Comments on: I WILL mark your comments as SPAM!

By: Tom B.

Tom B. — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:34:01 +0000

Hi, I think you will certainly scare away many “manual” spammers with this message, because once you get in the Akismet spammers list, you are not able to comment anything at all anymore, I had this bad experience already(I have a post about it in my blog).
By the way, if you do not allow using keywords in your name, that means people are promoting their name as a Keyword - we have somehow promoted one name to google’s top pages. Oh, and the solution to that could be Keyword Luv plugin, which allows commentators to use keywords and their name separately.

By: Mitch Argon

Mitch Argon — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:47:02 +0000

I am fairly new to blogging and I am amazed to see how much of this landscape has been altered with the dofollow/nofollow scene.

By the way, what is the “acceptable” format for a name - just the first and last name? I do see keywords inserted for names - are all of these posts spammers?

Any help from those of you with more experience is appreciated.

By: Nathan Rice

Nathan Rice — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:49:19 +0000

iDope,

Rob is correct, we’re not talking about spam comments … akismet does a good job of catching those.

We’re talking about actual humans, doing their research to find do-follow blogs, adding a moderately on-topic comment, leaving a link to a site you’re trying to get backlinks to with the anchor text I want to rank for.

Dofollow encourages this kind of thing. And akismet/capitcha won’t catch it (neither will your plugin, I suspect).

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:39:17 +0000

iDope, I think you’re missing a key point….

we’re not talking about the automated garbage that the likes of Akismet or Captcha is going to work….these are obviously comments left by human beings, though shallow (add little to the conversation, but are very loosely related to the content of the post) and with obvious SEO type anchor text put in the name field.

By: iDope

iDope — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:56:39 +0000

Nathan,

Do you think spammers care if you add nofollow to your blogs? You understand that it is all automated and costs them next to nothing, right? If they don’t get PR from your links they still might get a couple of clicks. Even if they get nothing why would they spend their time to filter out your blog from their list, it only takes them a fraction of a second to post. Comment spam is hardly different from its email cousin. Its a matter of numbers.

nofollow does not solve anything. It only disturbs natural linking and punishes your genuine commenters.

You’d be better off using a plugin (preferably that doesnt require captchas) to fight spam. You can checkout a plugin that I wrote http://wordpresssupplies.com/wordpress-plugins/captcha-free/ (shameless plug ). This doesn’t replace Akismet but does complement it very well. Let me know if you try it.

By: Nathan Rice

Nathan Rice — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:02:19 +0000

Solution: no-follow.

I don’t mean to be a cynic, but if I were a ~~spammer~~ SEO expert looking to up my ranking or the rankings of a client, the first thing I would do after setting up the website would be to find a long list of blogs that do-follow. Then I’d add somewhat meaningful/beneficial comments to posts, including the keyword I want to rank for and the url I’m trying to promote.

I could easily get between 100-200 quality do-follow backlinks a day doing this.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re on a do-follow list somewhere, you have a giant bullseye on your blog too.

IMHO, do-follow is no good if you’re a blogger. If you’re looking to up your SE rankings, do-follow is a godsend.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:53:11 +0000

@Dave, I don’t know about anybody else, but as for me…if you leave a “legit” comment, I’ll approve it…I don’t care what you put as the name (provided it’s not rude or offensive).

By: Dave C.

Dave C. — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:22:03 +0000

@Rob - That seems completely reasonable. I can understand why that person would get marked as SPAM, but what if I wrote my last post or this one and signed it Backfire Blog instead of Dave C.? Am I a spammer or am I just using my branding?

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:29:56 +0000

Dave C. - I can tell you what I do on *my* blog to make the distinction.

If someone were to leave a comment on this particular article along the lines of:

“Great post! I agree that SPAM comments are a problem, something should be done.” And the “name” put in the comments field was “Replica Watches - Cheap”.

It’s obvious that a real person left this comment…it vaguely mentions the post, but come on…it’s so obvious that this is spam. It adds nothing to the discussion whatsoever and it’s obviously intended to just get a backlink.

Akismet is not catching those types of comments and it’s starting to take a lot of time to parse through these…

By: Dave C.

Dave C. — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:24:09 +0000

This is my first comment post, so bear with me. I came over from Michael Martine’s site and although I understand the need to curb this before I becomes a real problem, I’m confused about what is acceptable. If I had signed my post with The Backfire Blog, the name of my site, would that cause me to be marked as spam, or am I just using my brand?

I think Michael has a slightly different take on this. He seems to be taking a zero tolerance stance on the issue, which is fine. It’s his blog and he can do what he wants, but if you have a commentator that comments often using a set signature style, in the name of the “community”, do you as the blog owner have a certain responsibility to let them participate in that manner?

I don’t really know the answer to that. I’m just tossing out the philosophical question.