How many times have you visited a blog, or any website with commenting enabled, and spotted comments that are completely off-topic or look like they were automatically generated? How many spam comments do you see on a regular basis? Why do the spammers get away with it? Read on as I explain what's happening, why it's happening and what I've done to reduce that kind of spam on my own websites.
Comment Spam
Ever since Google started indexing websites and giving priority to search results for pages with links pointing to them, comment spammers have been a problem. This is why Google implemented the "nofollow" attribute for links in the first place. A blog could have thousands of comments and with that attribute in place, the links in those comments have no link authority as far as the Google search engine is concerned.
The problem is that there are a lot of search engines, other than Google, which don't pay attention to that attribute and that's why comment spam is still effective for spammers.
Manual Commenting and Paid Commenting
If someone is being paid, usually by the comment or by the hour, they're going to post as many comments in as many places as they can as fast as they can. These are the kind of comments that will be formatted in ways that don't look quite right – links will almost always be embedded in the comments in a haphazard way. The comments will frequently have nothing to do with the article commented on or will only be remotely related. Another telltale sign is that more than one comment from one IP address will appear within minutes of each other, some having different names attached (including keywords instead of names).
Comment spammers not being paid, like those who are doing it in order to boost their own sites, are harder to detect and are usually careful to stay on topic. I don't have much of an issue with this kind of comment spammer because the comment content usually adds to the conversation and builds related content for the post in question.
Automated Spamming
This is the kind of spamming that irritates me the most. It's the hardest to filter out because the spammers using the tools designed for this purpose will switch from IP address to IP address (using open and insecure proxies) and change the comments enough to get by automated filters.
Still, I don't have much of an issue with comment spammers that use the automated tools that are designed to find related posts to be commented on. It sure beats searching for related posts through Google.
Combating Comment Spam
Until a month or so ago, I never moderated comments. I would allow any comment to be posted, if it got through the filters, and then would delete anything that looked like spam.
The spam flow became so ridiculous and a single spam run that left 18 duplicate spam comments, on 18 different posts, cinched my decision to start moderating all comments. As I wrote when I posted the final word on comment spam, comment moderation is the most effective way to reduce or eliminate comment spam.
What about old comments, on old posts (especially those from more than a year or two ago) that may look a bit spammy? Well, if you're a regular visitor, you've probably noticed that I remove old posts that I think have no value to readers. Some of them are rewritten and republished, some are incorporated into other posts and some are deleted completely.
Why does paid commenting and automated spamming work?
I'm sorry to say that the reason it works and will continue to work is that there are millions of websites on the Internet with comment forms and blogs are only part of them. Out of these millions, there are a large percentage of website owners who refuse to take the steps necessary to stop the spam. These people won't even review the comments, much less moderate them.
Believe it or not, a lot of the spammed blogs are auto-generated, using specialty software. Some are spam blogs and some are not and it probably depends on who's making the definition. I find it hilarious when I run across one of these types of blogs and see it spammed by other people doing the same thing they're doing.
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This article is published as: Why Paid Commenting and Automated Spamming Works
Hi RT,
I recently joined a paid membership site that offers some great downloads albeit not totally legit in some cases but there were a couple of things I just had to have ;-)
Anyway, I was amazed at some of the software available out there that facilitates comment spamming – some of it is actually quite sophisticated but I'm not going to mention any names.
As an ex DoFollow blogger like yourself, it is no wonder so many stupid comments were being posted – comment spam has become a bit of an art form and, should I be so inclined, which I'm certainly not, I have a collection of tools that could do the job for me.
The sad thing is that some of the software, can be used quite legitimately to discover great blogs and to contribute some good comments. Unfortunately most people seem to abuse these by setting up a collection of pre-written generalized "comments" that are then inserted randomly, usually resulting in nonsensical and easily spotted spam. It's a short lived and short sighted strategy for gaining back links but as long as it's out there and sold to people as a shortcut to success, it's not going to go away.
One of the programs I found can seek out blogs based on all kinds of parameters – CommentLuv, Top Comments, DoFollow, Disqus, etc. etc.
You'll be pleased to know that you do really well on the CommentLuv searches, invariably throwing up a fair number of posts ;-) The software can return hundreds upon hundreds of blog posts within a few minutes! I guess it's good and bad that Untwisted Vortex does so well!
.-= My last blog: Installing Moodle Onto A Subdomain via Fantastico and Cpanel =-.
I have a problem with the first type of spammers because they keep on pestering my blogs with silly comments which are irrelevant. But then I let them be because as you mentioned, Google doesn't pay much attention to them (being NF) and so will my readers I guess. Besides, I have always been wondering how could I encourage a conversation on my blog posts (I still haven't figured that out). So at this point I just let these spammers. I would mind if they keep on sending me emails perhaps.
.-= My last blog: Facebook is Expanding and Rejoicing =-.
I hear you guys.. with this commentluv thing, anything is possible.. advertising , etc. but we all have to earn some money.. heard that a few people are paying for blog comments with commentluv to bring traffic to their site..
.-= My last blog: Are you looking for a public liability insurance quote ? =-.
thanks for this…
yes i always use commentluv so hopefully it would work for my site…
I think it's giving fewer and fewer rewards, though.
I don't understand why they even bother targeting obvious Akismet-protected targets like WordPress.com blogs, to be honest. Only had one problem with spam and that was a false positive.
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