I recently noticed something strange happening on a few of my blog posts. Every time I typed something like domain.com, it automatically became a clickable hyperlink even though I never manually added any links myself.
At first, I thought Blogger was somehow auto-detecting domains and converting them into links automatically. Since I knew some WordPress users experienced similar behavior, I assumed Blogger might simply be doing the same thing.
After investigating further, I eventually discovered that Blogger was not responsible at all.
The real cause turned out to be my Disqus commenting system.
Disqus was scanning the page content and automatically converting plain text domains into affiliate-enabled hyperlinks using VigLink integration.
I found a very helpful explanation from Simagin Andrey from SiteAnalyzer describing exactly how this works.
Once I noticed on the pages of my site that each domain or link in the text began to be formatted with a hyperlink of the format <a class="vglnk" href="..., which, when clicked, takes visitors away from the site. At the same time, the data in the HTML editor is "hyperlink" are plain text.
Opening the link properties through the source code research plugin, it turned out that the link has a VGLNK class, which was never used in the CSS styles of this site.
<a class="vglnk" href="http://somesite.com" rel="noopener">
<span>somesite</span>
<span>.</span>
<span>com</span>
</a>
Googling this question, it turned out that the Disqus comment plugin was to be blamed for everything – it was he who turned fragments of plain text, similar to links, into direct hyperlinks of his affiliate sites (apparently Disqus is working with VigLink to post their affiliate links on our own sites. Scoundrel!).
How I Fixed the Problem
Thankfully, the solution was actually very simple. I followed Simagin Andrey’s method and disabled the affiliate link feature directly inside Disqus settings.
- Log in to your Disqus admin dashboard.
- Open your website settings page or directly visit:
https://yourdomain.disqus.com/admin/settings/advanced/
Replaceyourdomainwith your own domain name. - Under the Advanced section, find this option:
Affiliate Links: Automatically append merchant codes to product links on your site. - Uncheck the affiliate links option.
- Click the Save button.
- Refresh your website and check your posts again.
After disabling that setting, the unwanted auto-linked domain texts finally disappeared from my articles.
Final Thoughts
If you suddenly notice random domain names automatically turning into clickable links on your website, your commenting system or affiliate integration may be the actual cause instead of your blogging platform.
In my case, Disqus affiliate link integration was silently converting plain text domains into affiliate-enabled hyperlinks without modifying the original post editor content.
Hopefully, this quick fix helps save you some troubleshooting time if you encounter the same issue on your own website.
