The New Spam – How Do We Deal With It?
February 28, 2008
There’s 4 new breeds of spammer lurking on the Internet. But how do we spot these new types of spam? And how do we deal with it?
The Spammer Who Doesn’t Read: I was discussing this type of spammer with Barbara of Blogging Without A Blog the other day. We’ve noticed that some spammers will simply glance at the title of a blog post or article and leave long comments that are related in some way. But it’s obvious they’ve not actually read the original post. They just want to benefit from the inbound link, or the chance to have their post title noticed in CommentLuv. Pretty pointless isn’t it – as they’re just making themselves look stupid.
The Spammer With The Stupid Name: Most bloggers like to engage with their readers. But it’s difficult to have a conversation with someone who uses a keyword stuffed name, or the name of their website instead of a real one. Michael Martine has written an excellent post on keyword stuffing here. And I’m thinking of adopting his policy of deleting comments made by these keyword stuffers.
The One Liner Spammer: Ok, so one liners can be funny sometimes. But some people make a habit of zooming round blogs, making a one line comment on each one. All they ever leave is one line and you get so tired of seeing it. Now, I move the ones that simply say “great post” into the spam box immediately. But what do you do with the rest? When someone always leaves one line comments on your blog, is it time to say bye bye to their comments too?
The Keyword Stuffer: Some comment spammers stuff their comments with keywords they want to rank for in the search engines. And some go one step further.
I get a reasonable amount of traffic via searches for my own name – in various forms. But, a few days ago I searched my name and discovered that a comment spammer wanted to rank highly for my name too. So, he’d gone round various blogs and mentioned my name in several comments. Now, I find this type of spam really low and offensive.
Any type of comment spam is annoying. How do you deal with it on your blog? Do you ignore it, delete it, contact the spammer and let them know you’re onto them, ban the IP of persistent spammers? Or do you have other ways of dealing with them? Please share.
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20 Responses to “The New Spam – How Do We Deal With It?”
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I hope you don’t think of my sometimes one-liners as Spam *gulp*
I had a few people at some times that leave one comment where you think “huh”?
And a short while later another comment, where you know, ok a Spammer.
Those comments usually are completely unrelated to the post.
And most of them are even offensive and critical.
Pretty weird what’s going on out there.
The few that do that on my blog and which I know of that they are Spam, get instantly banned
The one liners and such, don’t have many of them, guess I don’t have enough traffic for that yet
Hi Nicole – no, I did have a particular commenter in mind, but it wasn’t you – as your comments vary in length.
The offensive ones are so annoying aren’t they. Sometimes you feel as though you should leave them up and reply, but part of you really wants to delete them.
If you use wordpress then the best plugin has to be akismet, this is a brilliant piece of software.
Regards.
jsanderz’s last blog post..11 More Essential Shortcuts
Hi Jeff – I really need to install that, but apparently you have to join Wordpress first. I don’t think Askimet deals with these four types of spammer so well though.
I’m so with you on this one, Catherine. While I do tend to be omnipresent in the comment section of multiple blogs, I make sure that if I’m going to leave a comment, it had better be valuable, add to the discussion, or respond to another commentator.
Commenting is an art. Really. Brushing up and practicing on the best comments takes some effort, and I wish more people put the effort in to make discussions worthwhile. Hopefully, everyone who reads this will!
Argh… still no Subscribe to Comments here… which makes adding to the ongoing discussion very difficult… tsk tsk
James Chartrand – Men with Pens’s last blog post..How to be Cool with Your Network Contacts
Guilty on two parts, I think, but not on purpose. I sometimes skim an article and leave a comment. I am a slow reader and to get through many of my blogs, I try to cut a few corners. I do try to make sure I understand what the person is saying before I comment, but sometimes I wonder if I’m out in left field.
As for the name, sometimes I use my name Deb at my blog name. I started doing this not so much to get the traffic, but to set myself apart. There are a lot of Debs out there. I have one blog I visit that has at least 2 other Debs that comment. On my blogger profile I am Deb in OPKS so I could start using the same in Wordpress comments. What do you think? I apoligize if I have offended anyone.
As for keyword stuffing, I wouldn’t know how to do that if I tried.
And as you can see, I’m incapable of a one-liner.
I have received some comments that seemed like spam. I’ve recently started participating in Wordless Wednesday and I’ve had some people drop by just so they could leave their link, but they don’t seem to be visiting the rest of the week. I had one woman tell me to stop by to participate in her contest give-away. I go ahead and publish the comments because they aren’t overly offensive, just annoying and they increase my comment count. I don’t get a lot of traffic right now so for me any comment makes me happy. However, I’m sure I may change my mind in the future and may handle things differently.
Deb’s last blog post..Wordless Wednesday – The Demise of Frosty
Hi Deb – I think many people do skim through some parts of a long article – especially if it’s not an easy read. But, some people don’t read it at all, which is bad.
I don’t particularly mind the use of the persons name and the blog name, but I know some bloggers do have a problem with it. My name is my blog name, which is why I often use CatherineL instead.
The keyword stuffing thing in comments goes a bit like this. They will often use a keyword or phrase that’s not really related to the main post – then write a comment which contains that phrase several times. Eg. If the phrase was email marketing – they’d use that phrase several times in the comment – even if the post wasn’t actually about email marketing.
Like you – when I first started blogging, I had problems differentiating the spam from the real comments and was just happy to get a comment too. But, you get wise to it eventually.
cathlawson’s last blog post..The New Spam – How Do We Deal With It?
Re askimet, as I understand it, it shares info about spammers so if enough people mark the spammer out as a spammer then it will start to recognise them. I’m certainly glad I use it.
As for the rest, I delete anything that doesn’t add to the conversation and I change keyword stuffed names. If the person using a keyword stuffed name posts several good comments then I’ll email them asking them to use their name rather than keywords – some of these people are now good regular commentors.
John’s last blog post..Starting A Business While A Teenager
@Nicole, on my blog anyway, I’m fine with one-liners from people I “know.” But if it’s the first comment and it’s just “Great post!” or “Great blog!” away it goes!
Hi Mrs M – That’s what I tend to do too. But, what do you do when someone comments regularly and every comment is just one line?
Hi John – Emailing those who use the keywords instead of their name and asking them to use their real name instead is a good idea. I might try that one.
I actually left the last two of one of them guys there, because I already replied to the first one until I got the idea.
What gets me wondering are trackbacks.
What good does a trackback do someone when there is no site to lead to?
And how do they find posts anyway?
Maybe one of these days you can enlighten me, Catherine
@Micah
I usually check the web address. When it sounds like a normal address I check the blog / Site.
Sometimes I leave a comment as well and see what happens or I simply ignore the whole thing.
Hi Nicole – I haven’t noticed trackbacks before with no site to link to, so I’m not sure.
But, I have had ones before where they’ll put “their keyword” wrote this and I delete those. I suppose they are trying to make it look like they have a reciprocal link for their keyword.
It is all very shady and they always seem to be inventing new ways to get away with it.
This isn’t something I’ve really had to deal with yet. Old school spammers, yes, but not what we’re talking about here.
My first comment ever had a keyword-stuffed name. It was a one-liner, but it was a reasonable comment, not something like “great post.” And then, apparently noticing that I had only written two posts total, he left another one-liner to welcome me to the blogging world. In that particular case, I thought it was fine, and I was thrilled to get some comments. Other than that, I haven’t had any one-line comments or keyword-stuffed names, though I can see how it would get annoying.
Hunter Nuttall’s last blog post..Free Ebook: The Zen Of Blogging
Hi Hunter – the trouble is, the more traffic you get – the more spammers you get too. And they are annoying – I wish I could shoot them (joking – sort of).
Hi Catherine,
Thank you for the link.
With regard to skimming, I will sometimes skim an article to see if I want to comment. If I feel I have something of value to add, I will wait until I have time to read the whole post, and then go back and comment.
Extremely long posts are sometimes overwhelming, but I feel if the author took the time to write it, if it’s a subject I’m interested in, than I will take the time to read it.
Barbara’s last blog post..Why Wait – Blog For Dollars Now
Hi Barbara – I sometimes skim to see if I want to read first too. And like you, I wouldn’t comment without reading it all first – it just seems pointless.
Hi Catherine,
I don’t foresee spammers getting a life and be respectful of others — that would be too ethical and morally upstanding!
Who else would we gripe about?
In any case, I have found Askimet to work quite well.
You do need to sign up on Wordpress.com to get the “api-key” needed to activate the plug-in. Here’s the page explaining it:
http://wordpress.com/api-keys/
Pretty painless.
As to what I do with spam comments, I just delete them.
Nez’s last blog post..PLR Articles, the Microstock of Written Content
hey
so far I’ve only had one kind of spammer and boy is it annoying- I would get many comments stuffed with adult entertainment stuff
askimet I believe catches them- but it just annoys me that I get them at all and have to manually delete them
I am careful to not leave one line comments that are super generic and provide nothing. If you have nothing to say, say nothing at all
I agree with Barbara – some posts are long so I do skim them. Somehow, I’m one of those wordy bloggers who says a whole lotta something on her posts. I totally get the need to skim to see if you catch anything interesting in particular before dedicating time into reading and responding.
That said – I always thinks it looks very silly when someone replies to a title and skip reading altogether
Always.
JEMi @ InMyHeels’s last blog post..Uninhibited: 10 Ways to Set Yourself Free (Part 1)
[...] 9) Do not “spam” another blogger or blog, . Overusing the name of another blogger in comments and/or posts is often considered “content” or “comment spam”. For more great reading on blog spam, read a great article written by Catherine, titled: “The New Spam – How Do We Deal With It” [...]