Blog Comment Spamming Really Works…Just Kidding!
By Christian Little • Sep 25th, 2008 • Category: Webmaster EtiquetteIt’s funny how people think that using some lame comment and then link spamming on a do-follow blog will actually work. What’s even funnier is that most of the people that do this are paying for it, either with some comment posting software or hiring somebody from India for $0.05/hour.
So let’s look at how good these comments are that you are paying for, here’s a few that made me laugh this morning when I checked the filtered comments.
Example #1: Foreign language spam
Ok. First off, this is an English blog. I don’t have the time, or the patience to figure out what language you are typing in (though I’m guessing it’s a european language from the lack of special characters). Either that or you just bashed your keyboard a whole bunch. Yeah…that will work really well.
Example #2: Stupid Comment Text/Anchor
Nice try on this one, they actually made it sound like they kinda cared. However I don’t use Stumble Upon, and this is the third time somebody has posted the exact same comment. So chances are this is from some software, or somebody is just running around pasting the same stupid comment on lots of blogs.
To add insult to this, look at the anchor text they are hoping to use – “Free Christian Web Hosting Site Building”…yeah if that’s not keyword stuffing then I’m a saudi prince. I really don’t care if you use keywords in your name field for the back links to your site, but that’s just stupid. At least keep it simple. If that was the only problem with your comment, I’d probably let it go and approve the comment.
Example #3: Were You Even Trying?
This one made me laugh when I read it. What the hell are you trying to say?
The name/anchor text/url you posted are perfectly fine. But the comment content is just…retarded I guess would be the best term to use.
Example #4: Comment Posting Software = Fails
Ok for some reason I’m getting about ten of these types of comments per day, judging from the content this is meant to spam forums, as it uses the UBB-style coding for the links in the message. Cute, but more annoying than anything. I especially like the email address of the second one, you take one look at that and tell me it’s somebody’s real email address.
Lessons for Blog Commenting
It’s great that you are using blog comments, but at least have the decency to do it properly. Here’s some basic pointers when posting on a blog specifically to get back links:
- READ the post content
- CONTRIBUTE something worth while. Don’t just reply with “I agree” or something like what you see in Example #3 above.
- RETURN to the site. If you are going to make comments, come back and see if people replied.
The short end of the stick here folks if that if you do blog commenting (which is a great thing to do), then do it properly and don’t use some piece of crap software or outsource it. Do it the right way, otherwise it just makes you look bad, and results in you getting banned from the sites in question.
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Christian Little is a web monkey and owner of this website. Aside from blogging about webmastering, SEO, and marketing, he spends his time with his family, running too many websites, playing counter-strike, and provides SEO consulting for a few select clients around the world.
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Blog spam is really annoying. It is shame we had to stop ‘following’ comments on our blog and return to ‘no-follow’. ‘Tis a shame when a few bad apples ruin it for all. Anyway, thanks for the link!
Cheers –
Alan
PS Viagra viagra viagra — just kidding
Alan RImm-Kaufmans last blog post..Early Read on Google’s Quality Score Changes
The first example isn’t really foreign language spam, it’s simply gibberish. Spammers do this for a reason. Many spam filters such as Akismet filter out comments with certain words and immediately flag them as spam. By writing in gibberish, spammers can guarantee they will bypass this level of the filter (although they are almost certainly caught in other ways)
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No problem Alan
I try to post links to related posts whenever I create a new post here.
Akismet did catch that one Seth, it flags about 5/day on this site.
I don’t get a lot of really spammy comments due to a plugin I have, but I consistently get a few of your second and third examples from real people who just blog hop to get a link back.
A lot more people will click your link if you add to the value of the post you are commenting on.
Tom – StandOutBlogger.coms last blog post..5 Things I Hate About Bloggers!
You should give Defensio a try. We’re really good at catching these.
Carl Merciers last blog post..ExpressionEngine, here we come!
What plugin are you using Tom? I mostly rely on Akismet, but also manually review comments to make sure nothing horrible gets through.
Carl – I checked the Defensio site over, what makes it different than Akismet?
@christian: better accuracy, personalized spam filtering that learns from your content and behaviors, much better UI (reviewing the spam is much easier as everything is sorted by “spaminess”), RSS feeds for your innocent and spam comments, etc.
Give it a shot!
Carl Merciers last blog post..ExpressionEngine, here we come!
I’ll try playing around with it next week, but I have to say I’m skeptical about the accuracy bit. Akismet does one hell of a job already, but we’ll see how it goes
@christian: I’m saying we have better accuracy because that’s what people tell us constantly. It’s hard to compare since Akismet don’t publish any statistics (but we do).
I think the UI alone is worth switching. I personally find that it makes my life a lot easier.
cheers!
Carl Merciers last blog post..ExpressionEngine, here we come!
I receive this all the time too! At first I thought that the comments that said they found me through StumbleUpon were legitimate….but after a while after receiving so many of them I just deleted them all. Is Defensio good? I am using Akismet at the moment and so far it hasn’t caught anything it shouldn’t, but it did let a few past it’s guard though.
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Been surfing your site. Found some cool plug-ins and then came across this article. Article spam really sucks. I have a blog where it was just blatant advertising, just a post with a link. I mean really. If they had offered some feedback on my articles and contributed to the discussion then great but just replying with a link. (eyes roll). Oh well. Let the spam filters deal with it now. Hopefully with better filters in place it will cut down on spam.
At least you got a blog post out of them lol! It even sounds like some of it amuses you. Thankfully tools like askimet catch a lot of the automated spam.
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I was really tempted to be a smart-alec and post some comment like the ones in the post. I get tons of those caught by askimet every day. Sometimes, and since the purpose of my blog is to write nonsense, I use the more entertaining ones as the base for a funny post. Hey.. they should be good for something I figure.
I’m off to read more here. I’m finding you rather interesting.
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