I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but there have been people posting on TAM who are putting images in their posts that do not display. So I've been trying to figure out what they are and why they are doing this.
Below is an example of what the image and tags look like (except that I put spaces in the tags so that they entire tag/image-addy show up. (the addy below is fake, just posted here for demonstration.)
[I m g]http://ift.tt/1jQhoP7 I m g ]
Just in case anyone else is curious here is what I found out:
It's a form of a tracking pixel.
One of the metrics that search engines use is how many times your URL is linked to from other sites.
So search engines crawl Pelican and other sites, find the domain name and increase the sites relevance.
It's a scummy technique but also fairly benign, harmless for here.
A lot of times, like in this case, when you follow through to the domain there is nothing there.
It's probably a domain broker, they are trying to increase the value of the domain by increasing it's search rank which justifies asking a higher price for it.
Below is an example of what the image and tags look like (except that I put spaces in the tags so that they entire tag/image-addy show up. (the addy below is fake, just posted here for demonstration.)
[I m g]http://ift.tt/1jQhoP7 I m g ]
Just in case anyone else is curious here is what I found out:
It's a form of a tracking pixel.
One of the metrics that search engines use is how many times your URL is linked to from other sites.
So search engines crawl Pelican and other sites, find the domain name and increase the sites relevance.
It's a scummy technique but also fairly benign, harmless for here.
A lot of times, like in this case, when you follow through to the domain there is nothing there.
It's probably a domain broker, they are trying to increase the value of the domain by increasing it's search rank which justifies asking a higher price for it.
Put the internet to work for you.
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