot more dangerous that a form filler, as it fills the stuff wrong atleast half the time, versus Roboform is more sophisticated, if you obviously set up the form filling function correctly that is... what I tend to do is leave atleast one of the fields incomplete in Roboform, usually the last part of the URL, so that forces me to type in the last part manually and double check before I hit submit, but at the same time, I end up manually typing 4 characters instead of 70... saves time and ensures I still look at every field before submitting...

Anyone is free to use anything they like. I review all submissions by hand and there is zero tolerance for form filling tools used incorrectly. PERIOD!!

Agreed. There's just some elements of submitting that once you get past a certain point would become difficult to do all by hand. Example: I have 150-200 tgp partner accounts, all with different passwords, all different usernames...there's just no way that it would be practical to hand submit that amount of info each day and to do it 3 times as I submit three galleries.

I recommend AS as they allow you to do site specific rules, etc to fill in usernames, passwords, and also make alterations to forms as not every tgp, names their form fields the same.

It's all about taking the time to learn how a tool works and to learn it enough to help you not hurt you. Ultimately in the end I would rather have submitters spend more time designing their pages than typing in their email by hand. Most people submit with a lot of sponsor graphics, some ripped fhg, etc, and ugly pages like something designed out of the late 1980's, bad looking thumbs...that gets me more annoyed than a form error. (now if they do ugly pages and have form errors, lol |club| )

Ok, well I know my way around AS and I'm pretty careful with it so I'm gonna carry on doing what I have been doing. Hopefully I won't make any mistakes and won't be blacklisted from anyone. If I do then I guess I brought it on myself. :)

Thanks for your replies guys.

The one other thing that wasnt mentioned here is that as a LL or TGP owner I dont want my submit page loaded in another program - form fillers dont do this, but there are some submit programs that will - which does two things that I tend to dislike - 1st - it avoids having to read the rules page which might get updated, and 2nd - it avoids any advertising I might put up for submitting WMs (hence the amazing email confirmations with huge ads that came about when RS was in its prime) therefore I am making a little less money overall if that type of submitter is used(not a huge deal but worth consideration)

Therefore you'll get more incomming links from Recips :D

Hey - if they're stupid enough to put up a recip without reading my rules that I only accept partner submissions - sounds like its their problem - not mine :) Not that recips do much for anyone anyway - the 2 hits a month are "gold" (yes Im being sarcastic)

Hey - if they're stupid enough to put up a recip without reading my rules that I only accept partner submissions - sounds like its their problem - not mine :)

I agree, in other words you profit from autosubmitters that don't maintain their DB correctly (in that Recip case)

Not that recips do much for anyone anyway - the 2 hits a month are "gold" (yes Im being sarcastic)

As a LinkList owner you do know about the SEO value of relevant incomming links, especially when you're able to choose the anchor text yourself?
If they just bring you 2 hits a month, why do you keep them at all?

hjnet - Im not sure exactly what you mean about the SEO value of recips on free sites autosubmitted?? Best I can tell, most LLs dont list autosubmitted sites, so there wouldnt be any page rank flow for Google unless the submitter happened to use a free site that he developed to something with an amazing page rank inherent on that page - again the stupidity to waste something like that would not be in the submitters interest. From a historical basis and some good guessing at page rank since there is no reliable indicator anymore, I would say that I havent had a free site autosubmitted that would give any search engine benefit in at least 5 years that Ive been watching for the autosubmitters. I also dont have any anchor text on my recips as I only use request a link to the index page and dont use category recips anymore as they obviously had no effect on search engine placement (ranking) and were discontinued over a year ago. I would go so far as to say that the recip links on free sites have a miniscule effect on ranking (if any) and therefore I have very little concern for that line of reasoning :)

As far as the 2 hits a month - again - that would only apply to free sites that actually got listed on other LLs as well - something that usually doesnt happen - and if those two hits produce anything - well Ill just keep it thank you :)

This is a discussion that we have on this board probably every 6 months although the recip question probably was discussed here rather recently and it gets old - but just like anything that people are misled into believing it just wont go away

You would thin that an adult webmaster trying to improve himself or herself would read everything they could on a board like this. Sadly that isn't always the case :(

Just to avoid that someone get's the idea I'm defending autosubmitters here, I'm only using manual submission since years, even on TGPs and MGPs, and I do that cause I know how easy it is to fuck up an autosubmitter. So I completely understand the ban of autosubmitters from LinkLists.

BUT, if you say "Best I can tell, most LLs dont list autosubmitted sites" I'd suggest you buy a subscription for an manual submission tool or autosubmitter yourself, just to get an idea how they work. Most (all) of them just load your submission page in Internet Explorer, and sends the form like any human being, so there's no way to detect an autosubmission (as long as the submitting webmaster doesn't fuck up the submission all the time). And I bet you that most LinkList owners (including yourself) list much more autosubmitted Freesites than they'd expect.

The Recip Thingie is something different, I actually see them as a valuable tool for SEO, but that's just my personal opinion.

I actually own 3 different autosubmitters - bought them so I could reverse engineer them and get code to block them - and you'd be surprised what a little coding can tell you about submitters :) Yes there are some LLs that allow them unknowingly - and I allow the form fillers for my partners - but I can guarantee that the auto-submitters go directly to the blacklist and that will be shared with the other LL owners in the very near future :)

I know we wont agree on the recip links - but then - it really doesnt matter as I know who ranks for what in google :)

Any old school LL owner or TGP owner can spot an auto submit a mile away. If you believe otherwise you are just fooling yourself.

Well, I'd say that too if I wanted to keep autosubmitters of my Sites :D

But we can test it if you like, give me a partner account for 5 days at one of your "protected" sites, and I'll submit 10 random links to it, 9 per handsubmission and one per autosubmission. And you'd have to pick the autosubmitted one.
I bet $100 that you'd pick the wrong one, although there's a chance of 1:10 :)

WRONG! Think about the process, compare the difference between auto and manual, and you may figure out how intelligent scripts know when a link was auto-submitted.

I've only had a half-cup of coffee this morning and I can still figure that one out.

Just to end this discussion, anybody can bet with me.

I submit 10 links to your site(s), 9 of them by hand, and one autosubmitted. If you can detect the autosubmitted link, I'll pay you $100, if you can't I'll get $100 from you (to avoid that 20 webmasters just try their 1:10 chance for $100)

Only one try.

For starters besides the obvious referrer and UA which could be spoofed, I could see a mechanism based on the time from which the form was loaded (if at all) and it was submitted. Autosubmits would be near instantanious, hand submits would not be so even for the fastest typist.

True, but scripts on both ends make a mistake...whether it is autosubmits or a tgp script. Example, for The Hun I manually submit...that's just too huge not to manually submit to. I type 125 wpm, one time I hit enter, the verification word came up, it was something like "Clear"...my fingers typed it, hit enter, and the script said I wasn't a human, lol.

Completely automated everything isn't a good idea. Whether it's a submitter using an autosubmit program or whether its a tgp that sets rules up for their tgp that doesn't meet real world tgp standards. The #1 error I see on new tgps regard setting too few outbound links. Doing that just makes you look like a noob sauce. Testing your script before going live would have prevented that.

Know your tools or it'll make you look like a tool.

hjnet, there is one problem with your challenge: You would be trying too hard, and checking it twice. That isn't what most autosubmitters do.

Yes, I can program a single bot to go to a single submit form and fill it out perfectly. Given 9 times to teach it, I am sure the 10th try would be good.

Most autosubmitters don't do that.

Most autosubmitters get a list of submit pages (often getting the URL of the form processor script directly) and they use them without verification and without concern that changes may have occurred at the link site. They just turn it on a spew like incontenant monkeys until they get blocked at most good places... and still they spew.

Your test isn't valid because it isn't real world. It has no bearing on how things really work, and would prove nothing.

Alex

Most better autosubmitters have a timing option since ~1-2 years to simulate the time a human beeing would need to fill the form.
But actually I only know 1 script that checks for that.

I was talking about a perfect autosubmission, and that it can't be detected.

Actually it's true that in reality nobody maintains his Database good enough to qualify for autosubmission, thats why I submit manually myself, and I'm suggesting it to all my Clients.

I suppose submitters get banned for auto-submitting all the time because reviewers are pyschic, not because of the fallacies in auto-submission software. hjnet, for someone who claims to preach manual submission, you sure do run to the defense of auto-submission products. I suppose I would to if I made money selling databases for auto-submitters.

Then you don't know many scripts. The smartest scripts test for it, and don't report their findings to anyone except the link site owner. Why give submitters information on how to cheat your system?

Alex

That is nice option from the autosubmitters perspective then. I don't know much about them. I was only trying to come up with ways to detect them. I'm sure you could do other stuff as well (such as randomly change the fields in away to cause it to crash and burn every once in a while to make the autosubmit ibvious), or if it becomes a problem go the the graphic security code setup.

I allow it on mine, but I think it is disrespectful to do it on someone's LL when they don't allow it. :twocents:

UW, you really crack me up sometimes! |thumb Thanks!

I'm not even old school, and I can smell them a mile away :D

Autosubmitters are a plague on my house, and I can easily stand with the other LL owners here in saying that there isn't one out there that behaves well enough to keep itself from being detected. Maybe not on the first submit, but eventually it will become apparent.

Hate to be mysterious, but I just can't give away any of the trade secrets on how they throw flags up...be they DO throw up flags that go way beyond not filling form fields correctly :)