With names such as SEO Forum, SEO Outsourcing, and Herbalife, it is pathetic that despite clear instructions that real names are required when adding comments, people continue to leave comments with their company names or other search engine optimized keywords.
I wonder if these people are following a manual when commenting. Do this, do that. I also muse if human beings are commenting at all or if sophisticated robotic scripts are doing the work.
My comment review process is simple:
No real name, no approved comment.
Any questions?
About Ari Herzog
You need to understand that those spam comments are actually made with automated programs such as scrapebox and the person using it will simply write a comment that will be posted on hundreds of thousands blogs at once.
Imagine this : your blog is among 1000 blogs that the spammer will blast with a single comment. From those 1000 blogs if it get’s approved by 10 blogs, the spammer is at gain because even if the link is nofollow, at least 1 person from those 10 blogs will click on the link from his name in the comment. That means extra unique visitor.
That is how it works and how it always worked regardless of your blog rules. Rules don’t apply to spammers.
Just disregard your spam folder and empty it periodically. Akismet is a plus also.
Another reason for huge amount of spam is because keywordluv and commentluv because most spammers know these will be dofollow blogs.
Rules don’t apply to anyone — if nobody knows the rules exist.
This is why we have law enforcement.
Are things looking any better Ari now, after Google has taken a bold approach towards spam commenting? Did you see any reduction in the number of spammers after Panda update?
I still get oodles of spam. But it all goes into a moderation queue.
Look it’s my real name! I know how you feel there is nothing worse than people commenting who don’t really care about what you have to say. It is like when you talk to someone and they only want you to hear what they have to say.
I don’t mind talking to someone who wants to rant.
It’s worse when that person wants me to say something and once I say it doesn’t care for the rest of what I say.
yes i totally agree with u ari … people should use real names to comment
I am starting to get a lot of these comments. Do you find they target the same page? According to my analytics program these pages are not been viewed but are been commented on it just confuses me!!!
Gues sit is as someone else said an automated program cycling through proxies but I agree it is very frustrating.
I doubt that of those comments were done my hand. Most of them are bots that look for do-follow blogs and have an automated response.
The most important in commenting is sincere and related about topic.. Not just leave the backlink..
Heh, it happens. Carry on.
BTW, I hope my name’s real enough despite being a shortened version.
Your name can be anything you want. As long as it appears real.
Ari, I use my real name, I think my comment can be published here.. lol!Between, I believe these spammers are using auto blog commenting software to spam everywhere. Perhaps they don\’t know this can ruin their reputation and it won\’t help in term of SEO too. This kind of comment can\’t be disappeared no matter where you go.
(It’s weird, I use my real name “Lee Ka Hoong” and the error shows that my name is too long, lol!)
Hey Ari, if your blog is listed by some bloggers as a potential place to throw their blog spam then your quite prone to it. Do take care of this as it ruins the hard-work behind a blog which is already performing nice. You can correlate this with Google’s new update of penalizing private blog networks. They might run similar ban thing against such lists.
After all it doesn’t not create an ethical understanding before a genuine user.
Ah spaming is the most disgusting think on internet
just to get backlink, bloggers do hell lot of thing but more often they provoke you and you cannot be lenient with them.
At the end of the day, this is something we’ve to bear. This is something that’s inevitable. Though there are some plugins(only if you are ready to add few more plugins to your already over-growing plugins lists) which can prevent SPAM comments. Either use some captcha plugins or remove that website text field from the comment box. No Back-link, no spam. Hehe
Real names are considered real comments.
I don’t know..if i totally agree. Obviously the bots are annoying but i think if the post is valid then sure why not. I do agree that it has become abusive to comment spam. if you ask me it depends if it post even has anything to do with the article. for example im linking to a site of mine but if my post was about coffee and not the article topic then def….DELETE!
I agree. If the commenter has obviously read the article and has made an intelligent comment, then why not leave it. The person went through the trouble of reading your page and writing an intelligent comment, they should get the link.
However, if you see a generic comment with no real value DELETE. I hate comments that say stuff like “great post” or “nice site”. Or even those that try to be cutesy and say “Hey, I was passing by and this didn’t work in XYZ browser.”
A spam comment is a spam comment no matter how you dress it up. But if it is a legit comment that adds to the conversation, then you should leave it up.
I’m seeing this more and more each day on my websites. Frustrating
Hi Ari,
but I think by the time all robots will be awared by this rule.
I understand that it’s really annoying for you to saw a message without real name because you already made a post on it and no doubt these commentors look like robots
I also dont like such types of spammy comments and I mostly found these types of comments with username related to seo or Herbalife. Ari, you can’t believe, Herbalife spammy comments annoyed me almost for a year.
Remember that dude that threw that shoe at bush?
You can’t blame somebody for trying. The real name or don’t come here thing I don’t know about. There’s other ways. Using your real name can have unexpected consequences. People are getting fired for twitter posts.
I have one spam site that drives me crazy commenting on my where to buy quinoa site. Each comment begins by telling me that I am ranking very poorly for my targeted keywords in Google when I am consistently 1st or 2nd place for dozens of targeted keywords. I want to force them to acknowledge their mistake, but they don’t care about me and aren’t worth the energy.
I’d call them idjits but that might offend someone who is kinder and wiser than those spammers.
Spam has hit my blog too. I have found myself removing comments, usually two spams at a time. Spamming seems like such a waste of time when a real comment would only take another minute
It only means those comments are bot ‘cos they do not know the rules.
Awwww… the never ending fight. Although in Hawaii, we love spam (the edible kind), I’m tired of moderating a ton of crap out of the comments on my blog just to get to real ones. Grrrr….
Hello. I agree with your position. We have same problem at our facebook web page and it´s disturbs a lot. (Sorry, my english isn´t too good to comment more about).
I hope to not be in your blog spam. I actually do want to add to conversations and such. I think that the fact that you are calling people out on this is way awesome and should be done by somebody.
I do not even know who is guilty here – spammers are spamming because they follow their SEO mentors advice but they could not spam if there is not a backlink software like Scrapebox or Tua Mamma. Everybody wants to make more money. There are many unanswered questions, if it would be very clear spamming is really bad for SEO then nobody would do comment spam but sometimes spammer gets deindexed by Google, sometimes they are ranking well… So it is a little bit Googles fault too. At least there is Akismet that is making really good work protecting blog from spam.
Hi Ari
Yes you are right people should use their real name . I think there should be a way to know that one is using his real name or else….
Ha.. this is hilarious! You have just written all about how you are getting comment spam, and here are like 50 more comments spammed at you! haha.. I really like Rashan’s comment ” I definitely savored every little bit of it.” What rubbish! He so didn’t! haha.. have a good one mate..
Unfortunately I am seeing the same on my blog and I have to agree with others here in saying that most of it is probably not human, it’s algorithms running 24 hours a day. I guess the automated process banks on some comments sticking and it’s a numbers game that the robot can use to it’s advantage by posting millions of comments a day on millions of different sites. A bit like spam email, it’s annoying but I don’t see any immediate solutions other than recognizing it and trashing it.
haha, we’re not all spam and robotic scripts
, but I know how you feel, today it’s hard to know the differences between script and a real human.
I’m first time here but will be back, bookmarked it
I got a lot of spam on my blog too. I woke up to find 23 spam pingbacks to 23 posts all coming from the same domain. When I checked the url, the page was down. It seems like the spammer got kicked off his own server.
People will always try to get something for nothing Ari, we just have to keep fighting the spam
We get a fair few similar comments over at Technology Bloggers, which I hasten to add are deleted very swiftly.
When people leave comments using names other than their real name, think of it as spam. Most people want to use it to sell affiliate things like colon cleanse etc. I think there has to be some sort of rule where only real names should be allowed.
now a days comment spam is increased and some days above my site also trapped in comment spam.
I’m also having some problems about this kind of spammers, i think they are suing softwares. they should really stop this because it really make my hind ache everytime.
I have the same policy when it comes to approving comments on my blog. I just hate spam. They may not realize it but these spammers take us away from getting more work done!
We really can’t avoid these type of people. All we need to is just disable auto approve. The bad side of Web 2.0. :c
Truly spammers are within the air of commenting in blogs. They have simple goal and that is to intentionally leave and planted their link even if they have irrelevant comment. Having your own commenting policy on your niche with the help of plug-in feature would do help eliminate those spammers.
I am really happy with your comment review as spamming on blog comments are really increased. So what about this method using CommentLuv with “Name@Keywords”? Any suggestion highly appreciated. Thanks for the post Ari.
What happened to ‘to each his own’? If someone doesn’t want to use his or her real name here, well, that’s their prerogative, right? But I can understand why you would want to put this sort of a restriction, the spam on my blogs has been getting out of control lately. Wouldnt advise you to automatically assume that all non-name content is spam.
If there is an explicit request to write a real name and a comment writer does not include that name, it’s very fair to assume the person is a spammer, no?
Hi Ari,
Like you I sit back and wonder where these comments come from. There must be an element of human interaction in order to set up the process.
Do people really think that these comments will actually be approved, that somebody will actually click on the link to learn more?
The only thing these comments are useful is for having a laugh.
James
I think it’s plain simple: blog commenting is very efficient for ranking better in search engines, therefore these spammers just post general comments on every dofollow blog they can find. That is why, if the success rate is above 50%, they just don’t care about anything else. It’s sad but this is how things go these days.
Since I know you are moderating this, I know you may or may not post it, but I just wanted to say that a possible reason for the salesy spam is because your (old?) site appears on this site: hxxp://dofollow.info/tag/keywordluv/ (i made the link non-working with the xx). The listing there specifically states that your blog uses KeywordLuv and allows keywords which, according to the rules on that site, are allowed in the name and body of the comment.
In all honesty, I found this blog while going through that site’s list. At any rate, I’m glad I found this blog, as I am finding it quite useful. I’ve subscribed via email, and definitely look forward to reading your posts. I will be contacting the other site owner to let them know your rules have changed. Thanks!
It is sad that they are just using comments for links and unnecessary purposes. This is why Google is really mad about spamming. It\’s a good thing that most of bloggers today has an idea about spamming. It would really help them avoid spam schemes.
Kyle: I understand what you and the others who commented after you are saying about the spam and using the dofollow blogs only for links, and – unfortunately – you are right. On the other hand, when KeywordLuv and CommentLuv are used, it is generally safe to assume that using the blog for links is allowed, otherwise, why would the blog owner offer such commenting abilities? At least that’s spam mentality, and spammers rarely read commenting policies and because people like that tend to take advantage of a good thing, with the good thing here being a link to their website, people like me who use links legitimately,and truly interact in the discussion get a bad rap. I only ever comment on a blog that I can truly enjoy reading and intend to continue reading – not just for the links, but for personal satisfaction. Yes, of course the do follow links help, but you will never ever find me BS commenting just for the sake of a link.
Neil: Commenters who use blogs for dofollow links are not always trying to sell stuff. In fact, many blogs and websites leaving links aren’t selling anything, but are using Adsense and know that comment links get a site ranked better, which gets more traffic to the site, which means a better probability that someone will click the ads. The ads relate to the specific advertisers selling stuff for the most part.
Sajith: Akismet is good as a spam filter, but its not free. Probably the best thing you can do filter them using moderation and blacklisting. Hover over the Settings option, then click Discussion. On that page you have the option of adding any word, phrase, IP or email address to the Comment Moderation option or Comment Blacklist option (get the information from the comment page, copy the info from the comment author info and transfer it to this page). Adding to the blacklist sends future comments with those phrases or ip addresses to spam and adding to the comment moderation holds future comments containing those phrases or addresses for moderation. So, for example, if you add “WordPress” to the blacklist future comments with the word WordPress are sent to spam, even if that poster has approved comments or your automatic comment acceptance is turned on. However, because of the way the blacklist and moderation work, you will have to go through your spam to make sure it didn’t spam a legitimate comment.
So This is my real name and I guess I am approved.. You know sites with comment love plugin is abused for backlinks.. Thanks and regards.
It’s a nice policy to avoid spammers but can’t completely avoid them.
It blows me away why people would spam.No one in their right mind will by from these people so what is the point?
I think that it is the same for most things to do with the internet; you have to provide interesting original interaction with your prospective clients. If you give value and interesting value they will come to respect and trust you.
Ha… haa… I thought it. Most of those comments are coming through automated spam software. I am also getting more than 70-80 spam comments per day. It is horrible to delete one by one. Do anyone know any good spam filter for wordpress? When I was blogging on blogger there was no such problems. No spam comments at all. What to do, this is wordpress..!!!
The reality is is spamming is here to stay, plus commentluv is now seen as a good source of quality links so inevitably more people will be spamming these sites.
Great post – And yes , Unformulated any good blog has to deal with a good load of spam as well. Even if it is only spammy link building (Comments), Its one of those day to day activities that not many people look forward to but comment moderation is a definite must! Well done , thanks for sharing the great post. And good luck with your spam – Don’t let it get the best of you….
Is it just me or has blog spamming intensified over the past couple weeks? I’ve been bombarded with spam on my old blog (it’s not even updated anymore), and I’ve seen quite a few angry posts related to spam across the blogosphere lately. In fact, quite a few of my own comments have triggered spam filters (I’ve been getting automated messages that my comments appear to be spam and won’t be posted). One particular blog, of which I was a more or less regular reader, and an occasional commentator, seems to have banned me altogether from accessing the blog earlier today. I abide by the rules, stay respectful and on topic…and bam- banned. What for?
I actually suspect that it may have something to do with my name- Olya. It’s my real name, but perhaps it’s too unusual that someone takes it to be spammy? LOL…after all, this problem certainly never happened when I wrote under an alias.
There are tons of new auto-commenting software coming out on the market these days for SEO purposes. And it really works too. So, I guess you can’t really blame people for doing all they can to win the game. Google needs to shape up as well, I guess.