Yes, It Is Spam, And It Must Die

September 4, 2009 on 3:47 pm | In Internet Marketing | 50 Comments

What is it with comment spammers these days? (Click to enlarge the image below).

Although this blog is “dofollow” (i.e. if you make a comment it will pass some “link juice” to your site), there are still standards. The rule is, “if it doesn’t add value, it doesn’t get published”.

(Thank you to legitimate commenters though…your guys rock!)

50 Comments »

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I’d have to agree, however I did find your blog via a do follow search but I only post comments on topics that interest me. I personally feel blog commenting is 40% about link building, 40% about building a public profile by providing valid feedback. And 20% abut having an opinion that you wish to share. If all you produce is spam it reflects badly on what or who your trying to market.

Comment by Martin — September 4, 2009 #
Omg, it is hard to be away from spammers, i have to moderate comments before publishing them and is a lot of job. I suggest using captchas also, it is effective against spambots. Cheers for you guys!

Comment by The Therapist — September 6, 2009 #
@Martin
I couldn’t agree more. When you spam you may build quick Google ranking, but soon after that the word “scam” next to your product name will appear on Google as well. People don’t trust spam, and if you are trying to sell a real product that works you have no need to spam at all, just get a few buyers to give good reviews and word of mouth.

I post comments on a lot of “DoFollow” blogs, and i’m actually happy that the spam is moderated out on them. I don’t want my link on a site with tons of spam links, it would make me look bad and the more spam links means the less “link juice” may come my way.

So thanks blog owner, not just for allowing dofollow links but for moderating out the spam

Comment by Forum Promotion — September 7, 2009 #
I totally agree with martin. Although i will (hopefully) benefit from posting i chose and read blogs that i am interested in before i post.
Theres no point in mindlessly commenting on every bleedin blog – its bad for your reputation and its annoying for everyone else!

Comment by corporate video — September 7, 2009 #
Im also agreed with martin, Now a days many people just comment for link building thats why comment spam is increasing day by day, Captcha are nothing to protect as many captcha breaking services are available and many black hat techniques to By pass captchas, I think No follow blogs should Also Pass a PR value, Less then Do follow but should pass the value because of that it will decrease the PR Spam… i just Comment on the blog that i have interest

Comment by Fashno — September 7, 2009 #
Hi Will, I would agree with you there are a lot of comment spammers out there. However I think it is about give and take with the blog owner. You want people to read and comment on your blog and enabling a do follow link, is a nice way of saying thankyou for the comment. The blog owner wins because he gets more readers and more interaction, the person who made the comment wins because he gets a nice backlink and maybe a little bit of traffic.

Comment by Precise Internet — September 7, 2009 #
I totally agree Precise — my only point is that the comment should add to the conversation to be accepted for publication (although this is the moderator’s prerogative of course.)

Comment by Will — September 8, 2009 #
There are several ways that has been devised by the the blogger s to get rid of spammers, Some use catpchas, wordpress users use Akismet but the spammers seems to find there way through. But commenting on blog that interest you is good idea. The quality of comment talks a lot about it…if it is relevant to your post and shares some good points apart from some generic “Thank yous” then moderating it will be a good idea.

Comment by James Murdoch — September 8, 2009 #
I agree. I’m new to the whole blogging thing, but even I understand that it doesn’t help at all in the long run to spam everyone. (Hopefully I’m doing this right. I’m still learning…)

Comment by bowling news — September 8, 2009 #
You are being generous and smart by not using rel=nofollow on your blog. This dofollow thing is supposed to be a great model to encourage community participation. In fact, I believe relevant comments actually help in terms of on-page seo of the page. Too bad this is often exploited by spammers. Best of luck though on moderation

Comment by Internet Business — September 9, 2009 #
Forum Promotion has a good point – it is actually a good thing that moderators of DoFollow blogs delete the spam comments because it makes sure that the links on the page are of good quality. On the other hand, it takes a lot of time to do all that comment moderation even though plugins like Akismet take care of most of it.

Comment by sealy posturepedic mattress — September 9, 2009 #
Comment spam has become such a nuisance over the years. It seems Akismet works well to catch most of the crud – but I still occasionally go through and see if it’s catching legit comments.

Comment by Christian Hollingsworth — September 9, 2009 #
Tell me about it. I’ve been getting so many ‘Thank you for this post’ comments at my blog. Makes me wonder how many are actually thankful for the info. Worse are the ones that are not even related to the content.

Not to mention I’v started noticing that Akismet is letting through some blatantly obvious spam comments which are complete ads and in some cases very adult ads. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this, too?

I’ve been spared these getting posted directly as I do have comment moderation on – although that can get to be a very time consuming process.

Comment by Erum — September 10, 2009 #
Hey Christian – I agree. Akismet is certainly not infallible but there’s no other choice (that I know of). I think Akismet has chomped through a couple of hundred thousand spam comments and probably a few false positives… but no one really knows for sure

Comment by Will — September 10, 2009 #
I have a wallpaper blog and i DO FOLLOW. yes it takes some time to edit comments, but with all no follow sites only benefits huge websites with unlimited budget with all their incoming links and all nofollow links. So i am sticking with do follow

Comment by Derek Dorian — September 11, 2009 #
I would guess a blog with do follow is going to attract a lot more spam attention than one that does not advertise do follow?

Comment by ZxVPS — September 11, 2009 #
I’m completely happy with the ‘add value’ rule. I don’t own a blog but I know I would follow a similar policy. Comments like ‘nice story’ or ‘i love your post’ should be deleted, since they also annoy readers, not only bloggers themselves.

Comment by ljubljana hotel — September 12, 2009 #
lolz this happened with dofollow blogs :p but i think spammers should know that every blog owner is not nuts

Comment by oes tsetnoc — September 12, 2009 #
Yeah I do agree with your opinion that do follow comments attract more spams that is the reason why blogs do not have as much spammers as much you can find on forums.

Comment by New Media Marketing — September 12, 2009 #
I give you six months.

the problem is that your blog will appear on a whole bunch of “dofollow” blog lists, so even if you make it nofollow, you’ll still get all the idiot spammers leaving idiot comments thinking that they’re getting a “clean” link

Comment by Stu @ Laser Eye Surgery Kamloops — September 15, 2009 #
Hi Will. All this “Thank you for your post” replies drives me nuts. I wonder how many who post this crap actually take the time to read the post.

Comment by Deiligst — September 17, 2009 #
I agree that most of people try to spam on blogs with dofollow. I think its very useful for us to find blogs with dofollow but in same time I am sure that we have to post comments on topics. People who try to spam only makes us to waste our time moderating the comments.

Comment by Photoshop Brushes — September 18, 2009 #
Well i guess this is very time consuming and something unavoidable. The best is to have no follow being disabled. But this eventually will reduce the no of comments unless your post is excellent or high profile.

Comment by Mimi — September 23, 2009 #
Akismet is just protecting the blogs from spam than the forum. That’s the reason why there is so many spam on forum than in blogs.

Comment by oes tsetnoc — September 23, 2009 #
The way I manage it is to do moderations manually, although I do favour the dofollow approach – it’s a real win – win situation.

Comment by Derek — September 23, 2009 #
Comment spam really is becoming a big problem and most bloggers are realizing this. The more popular your blog gets, the more spam you tend to get. I don’t think that having a dofollow blog is necessarily a spam magnet – I run a dofollow blog and I don’t get any more spam than a nofollow blog gets. So in general I think that dofollow is a good idea. -Mike

Comment by Crane Inspections — September 26, 2009 #
Having a dofollow blog is perhaps not a ‘spam magnet’ per se – but it certainly increases your sensitivity towards it.

Both my personal and our corporate blogs are dofollow and we’re certainly picky about letting people embed links into the content – but typically the better (relevant, on topic, insightful, generally helpful) your comment/contribution – the more we will let you get away with.

It’s a fair trade – a bit of content or someones opinion in exchange for a link!

Comment by Hampshire Web Developers — September 29, 2009 #
Spammers spread around the web… I was even a victim of spam before I learned some of the techniques in the blogosphere. I guess the best way to avoid spam is we should require a word verification in every comment posts.

Comment by Abigail Johnson — September 30, 2009 #
Everyone brings up some very good points. Like many, I agree with Martin and I’ve been struggling with this topic for some time.

I hate spammers just like the next person, however I do comment and I consciously search out Do-Follow blogs. However unlike many, if I can’t offer something to the topic of conversation then I don’t comment.

Bloggers that are generous enough to maintain a do-follow policy (thanks Wil) should also maintain a comment policy and adhere to it. While this post pretty much defined the comment policy of this blog: “Comments that don’t offer value will be deleted” I feel that there should be an explicit policy posted. Afterwards, the blogger should then take the steps necessary to blow out the spam.

Granted, it’s unfortunate that one’s generosity is repaid with more work, however in the long run I believe that it is worthwhile and does build community.

Thanks.

Hampshire Web Developers

Comment by Svetlana: Lawyer Kiyv — October 3, 2009 #
@Abigail: Spammers came along with the web when it was born. But I agree with your idea of integrating captchas.

There is something I don’t understand. How can people be studid enough to even DARE to comment like on the picture in your post?

I mean whom do they think to fool with that? On several blogs of mine I experience comments like that and I sometimes have to inhale the full outline of pure ignorance. It’s funny yet exhausting to press the delete button so many times per day

Comment by Frederik — October 3, 2009 #
When I turned my blog to do-follow, I started getting lots of comments (spam comments). Sometime akismet, wp spam free fails to catch spam comments. Bloggers know what to write or what to not write in comment section.

Comment by Ricky — October 3, 2009 #
Luckily Askimet catches 95% of the comment spam on my website but manual spammers seem to keep getting worse. I couldn’t imagine the amount of manual spam with a dofollow blog. I like how the spammer decided to try to “trick” you by saying he wasn’t a spammer haha.

Comment by Biz Consumer — October 4, 2009 #
Hahah. I love how that spammer said this isn’t spam. Best way to get rid of spammers is to install akimset then block the ip of spammers

Comment by godaddy coupons — October 4, 2009 #
I totally agree and work exactly as you do. It´s a known SEO technique to add backlinks in the blogs. But what I really hate is simply a “nice” or “hello”.

My personal opinion is to help other bloggers with sharing my linkjuice with them but I want to have theme relevant content in their post. Why not?

It´s not too much demanded if the blogger goes into the content and writes posts with sense.

Comment by 1er BMW — October 4, 2009 #
Hi Will,

I did comment about 3 weeks ago on this topic and related about spam I received on my blog.

I don’t see the comment here anymore.
That comment was contributory and in no way a spam.

I wonder why it was removed. Perhaps my relating what happened might give others an idea what not to do?

Anyway, spam is to be weeded out as much as possible.

Akismet is doing quite a good job but one still has to watch what gets through on occasion.

One or two line comments are really just a lip service that is bothersome.

It contributes very little with a few exceptions.

Vance

Comment by Vance Sova — October 7, 2009 #
Hey Will,
Martins very first comment pretty much sums it up. Commenting on blogs is about multiple things and its important to keep that in mind as a blog owner. Its also important to cut out the blog spam as well so keep up the good work.

Comment by Saint George homes — October 12, 2009 #
Hey Will,

A lot of the comments on here I agree with, Martin comment gets straight to the point. I believe if the comments made in a blog are constructive then I think it’s only fair for the commenter to leave a link to his website after making the effort to read the blog in the first place. I only read blogs that interest me and if they deserve a comment then I’ll leave one with a link to my website, I don’t see it as spamming but then others abuse this by just leaving a “Hello” and “Great Article” without actually reading it in the first place no that’s spamming.

If you a blog owner then this is something you’ll have to bite your lip over I’m afraid.

Great post…

Comment by Shaun — October 14, 2009 #
The way I manage it is to do moderations manually, although I do favour the dofollow approach – it’s a real win – win situation.

Comment by meaw — October 14, 2009 #
I have to agree with Biz Consumers up there. While Akismet is a great way to block out the automatic bots from spamming, the manual spammers are just getting completely out of hand. I literally had to shut my blog down for 48 hours once because it came under a massive manual spam attack all trying to link to various hidden links with tinyurl.

It’s also interesting that alot of manual spammers come from places that have cheap labor such as India, Russia, China, and other various countries around the world.

Comment by Webmaster Forum — October 21, 2009 #
I agree with meaw, manual moderation is the best solution.

Comment by Ashton Drake Dolls — October 21, 2009 #
captchas are okay, but Askimet will be more effective one, because it really works, Askimet deletes all spam comments automatically and you don’t have to bother to delete manually, besides you can also use Javascript to restrict privacy.

Comment by Frank Lynch — October 21, 2009 #
Spammers who contribute nothing of value are really annoying- is it honestly that hard to spend two seconds writing a meaningful comment rather than just posting in some advertisement gibberish?

Comment by Christian — October 25, 2009 #
I too have sites and I understand I annoying it is when people start selling via garaa tabs on your site I wish i could block internet access in china russia and all those countries where spammers show up

Comment by Anney — November 3, 2009 #
When I had my first blog it was a lot worse then now. All you could do is make comments no-follow, but then almost noone would comment unless you have a really great blog post.

Nowadays there’s plenty of really good wordpress plugins that allow you to make comments do-follow after a certain number of comments by a visitor, that’s what I recommend.

Comment by Krys SEO — November 7, 2009 #
I’m still kinda of new to the blog thing. My blog is also do-follow and I have to delete a lot of spam myself. I can relate. I’m still look for a plug in of some sort to combat the spammers

Comment by Apple tablet — January 4, 2010 #
I guess spam is a fact of life on the internet these days. Thanks for filtering it out and allowing comments.

Comment by SEO Online Marketing Ecommerce — February 12, 2010 #
But the value of “doFollow” would be less due to the number of outgoing links on the page?

Comment by Desktops — March 8, 2010 #
Perhaps all blogs should be nofollow. The only reason I can think of why some people have a dofollow blog is the incentive to encourage commenters.

Comment by Adam — May 19, 2010 #
Matt Cutts says nofollow doesn’t do much anymore, can’t find the exact link…but relates to page sculpting.

Comment by Apple Wallpaper — December 3, 2010 #
Hi Apple. I agree that these days, using rel=nofollow to sculpt internal PR is dead. But no/dofollow links still have an impact on how internal PR is distributed.

Comment by Will Swayne — December 6, 2010 #