All irritation at being notified of new comment spam is equal, but the amusements to be found in some spams are more equal than others:
The last time I wrote about comment spam was in April, when I received maybe five to ten such submissions per week. In the final months of 2008 that number is up to something like five to ten per day. There’s no good reason why this should be — as you may have noticed, the second half of the year has been observably less bloggy than the first, and notwithstanding a few spiky links from big traffic-drivers, the daily visitor count has been at best unpromising. So why the surge?
My guess is that unsophisticated pliers of the trade have become a little more sophisticated, and so must be trying — and failing — more often and in greater numbers. I don’t think these are the Russo-Turkic schemers akin to Jonathan Franzen’s Gitanas Misevicius. Much of that, I believe, now defaults to spam filters.
Instead, these comments make it all the way to the moderation queue and seem to come from native English-speakers who have a website to promote, know a little bit about how search engines work, and aim to elevate the PageRank of their meager obsessions (or unwitting clients) in the sections of a blog they found on Google or Technorati. My blog, in fact.
And sometimes they come back. Earlier today, an algorithmic process denied a now-deleted comment access to my latest post, about the Phillips Foundation’s Journalism Fellowship Program. It went something like:
Grants to become a journalist, what’s next, grants to become a lawyer?
Not exactly a constructive comment, but snarky enough to wave through… except for the business e-mail account and URL of said business pasted into the address field. And the business? A Welsh company selling organic meat (a tautology, if you ask me) on the open Interwebs.
I hadn’t even noticed it until I received an angry e-mail from the bon mot’s possessive owner, someone whom I’d wager fits the above description. In the interests of unusually equal amusement, here’s the e-mail exchange in full:
In retrospect, I believe he was genuinely confused by the phrase “SEO strategy” — after all, if he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have left a comment in the first place.
P.S. And to my erstwhile correspondent: If you leave a comment this time, what the heck: I’ll give you one free non-piscatory fish out of the Akismet spam filter.
Update: In case you’re wondering, “I love reading Blog P.I. because…” is the default opening line if you start from the Contact page. And speaking of defaults, I wish WordPress wouldn’t promise that the “blog admin … will be able to restore it immediately.” I’ll decide when I’m able to restore it.
N.B. The title is a reference to DeLillo’s Most Photographed Barn in America. Beyond the explicit nod to “The Corrections”, I count at least three more literary references that I swear were not premeditated.
How much do you love the fact that the first trackback on this post is to an SEO blog scraping content? This one can’t be called spam, I don’t think — no Adsense — but it sure is pointless.
What I don’t love is that it was approved without my approval, so once again the latest version of WordPress fails me. A revamp of Blog P.I. is in the works, and I promise this will be one of the first things I deal with.
That’s a riot. I have a tech website, but I haven’t had the issue with comment spam yet. I’ve found Akismet for Wordpress to work quite well. The false-positive rate is very low and it doesn’t let much junk through at all.
Hi,
I was just wondering… Maybe he was actually innocent about it?
But it’s amazing to think that some folks invest their time to add ‘useless’ comments on great blogs for the purpose of SEO…
Also one thing you could consider is called reKapcha (?) I believe. Looked great to use to stop comment spam.
Found their link:
http://recaptcha.net/plugins/wordpress/
Thanks :)
Martin
Spams are pretty irritating at times. This is an interesting post. Thanks for sharing. Hope to see your new updates soon.
I am wondering , how you decide which one of the comments is spam. I mean, If it is a blog which scrapes off seo content and doesnt have adsense, then it is not spam? Even if the comment doesn’t mean anything?
Or maybe, if it is a meaningful comment and links to a blog which contains adsense , then will it still be called spam.
Anyways, I think akismet plugin is the best for this. I have found quite a few worthless ads as comments, which I rejected as soon as I saw them.
Ever since I activated Akismet on my wordpress blog, Ive cut the spam down to almost 100%. It was getting crazy there for a while.
Hahaha.. it is funny to read your conversation with that guy.
Somehow, ho many spam commments to your blog indicates that your blog become more famous and got more visitors.
well, congratulation then…!
BTW I use simple captcha plugin to help me with spam on my comments.
Askimets certainly makes life easier for every blogger. In my opinion its one of the best plugins available for wordpress.
@Arunabh: I Totally agree with you. Akismet is the best wordpress plugin for any wordpress-based blog.
@William: Thanks man, this is very nice posts. SPAM is very irritating..
I’m not a big-time blogger but I have had some stupid spam comments that actually made no sense, just a bunch of gibberish with some links thrown in. I presume this must be some type of automated software? Anyway, I not only put Askimet into effect but I also just started using reCAPTCHA WordPress Plugin to see how effective it will be. If my blog does grow I don’t want to end up spending most of my time trying to sort through a pile of comments. Maybe I’ll eventually turn them right off if it gets worse.