Most of us know what spam is. It’s content that is a blatant attempt to promote some product, site or service. It’s obvious: “Buy Viagra, Get a cheap rolex watch, apply for this fantastic life insurance package, or fill out this Credit Card Application. If you have a blog or if you have an email address, then you have seen it and you know what it is.
But what about spam messages that aren’t so obvious?
Anyone who has dropped by this blog before will know I am a big fan of the plugin keywordluv. I feel it brings more comments, and thus content to my blog. As a result I get plenty of comments from other webmasters looking for targeted backlinks to their sites. There are dozens of PR3 and Pr2 pages on this blog when you can easily get a backlink to your site, and that backlink can have any text you want in it…within reason.
Now comes the reason why I am writing this post. What about people who want targeted backlinks from your blog, but they want lots of links, and they want them fast. This sort of person doesn’t really want to read your content. They don’t want to think of a meaningful comment to add, they just want to drop in and dump a “Generic comment” with their anchor, then move on. The faster the better. Now to the untrained eye these comments can look like legitimate comments. They normally look something like this: “Great post, bookmarked, will be back later”, or “fantastic article, keep up the good work”. Neither of these comments even suggest the person has even read the title of your post, they may not have even visited your site. The comments could apply to any post.
So, if you want a backlink with your choice of anchors from this site, you need to read the article and add to the content to my site. Nothing comes for free. Add a meaningful comment or I will flag it as the spam that it is.
Ryan from Learn Piano Online
Great post, bookmarked, will be back later. Because this was a fantastic article, keep up the good work. (There we go, hows that? Two sentences now, can’t call that SPAM.)
Seriously now though, I have been deleting those types of comments from day one on my blogs. I can’t stand them, to me it just adds useless junk and filler to my page for no real reason. Nobody gains anything from reading a sentence like that so there is no point of it being there. It does not add any value or any other view points to the discussion.
Andy from network marketing leads
I know what you are saying Simon. The comment spammers can really be a pain in the *ss. One blog I usually follow and comment on actually took Keyword Luv off because he felt all the spam was getting in the way of the people who had a legitimate question.
There are always some who try to ruin it for everyone else.
Print Matt from business card
I would have posted “Great blog! nice posts!” then I would be spamming your blog. Its true that generic comments are a bit annoying for the fact that they do not contain any sensible thought. I too have a blog, the first thing I would do everyday when I signed on to my blog is check out comments to my posts and manually approve or reject these generic comments.
brandon
I totally agree , I absolutely hate the “Hey there, I subscribed to your RSS Feed” type of comments on my blog.
HOWEVER I do get a kick out of comment spam that has absolutely no benefit for the guy spamming , broken links , no anchor text ,ect. I guess I should be upset a little more about it , but akismet is so great about catching things any more.
Ultratuga from Temas para telemovel
You are right, people are creating more and more sites, and they need backlinks, more backlinks, they don´t stop to read anything. But that hunt can be harmful for them, because if Google detects a recent blog with lots of links, it will be send to Google Sandbox, and it may take months to recover from there.
Terry from Lab Coat
I can appreciate spam, if it comes in cans though. LOL. I’ve heard of automated tools which create these generic comments. If I’m new to blogging, I would say “cool, some people are reading my blog. and they’ve bookmarked it too”. But in reality, they did not even visit my blog. And that really sucks. Pardon me French.
Neil from debt advice free
Hi
Totally agree. I really don’t know what I would do without my trusty spam filter
Neil
tom from Przywracanie Danych
Keywordluv not only brings you more commenters. It boosts your position in search engines as you’re not only on countless “dofollow blog lists” but also on couple of those “keywordluv lists”. Anyway free backlinks are always a nice thing – I don’t really see any drawbacks with enabling Keywordluv.
Matt from Cool Gifts
I agree that nothing is free. If people are trying to build links to their website, they need to also mind how they may be perceived in those comments. It’s so lame to just leave a standard response. If I can tell that you didn’t read my blog post, I’ll probably remove the comment.
Republican Blogger from republican blog
In an effort to combat bad spamming on my blog, I put a little disclaimer next to the comment box. I let the blog readers know that I encourage them to promote their own sites so long as they contribute some decent information related to the post. I don’t mind working a little bit in order to get a decent link.
Kathy from Digital Cameras
I have the same problem. I’m generous and I use KLuv as well, but I also get the spam… I don’t mind if people are going to use my site for backlinks, but for those who come by and leave those comments, i’m sure you’ve seen them, “great post!” or the ones that try to work on your ego “youre a great writer keep it up”.
Unless my visitors have something constructive to say or something of substance to leave on my blogs, they’re deleted instantly. Don’t try and abuse the generosity.
Mira from Contemporary Dining Chairs
The worst is when the spam filters don’t work. Then you are really left wondering how something which is purely spam managed to get past the system. Some deleting is definitely in order then.
Morgan - The Directory Link
Fortunately I always read the article on blogs/websites before I leave comment. If I have nothing to say about the post topic, I will not leave any comments. And I like to read someone else’s comments on that post too. Because I can find useful ideas from the good comments.
Captcha is a good way to prevent cheat bot or automatic commenting.
Alex from Blogging To Make Money
Glad I found someone who shares my passion on the topic. I think I wrote about 3 or 5 posts on my own blog that deals directly with comment spam.
Unfortunately spammers are getting smarter or outsource the process now to make it almost look natural.
Cheers!
Joe from Scarpe da ginnastica
I don’t know why people want to ruin such a good thing like keywordluv making spam comments. I always read the whole post and keep an eye on other comments too before commenting myself. In this way i have found some good blogs that now i follow beyond the purpose of getting links from them.
AA from Discount Airfares
I ended up turning off comments altogether on one of my blogs because it ended up on those dofollow lists.
I now have a link to tweet me if you want to comment on the post, and it actually works quite well.
Chris from Fur Clothing
I agree with Joe there is quite the blog list I now keep track of beyond the point of just getting some links back to my site. I always read through the article and comments to make sure that my comments add some meaningful discussion to the post. If some one is to be so kind as to use the plug-in “Keyword Luv” the least you could do for the blog owner is read their article and write up your thoughts about it. Anyways good read and keep up the good posts!
Olly from Cheap Electric Guitars
I have keywordluv on one onf my sites and the amount of people trying it on is unbelieveable at times.
It is a shame as it ruins it for other people.
Tracy from hair straighteners
I am using Keywordluv and Commentluv and really I did not see a increase in comment spam. Of course I was already getting a lot of the obvious spam and those are junked. But the generic spam went up only a little. For the most part many of them are at least trying to add something useful.
Lyn from eCommerce
Simon, people who use generic comments in their effort to spam, er, I mean “obtain meaningful backlinks” to their websites are shooting themselves in the foot anyway. Lame comments don’t add value to the page content, which is important. Lame comments reduce the value of their effort, because they reduce the value of the page information. If you want to get the most out of the page you are commenting on, you must add to the value via strong understanding and information. A good comment will also get your site more traffic because people are much more likely to click your link too. So why some people are always looking for the shortcut I don’t know. It seems like the people who do it right get better results. BTW, I like the article…
InstantSEO from Rom Machine
If user have no reward to comment why he comments so using keywordLuv benefit for both user & blog owner.
It’s prevent Actual spam using software. for hand posting user get reward i don’t think it’s bad.
Kasper from Søgemaskineoptimering
Nice – didn’t know about that plugin. Just googled it and found out how it works(i hope)
And i guess you’re right… The side-effects from a tool like this, could get pretty ugly, and i believe you need to seriously consider it, before you start using it.
Im new to this site.. just stumbled upon it.
Nice website, nice content.
I know you hate it, but i AM gonna bookmark AND return
Court from How To Make Money Online
Apparently it’s pretty difficult for people to understand that relationships can be mutually beneficial. I can leave a meaningful comment and add content and substance to one of your pages and you will give me a link in exchange.
There are too many takers out there and they aren’t willing to help people out. Take take take!
Melanie from Girl Blogger
Nice post. Will be back later.
KIDDING!
Seriously, though, my “favorite” is when they address you in this incredibly generic way -
“Nice site, webmaster!”
“Keep up the good work, blogger!”
It would actually be funny if I didn’t have to deal with hundreds a day across my blogs…
Jordan Pearce
Apparently several of my blogs ended up on some dofollow blogs lists. Comments range from “hi” to more prominent information. Sometimes the keywords are not even remotely close to the type of blog they are commenting on. I’m always grateful for traffic but it doesn’t help the commenter much if they are selling toasters and comment on an SEO blog. A name will do just fine. I’m constantly monitoring my comments now.
Also what Brandon said…’http://’ comments don’t make it to my sites. However a live link that is a valuable resource to readers has a better chance.
DVDs
Too right – quick comments like that don’t add anything to your site, so quite right to remove them.
Back links are important to websites so allowing DoFollow links on your blog, together with keywords in the anchor text, is a real service and will encourage a lot more people to contribute posts.
However, it is totally reasonable that you should expect the poster to spend a little time over the posts they make. It’s actually not usually that hard to think of something constructive to say as a comment to a post if you just read it in the first place and take a few minutes.
If you can’t think of something useful to say as a comment, then leave it. Find a post or blog where you can add some constructive comments instead.
Essential from Birmingham SEO Company
Yes, it is quite irritating when people just leave a comment like great post. I suppose is is intended to appeal to your ego?
We recently looked over a site that had 20 pages and the home page had a PR2 and the only other page that had PR was the links page!?!?!?
So leaves me thinking link luv works!
willem from kavel
Ive been commenting on a lot of blogs these days, for seo, I read the articles, i might be more work, but its more effective and most of the articles are intersting to read. I can imagine that its more work for you to keep all the spamm comments away. Thats why i like keywordluv to give something back to the commenters.
gagan from Miami SEO
Just remove the links from the name if the comment is not good . It would help in reducing some spam
Da brush from photoshop brushes
I don’t receive spam through my contact form, anyway I’m not using wordpress and I have a CAPTCHA code on my contact form.
Daniel
So, have you been keeping a tally of how many generic comments you’ve had for this post?
Simon
Too many already!
Greg Pritchard
I had a blog once with keyword luv. The PR was only 1 but still I had some serious spamming all the time. Had to give it up cause didn’t have the time to do all the moderation. Maybe that just happens to some. I guess it is niche related.
Anna from Drapey Toronto
I actually leave a lot of spam there in my blog comments.
If it actually contains your keywords, or related keywords, it’s just more content as far as the search engines are concerned!
Mike from PPC Kahuna Review
I hate the generic spam as much as you, but I find the blatant spam kind of interesting. If you search for example for “buy viagra” on google, you can see what web2.0 sites are ranking well for the term, and you can often use them as well for your own link building efforts. =)
Jeet from directory submission
Well, generic commentators are getting really crafty. Some of the examples that I frequently get on my blogs.
1. Great post, good work; now I know what you guys have been doing all this time.
2. I really liked your blog, you provide some really good information on this blog.
Some are really smart and copy paste comments that I have approved in past, they know it’s a comment I have approved before, it’s highly likely I would approve it again. They just steal someone else’s comment and post it.
Many don’t even bother to check their spellings
David from Outsourcing Sales
I really loathe people who try and take advantage of do follow blogs and contribute nothing. I do however also have a problem with many automated spam blockers on blogs. I can’t even tell you how many times i’ve spent the time to write out a relevant post that contributes to the blog only to get blocked by wp comments.
Savi
Well.. You’re totally Right, We as a bloggers, how to deal with massive spam nowdays.
Paul from SEO Company in Los Angeles
Been seeing this type of comments in my blog. At first, I want the deleting it but I get tired since they are too many. So I installed a spam blocker. Helps lessen my work. This the only thing that can stop spammers but still have “dofollow” blog.
willem from grindvloer reinigen
I mostly just delete the silly comments like: keep it up or nice work. those are the most obvious anoying comments, just to get a backlink.
Meric from Amerock Kitchen Knobs
I have noticed that comments increase as the page rank goes up on my site. Half of them are hi’s and nice blog. But some are very useful and I want to continue invite such comment.
Shane from Custom Wood Plaques
Nice post. I agree that while I really like the CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plug-ins, it really irritates me when someone makes a generic spam comment instead of taking all of 60 to 120 seconds to at least even skim the blog post and come up with a decent comment that adds some real text to the blog. Ironically, time would be better spent taking more time to skim everything – at least then you would get most of your links as opposed to most just being marked as junk.
Tom from Green Tea Benefits
I agree completely. I’m fed up with these generic comments that don’t add any value but I agree keywordluv (& commentluv) is a great way for both parties to win – you get a name and decent comment and the commenter gets a backlink with keyword text.
Kris from Make Money Free
Good post will bookmark. HA just kidding I to run a couple of no follow comments and understand that no matter what kind of do not spam or any other type of warning that you place every day you will wake up with a couple of comments that are pure spam. Thank you though for the attempt to let these people know how to get a comment actually published I find it quite difficult. Anyway good post on the war against spam I think I have a new post title.
Justin from Airsoft Rifles
I’m not going to lie, the primary reason I do blog commenting is for backlinks. If this was a nofollow blog, I would not be here. Why can I openly admit this? Although this is the truth, my comments are meaningful! I read the blog posts, think about them, and respond accordingly. Sometimes I forget I’m even doing this for backlinks. I hate generic comment spam! It’s alright to post for links, but write something meaningful, dammit. Is that so difficult?
jack from home depo
One thing they do not seem to realize it making so many comments that fast makes google think they are not natural links and can hurt them also. You never knoew what you will learn from the post let alone the comments sometimes people make some great points that could help you out and the people who do not read them loose out.
Shailendra from The Agra Indian
You are right Simon, spam comments are actually abuse to system and misuse of privileges. Spammer want to build back links with out doing any thing for this purpose they use automated system of spam commenting without contributing to discussion.
Kurtis from ottawa web design
To eliminate quite a few of them you could probably just develop a plugin that wouldn’t approve comments under a certain amount of characters, or would scan the comment against a pre-set list of words and try and buffer out spam. The big downside would be the returning of false positives though.
RT Cunningham from Acai Berry
Sorry, Simon, I couldn’t resist. Anyway, I found a good halfway point that takes more effort on the part of comment spammers to get worthwhile links. Consequently, the spam has been reduced by an incredible amount while those in the know can still get great backlinks. My latest “nofollow” post, which you already commented on, leaks it out if anyone takes the time to read the post.
tom from studentenkamers
ive heard u have some plugins for that, but most of em wont work properly for some reason :S takes a lot of time now to aprove al those comments?