In order to make web sites interactive, many of us add tools to help our site visitors interact with us.  This interactivity makes for a better visitor experience and helps us, as site owners, get valuable feedback from our visitors.

But pornographers can exploit this interactivity to build links to their own web sites?

Here?s an example of how it works.  You have a guest book on your web site to visitors can add comments.  You might not check it every day and may not have looked at it in months.  In the meantime, pornographers may have visited your web site and posted some links to their own sites.  Even my own site was violated in this manner.

Why do they do this?  Additional links on sites can help increase their ranking in search engines and they also may get some visitors from other readers of your guest book.  Unfortunately, this makes your web site look like it has porn on it.  If your web site audience includes children or parents, and they find the porn links on your site, this can be devastating to your family-friendly or business image. 

Where might it hide?  Anywhere where people can post something that might end up on your site.  Some common places include:

         Guest books

         Feedback forms

         Article comment areas

         Discussion forums, especially ones that are not regularly monitored

         Blogs (if open to public posting, comments or feedback)

How can you be safe?  Only use these interactive components when you will be regularly monitoring them.  Have a delay system where you can view any submissions from the public before they go live on your site.  Or allow postings from approved registered members only.

If you think you may have porn on your site and have trouble finding it, use Google?s Advanced Search to search for the offending words within your web site domain name only.

Garland Coulson, ?The E-Business Tutor? is an acclaimed speaker, author and coach in the field of Internet marketing for small business and home business. For more information, visit The E-Business Tutor web site at www.ebusinesstutor.com or call toll-free in North America at 1-866-413-0951.

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Last Updated Wednesday, November 17 2004 @ 11:09 PM CST