It seems that every single day I get more and more spam. By spam I mainly mean comment spam on my many blogs. I could just as easily complain about email spam, but that’s really another issue.
I’ve written about spam and spammers recently and the measures I’ve taken to combat spam on my blogs. Believe me I think I have the bots pretty much handled … it’s the human comment spammers that are driving me nuts.
Have you been seeing a steady increase in human generated comment spam on your blogs?
I think that one of the main sources of this comment spam is the free and paid comment software programs that have come out in the last year or so. These programs make it easy for people to find blog posts on certain topics, posts that are of certain page rank, and blogs that are dofollow. Now if people used these types of software properly – ie finding blog posts that related to their own websites or blogs and leaving real commentary on the post without trying to promote their own site or product it wouldn’t be that bad … but leaving “nice post” “I’m stumbling this” or “I’ve told all my relatives and friends about your article” type of comments while promoting a commercial site or commercial blog is just not right.
The other source of spam is of course all the do follow lists and directories. My own Do Follow Blogroll as well! Since I have several blogs is very easy for me to tell that someone is following a do follow list because they tend to hit almost all of my blogs one comment after the other from site to site. Some of the comments are fine … but the ones that are just quickly going through the list don’t seem to read the post they are commenting on and either copy whatever one of the last commenters said or leave the same comment on each blog! Bzzzzz – you’re deleted or worse – sent to akismet hell!
If you are interested in promoting your site and getting some back links do it properly! Either dip into your savings accounts and by some advertising slots or find sites that are similar to your own and build a relationship with the webmaster by leaving meaningful comments that add to the site.
Leaving comments that don’t make sense or self promote or that don’t add to the posts conversation will either be deleted from most blogs or ignored. Good comments that add to the conversation end up having their links visited by the site owner as well as those who read the comment.
So if you are coming here to spam my site(s) by leaving a comment that self promotes or that doesn’t add anything to the conversation ie “nice post” – be warned – I moderated heavily and I don’t like spammers. If you leave a meaningful comment and your site doesn’t lead to a sales page it will probably be accepted.
How do you handle spammers on your sites? Do you delete the comments? Mark them as spam by sending them to Akismet? Delete the url if the comment is semi-passable?
I hate spammers. They seem to latch on to the do follow list. I usually send them to Akismet. If they leave a decent, relevant comment, I delete their link and change their name from berlinhotel to something like Bernie. LOL
I hate spammers too, they’re so annoying. Thank goodness for Akismet! I tend to delete them all, but on occasion, if it adds something to the conversation, I’ll allow the comment. If they’re link is to a site that simply sells merchandise or services, I allow the comment but delete their link.
Hi Tricia,
I use comment luv, dofollow after a set # of posts, and for a while I used the top commentators plugin as well. I like comments, but the fact that I knew my sites were on a few of those dofollow lists, has made me pretty quick with my trigger finger when it comes to sending comments off to akismet land.
Basically, I agree with you …
Short comment that leads to a “good” and/or “personal” blog, I’ll probably approve it.
Longer, more thoughtful type comment, even if it links to a sales page, I’ll probably approve it.
But sort silly comment, that adds no value to my blog; with a keyword instead of a name, and linking to a site who’s primary purpose is obviously to make money … gets spammed every time.
It amazes me that more people don’t realize that over the long term, it’s much more “profitable” to make friends with fellow bloggers who have shown a propensity to be giving (by using dofollow plugins), than to just hit them with a couple of quick hit and run comment links.
Just my two pennies,
Todd
Hm, I can imagine that it could be quite annoying if people just stop by to make sure they get a link on your site.
As my pagerank is only 0 I don’t have that problem, quite contrary I’d be happy about a few more commenters 😉 but it seems that nowadays everybody just stops by to drop a card and then leaves without even recognizing what your blog is about. I don’t know what’s worse :-S
Greets Julia
Well shoot. It never occurred to me that people would do that. I thought stuff like that was all automated by a bot(correct term?). No matter what it seems like one can’t avoid “junk mail” or I guess what should be called “junk posts”. I’ll keep my eye out, though like Julia, I am not highly rated. (not sure how that happens) I just started out and am still figuring things out.
I certainly agree with everyone. Spam sucks. I don’t delete comments, as long as they add to the conversation. But, like you guys, when somebody just says “nice post,” that comment is headed to the trash bin.
You guys do know why Do Follow blogs get so much spam don’t you? The “nofollow” tag means that links don’t pass any weight and won’t help with search engine rankings. Blogs that “Do Follow” do pass link juice.
Links are hard to find and take time to source but they are vital to websites ranking well in search engines. With Google down on web marketers spending money to BUY links, we have to find them where we can and Do Follow blogs are one place we can get them without costing our clients loads of money and without spending countless client hours just researching backlinks.
As both a search marketer and a blogger I agree that comment spam is incredibly rude – people invest time and thought into blogging and that shoud be respected – but sadly it’s also not going to go away.
I comment on a lot of blogs, and I’ve seen many posts like this. There are a lot of spammers out there. In fact, on my blog, I haven’t even installed any kind of spam control device, so I get a lot of bot spam, in the hundreds. It’s quite annoying, even though I could fix it easily. When I read over comments, I do see what are clearly spam posts (i.e. that was a good post) fairly often. It’s up to the webmaster how far to take their spam control activities.
If I was using Akismet than I would indeed report it as spam, but in my experience I have had better luck with spam karma and result in far less time spent moderating comments. I have found Akismet in the past to delete some viable comments.
Do you use one of the plugins that mandate that individual posters must have at least x amount of approved posts on your website before their links have the “nofollow” removed? I just wrapped up designing for my own blog and have been researching methods to deter spammers, and I think that’s the one I’m settling on for now. You should check it out, too!
I have also found that I get the occasional comment spam on my blog, I implimented Recaptcha on my blog which stopped the bots that were used to do the spaming.
I still get the ocasional human entered spam comment spam but that is quickly banished to the marked as spam list.
I do allow relevent comments even if they are linking to a comercial site though.
I am constantly amazed at just how much spam my little blog receives every day. For every decent comment, I bet I get 5 spam comments with 100 links. Do people honestly think I am going to let that pass?
I have a hard and fast rule – if your comment is not relevant, it gets deleted!
I have been dealing with the same thing! Some times I am totally confused who is handing out the information because I am so careful and selective about who I give my email… It’s definitely a frustrating situation