Today I received a comment on my blog that looked fairly legitimate. Just so you know I’d say 95% plus of comments I receive on my blogs are from spammers attempting to place a link to their site in some way. Often the link is not obvious. The following comment was posted on my Australian English dictionary blog today.
“Hi there! Have you ever dealt such a situation when a person has robbed you online and took your personal ideas? Can't wait to see your answer. “ by Nicole the writer.
Had I accepted the comment this would have linked to a site which is a WordPress blog. The articles on the blog look legitimate. There are no contact details on the blog titled “Silly Secrets”. No name, nothing. As best I can tell this blog has ads provided by WordPress and it would appear the only purpose is to get people to the site in the hope they click on ads, which in turn generates income for the creator of the blog. The problem here is the blog spam this person is generating only exists because WordPress provides a mechanism for the spammer to make money.
I’m more than happy to receive legitimate comments, but filling up other peoples’ blogs with irrelevant comments is equivalent to spamming people. Spamming is general illegal but at this stage there appears to be no mechanism to stop blog spamming. If WordPress cut out the source of revenue for these spammers their activities would soon cease.
It should be kept in mind blog spammers could have a range of reasons to put links on your site. It could be as simple as trying to make money, to redirecting people to phishing and other malicious sites.
To protect your users and your reputation you can do the following:
1. Don’t automatically release comments on your blog.
2. Review each comment.
3. Some comments look very legitimate and it can be hard to identify spammers but you should make the effort.
4. Often blog spammers put a link in the body of the comment.
5. Often blog spammers use their blog profile link which is a link to another site and this link is often not apparent in the comment you see. It only becomes apparent if you look for it using the blogging software or check the comment on your blog after you release the comment.
6. Search Google for a short section of text to see if the same or similar comment has appeared in another blog. Keep in mind spammers use software known as spinners. Spinners automatically generate blog spam by replacing words automatically so the same basic sentence or paragraph is automatically changed to use different words. In this case the first search I used was too long and yielded no results. Then I searched for “took your personal ideas” and found another entry the same on a different blog. A quick check using a search engine will often reveal that most comments you’re receiving are blog spam.
In the past I’ve seen the same comment on tens of thousands of blogs and every day I receive dozens of blog comments which are spam.
Some people when they set up a blog are happy to start receiving comments. The first comments are often compliments and so they accept it. But using compliments is a common technique used by blog spammers. We all love praise, but as they say, false praise is no praise at all.
Take the time to review comments. It does take effort, but the end result is you’ll have a higher quality blog which others will read and trust. When I see blog spam in a blog I visit, the message I get is the owner of the blog doesn’t really care and personally I’d prefer to do business with someone who cares.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for computer support.
Servicing Doncaster, Templestowe, Eltham and the surrounding area.
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