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I have been intrigued by this for a while, and haven't been able to find a solution elsewhere, so I was wondering if anyone here knew the answer:

Since I have set up my personal website, I have noticed that I get a fairly regular supply of fake registrations, i.e. semi-random email addresses and usernames that sign up to the site and then do nothing else.

So I am curious: what is the point of these bots? Why would a programmer spend his resources producing bots which simply register to a WordPress blog? It doesn't seem to be for black-hat SEO purposes, as there is no user list, nor do most of the bots even have a URL attached to them, nor do they attempt to publish posts on the blog pages.

Does anyone know why these bots are written, and why?

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The bot is looking for a site that automatically publishes their comments, using a "Black-List" method. Most Webmasters use the "White-List" method and only approve comments they have personally read.

If the bot was able to post for example 100 links and Google's bot were to see those links it would give their URL a PR boost, even if you remove the comment days later the damage has already taken place: your PR dropped their PR gained.

PR = PageRank (I hate quoting a wiki, but it's good enough to get the idea.)

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    But the bots don't even try to publish a comment? Surely if they were trying to use Black-Hat SEO techniques then they would at least try to publish a comment? Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 22:58
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    Most of the time a CMS has an open list of user profiles, these profiles contain public info: name, email address, website and by default accessible to Google's engine. Once they create an account the bot can check security rights and if it does not have a write ability it will leave. It would be nice if the bot would clean up its mess and unregistered. =) Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 23:02
  • Nicely explained. Commented Jan 17, 2015 at 1:22

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