I’m sure the folks at New York-based JKAhosting.com don’t know what’s going on around the blogopshere, so they and other companies should pay attention to a series of blog comments I’ve received in recent days — that are identical to the following screenshot:
If the text is too small, you may click the image to zoom.
See the blue-colored link in the third sentence? That points to JKAhosting’s website, advertising their web hosting rates.
But the company didn’t post the comment. The person behind the following email address is the culprit:
Search for that IP address and you’ll see it’s a known spammer. Google the email address, and it’s similarly ubiquitous.
The comment is not unique to this blog, either.
Upon searching the web for results matching the first sentence, you will notice two identical comments, here and here.
Anyone can write any comment about your company. Unless you’re running Google Alerts or similar metrical analyses to monitor your brand online, you’ll never know if someone writes a comment with your name or linking to your URL.
The above comment puts the company in a positive light. Why the spam comment was written is unknown to me; maybe the company is a front. But what if the company is legit and someone writes a malicious comment? Think about it. Run those alerts and protect your brand.
About Ari Herzog
This is sad. I mean, anyone can just write a spam comment and use my blog info and even name, without my knowledge. Good thing there are those alert systems around to use.
That’s an unusual place to submit articles!
I’d say that JKAHosting.com have employed a low-cost outsourced link building service without considering how much this might negatively impact their reputation. This is an important lesson – if you’re going to employ outsourcers, you need to know exactly what they’re doing on your behalf!
It looks like a low quality link building attempt. Branding has not been considered at all. This one looks like a manual cut and paste job. Considering the fact that it points to a call to action page (hosting rates), it is definitely done with the company’s knowledge. A spammer would’nt go to the trouble of picking a specific page like that.
Very true Ari, brand is everything.
I have been worried before about people using my name and URL to comment. This can have really negative impacts on your website, as like you have done here, people can highlight this and destroy your brand name.
Spam is sad, and I hate it. No more to be said.
Thanks Ari
I agree with Jane. What probably happened is the company hired someone to do SEO for them, and well, the rest is history.
Spam commenting is beyond me in terms of understanding. I get the intent and I get the desired goal, but the process is just so ridiculous. I’m surprised so many “companies” are still using that as an SEO technique.
Anyway, cheers, Ari. I like your blog.
Tia
Yep definitely hired some under-achieving SEO firm who blasted a bunch of articles/comments out probably using some piece of software they thought might help. I don’t think it will be all too helpful for them.
And great tip about Google Alerts, too. I get use it for all my important names and although I don’t usually find anything out of the ordinary, it’s nice to know it when there is something!
Hi Ari,
They’re employing typical spammers – but it IS true that any company or blog could have their reputation tarnished by someone who spams in their name. That spammer is hitting blogs I manage too.
I just started seriously using the blacklist function in WordPress. I’ll know soon whether that is of any use or not.
Lol. Ain’t denying the fact that Google Alerts is the sh*t. I’ve managed to keep track of scrapers, mentions etc through its’ use
Reading it gave me a headache lol – brain couldn’t keep up with all of the randomly chosen words, phrases and paragraphs in the comment! Ridiculous that people think that will a) get approved or b) last for more than a day if auto-approved!
This is why I’ve always been scared of hiring anyone to build links to my sites. If you get it wrong and hire someone who does this type of thing, you risk having your site blacklisted or banned by blogs, and also possibly some kind of penalty from search engines.
I vaguely recall hearing about Google Alerts before but thought it was only for monitoring news stories – never realised it can send you details of new web pages too. I may play around with it a bit after reading this and see what it sends me for a few things I’m interested in.