Are bike lovers so intent on proselytizing two wheels over four that they’d help spammers prey on web travelers? Intentional or not, that’s apparently what happened this week when the embed code for a spiffy but questionable “How Bikes Can Save Us” infographic went viral on the web.

Full disclosure: I nearly got duped, too.

I saw the snazzy, retro-sleek graphic breaking down the virtues of bicycling and nearly posted it on Hard Drive. Two things made me pass. One: The source at the bottom was listed as “Health Care Management Degree.” (Who Care Management Degree?) And two: The information itself was about as worn out as the green paint in a downtown Portland bike box. (About 90 percent of Americans drive to work? Riding a bike means "better fitness" and less pollution? Really? Wow!)

It also has a section that shows why Portland is a "model for the U.S.," repeating City Hall's claims about how the huge investment in bicycle infrastructure will save us $400 million health care by 2040.

Still, scores of news sites and bloggers were quick to pounce on something to support the bike-commuting revolution that they want America to join.

Everyone from Huffington Post’s “Green” blog to

started posting, tweeting and sharing the graphic. It exploded across social media.

It now appears that graphic is tired to what blogging world calls “link farming” and "black hat SEO" using “linkbait.” It apparently exists solely to generate massive hits in order to get certain sites ranked higher and higher in Google searches.

:

Bike Portland editor Jonathan Maus said he “smelled something fishy” right away. But he loved how some old information about the benefits of bicycling was presented so concisely and attractively in a new inforgraphic. He said he compromised by posting it on his site's less-visited Page 2 instead of splashing it on the home page.

But as soon as

, he said he unpublished the graphic and tweeted a mea culpa to his followers for falling for the bad trick. “Once I found out a little more, it made me think about it again,” Maus said. “I deleted it. It’s clearly spam.” (

).

, Byron posted his cautionary tale about how things got messy quick when he posted the graphic with a link:

Maus said it’s common to find well-done graphics by “serious news organizations” on the Internet. But in the future, he said he’ll be more dubious of mysterious sources, especially as link farming propagates.

But while Maus and a few other sites such as

did the right thing and pulled the plug on the Internet trickery, several sites, including

, continue to dangle the link bait.

Safe Internet travels. Careful where you click.

For context, here's an unlinked version of the infographic: