Reader numbers are slowly climbing on the Spoof after a long lull saw numbers drop to as low as fourteen people in the last fifteen minutes.
"Thanks to some clever tweaks with URLs and search engine optimisation, flicking the flanges and conjoining the TLAs on the FLC and 77Y, I've started to improve matters," said Mark Lowton, head of the editorial and technical side of the Spoof.
OfNet, the UK government's watchdog for all things relating to the internet, has investigated the techniques employed by Lowton, and they are not impressed.
"We're very impressed," said Mike Rochippe, chair at OfNet, contradicting the Spoof. "Lowton's been shanghaiing visitors to other websites and ushering them into the Spoof via any channel he can."
Mark Lowton's been lurking in other people's websites and redirecting their search queries on forums over to the Spoof.
"We have seen one case about a query about the differences between an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy seeing the person asking getting results from the Spoof's Science and Technology section, and not the iPhone forum that the person asking was on," said Rochippe.
The same has been seen on other forums, with search results hijacking visitors and taking them away from those that could give real answers to Spoofs that gave wise-cracking, half-arsed answers.
"It's not good," said Rochippe. "People look to the internet for answers not a cheap giggle. Although people look to the internet for a cheap giggle too. What they don't expect is to go looking for a comedy cat picture, and be shown a story about clowns noses exploding."
OfNet have issued an ultimatum to Lowton. "We want him to stop dragging punters into his website and let them come and find him like they have to for other websites."
"I wondered where the boss had gone," said one Spoofer, who prefers the name 'Debbie'. "He didn't seem to be around, now it turns out he was grabbing people to read our stories. What a hero."
