Hey guys,
As some of you may have noticed, this site is becoming more and more popular, which is a great thing. While it stinks that so many people are suffering anal fissures, it's good that we all have a place to talk about the matter and lean on each other for support.
The downside of all this is that this site now gets more hits (visitors), and with that, it becomes a more desirable target for those who attempt to utilize it for their own SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes.
The idea is this: Google has an algorithm for deciding where your website appears when someone searches for a given term. For example, if you search for "black Prada dress" using Google, there are lots of websites out there competing to be higher up in the set of results that Google returns. One way to move higher up in the results is to have "linkbacks." Linkbacks are the number of hyperlinks that point back to your site (in my example, the sites selling black Prada dresses).
This is why you sometimes see people posting random things about Microsoft Office or Coach purses on this site. It's total garbage content, and the only reason these people do it is because they put in lots of hyperlinks in their posts to increase their linkbacks and therefore position in Google (and other search engine) results. In fact, the sad truth is that many of these people are overseas (southeast Asia mostly) and are hired by small organizations in more developed countries expressly for the purpose of increasing linkbacks.
This is obviously a nuisance to those who come here for help with a medical condition, and it also rips off the organizations who think they're hiring legitimate SEO Specialists when in fact all the so-called Specialists do is post garbage to websites that get lots of hits.
THE IMPORTANT PART
Here is where I'd like your help: I (and I'm sure the other admins as well) don't have time to monitor the boards for this kind of garbage content all the time, so you all are our eyes and ears out there. If you see any such questionable content, please send me a Private Message to let me know, and include a link to the offensive content. I will delete both the post and the user who posted it. I will also report to Google and the other major search engines the actual domain that they are trying to link back to. If a search engine company gets enough legitimate complaints about a domain, it will be blacklisted and either dropped from the search engine's results, or at least pushed down to a lower position. There is no real good way to completely eliminate the problem (it's just a side effect of your site becoming more popular), but hopefully this will at least help mitigate and discourage it, and keep the content on this board pertinent to its core focus. Thanks to all for your help!
(And to my fellow admins: I didn't consult with you all before posting this, so if this is not desired in any way, just let me know and I will back down from this position. I've seen enough cases of linkback generation here that I think such action is warranted, but am open to other ideas as necessary, since after all, you all were the ones who created the board and got it to where it is today -- I'm just volunteering to be the enforcer when it comes to cheap SEO tactics :))

P.S.
I should be clear that this doesn't include off-topic chatter. We have great fun with chatting about all kinds of topics, and that should continue unabated. It's the completely outright garbage posts that I'm really taking aim at here -- most of us probably know them as soon as we see them.

Yes, right on, NG!!

Absolutely, NG!!! 100% behind you on this and will happily give you a heads up the next one I see.

Anyone who spams our forum, or uses it for Search Engine Optimization (and if you are doing it from two different names but with the same IP, we will know), will be removed from the forum. So, please, read what NG has said above. It still applies!