Comment Spam, Do Follow, Keyword Names, and You
September 3, 2008 by Lillie
I’m pleased with the number of insightful comments this blog gets, and I appreciate comments from diverse readers from around the world.
As my comment policy specifies, first-time comments are moderated; after the first comment is approved, future comments from that person are not subject to moderation. In theory, at least. Recently Akismet, which generally does an excellent job of catching spam and not blocking legitimate comments, has blocked comments from regular commenters. I usually delete spam comments without looking at them, so it’s possible that some valuable comments have slipped through and been deleted. If you have commented before and your comment doesn’t appear immediately, e-mail me.
If you haven’t commented before, your comment won’t appear until I have approved it. If your comment hasn’t appeared within 24 hours, you can contact me.
However, if you leave a comment that says “great post,” “now there are more reasons than ever to comment,” or any other comment that doesn’t even indicate you’ve read the post, expect it to be deleted. The first time, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and delete the comment; if it happens again, the comment will be marked spam and any other comments you leave will go into spam.
This blog is a Do Follow blog, which encourages comments. It also attracts spammers. If you come here to comment because you want a link that search engines will follow, I’m happy to have you … IF you read the post before you comment and leave a comment that says something. If the comment is so generic it doesn’t relate to the post … that’s a different story.
The most egregious case of inappropriate commenting started with a comment I approved. The comment related to the post, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary so I approved it. The next day that person left about 15 comments—all of which posted immediately because the previous comment had been approved. The first comment I read sounded familiar so I read through all the comments on that post, only to discover that a comment left by another person had been copied. I checked all the comments, and all were duplicates of other comments. The comments were made on older posts with a lot of comments to make it more difficult to catch. Since they were copied from relevant comments, they were appropriate for the post and seemed like legitimate comments. In fact, they were legitimate comments from the original commenter—but plagiarized by the spammer. I marked all the comments, including the first one (which had also been copied though I didn’t recognize at first), as spam. So now we have spam and plagairism in the same comment!
Commenters we bloggers love. Spammers are not welcome.
I do appreciate all legitimate comments, and I reply to every comment. I like to address the commenter by name, but I won’t address someone as California Liposuction or Timbuktu Real Estate. I will approve and reply to the comment, but I’d much rather respond to Susie of California Liposuction or John @ Timbuktu Real Estate. Note: This policy has been changed. Now I automatically send comments with keywords only in the name field to spam. Including keywords with your name is fine—you get a keyword link, and I know I’m replying to a real person. I have a hard time relating to Fat-Burning Miracle.
If you are a blogger, what is your comment policy? If you comment on blogs, what do you think of my comment policy? How do you feel about using keywords rather than names?
I wanted to follow up on this topic to point out that having a No Follow blog still doesn’t absolve you of spam and the work surrounding it. I have a No Follow blog (not by choice, I keep it for my employer and would most likely change to Do Follow if I could) and I am still amazed at how much spam I get.
I’m not entirely sure of the point. I can understand a large portion of it being spambot originated, but I do have what seems to be visitors stopping by to leave nonsensical comments. Do they think I am going to accidentally let one slip by? Is it really worth the effort they are taking to find my blog and comment?
So yes, even No Follow blogs have to deal with spam. At least with Do Follow you stand the chance of bringing in some interesting conversationalists!
Jennifer,
Yes, everyone has to deal with spam. But my spam comments increased tremendously when I changed to DoFollow, and more than the number of comments is the difficulty of determining if they are legitimate. The porn and gambling and male enhancement pill comments that everyone gets are obviously spam. But DoFollow attracts a lot of “Great post. I’ve subscribed to your blog” type comments. Of course, we all like new subscribers so it’s easy to mistake these for real comments. The latest trick is to repeat what a legitimate commenter said. I approved one such comment, not recognizing it was copied, then got 15 or so more from the same person after I approved the first. I recognized some of them as being copied, and when I checked the others, they were all copied. This is probably done by those companies who charge a fee to comment on blogs. The fee they charge isn’t enough to take the time to read and leave meaningful comments, so they leave a “great post” type of comment. Now that bloggers are wise to those, they are copying part of an earlier comment. They do this on older posts with lots of comments so it’s less likely the blogger will recognize that the comment was copied. Aside from the ethics of paying someone to comment for you, I think you lose the real value of commenting—making connections with other bloggers. Akismet has caught more than 90,000 spam comments on my blog, but I probably delete another dozen or so a day. The first time someone leaves a “great post” comment, I just delete it rather than mark it spam because sometimes those are legitimate. However, if it see repeats, I mark the comment as spam and block future comments.
Your comment policy is justified, on my wordpress blog i have to use Askimet & Spam Karma 2 just to keep the blog spam at bay.
They work great together, but the comment spam only seems to get worse.
As for the people that just leave 2-3 words well you know there just fishing for a back link and nothing more.
Unless you have an actual opinion to contribute to the post, move on.
Now im thinking i need my own comment policy, well more work to add to the list..
It is true that like many of the bloggers I try to get links by commenting on other blogs. I don’t leave any comment if the blog is not interesting for me. With this need of links, I have discovered many great blogs, and I enjoyed reading them and leaving comments. As there are spammers with stupid comments, I also found there are many useless blogs with dofollow links.
Soham | debt collections last blog post..Benefits Of Oolong Weight Loss Tea
definitely a great idea, but one question: how will you protect from bots?
if this method of protecting from spam catches on, you can bet there’ll be bots that wait for one comment’s approval, and then spam the crap outta your site
panx,
I have not had the problem. Only once did I approve a comment and have lots of spam follow, and that was because I should not have approved the first comment. It was on an old post, and I didn’t realize that it was a copy of an earlier comment. I approved it, and the next day, I got tons of copy-cat comments. I recognized ones on newer posts as being copies of comments already left, so I deleted the comments and put the commenter on the blacklist.
That may get to be a problem eventually but so far, the first comment is almost always detectable as spam. If I’m in doubt of the legitimacy of a comment, I will just delete it. The next comment will still be moderated but won’t automatically go into spam. I can tell by the second comment for sure whether it’s spam or not.
One mistake out of tens of thousands of spam isn’t a problem.
Indeed, the keyword luv plug in do entice commenter into writing more relevant comments on do follow blogs if only because they are assured of high quality link because of this plug in.
sabby,
I appreciate it when commenters use KeywordLuv correctly as you did. Many commenters still don’t include their names, and I find it very frustrating to try to carry on a conversation with keywords.
I agree with your policy, it rewards genuine commentors, but doesn’t allow spam. I do the same myself – I’m happy to allow keywords if the comment is saying something. I don’t see why people have problems following simple rules, they only ruin it for themselves (and everyone else).
One problem I have found with Keyword Luv is that some bloggers hyperlink the whole name, including the name at the start and the “from”. I see you don’t do this.
Anders,
If you read my current comment policy, you will see that I no longer allow comments without a name. With KeywordLuv, there is no excuse for not leaving a name along with the keyword. I was getting tired of getting comments from Cheap Toilet Seats, Acne Cure, Philadelphia Lawyer, and Bargain Hosting.
I see that your name and the word and are hyperlinked along with your keywords. I went back to see how you left the comment and you wrote “Anders from Graphic Design Agency London.” The correct protocol as described in the small print above is to write “Anders @ Graphic Design Agency London.” KeywordLuv converts the @ to from and only hyperlinks the words that follow. That is apparently why you are seeing that occur on other blogs as well.
Oh, OK. Thanks for pointing that out. I’ve always used “from” and some have hyperlinked it all and some have not. Makes more sense now. I actually thought writing “from” or “@” did the same thing.
Anders,
Glad I could help you solve the problem. I don’t know what anyone might have done to make the “from” work. I’m no techie—I just use the plugins as-is.
I really love your blog. Not only do you appreciate your readers (the awesome plugins you’ve installed) but more importantly, because you take the time to reply to each an every comment. How lucky are your readers? Thanks to you, I’m pretty darn lucky (that’s my name!)
.-= Lucky @ Dog Halloween Costumes´s last blog ..Hat and Collar Dog Costumes =-.
Lucky,
Hope your name also describes you! I was away from my computer for a couple of days, and I have been replying to comments for a long time now catching up. I usually do it several times a day so there aren’t so many at once, but when I reply to a couple dozen or so in one sitting, I realize how much time it takes. But I also realize how much I enjoy it.
Thanks for your comprehensive instructions.
Have been thinking about rolling out Keywordluv across a number of blogs but wonder whether all the moderation is just too time-consuming.
What benefits have you seen from adding KeywordLuv?
.-= Howard@France Facts About´s last blog ..Head in the Clouds over Cloud Computing =-.
Howard,
I don’t know if KeywordLuv is of any benefit to me, though it’s possible that in combination with DoFollow, CommentLuv, and monthly thank-you posts, it attracts comments. I do those things to reward commenters because I appreciate interacting with readers, not for any benefit for myself
I actually think there’s probably more moderation without KeywordLuv because now I have a firm policy that commenters must leave a name and not just a keyword. KeywordLuv makes it easy to do that. If I get comments with keywords instead of names, I just automatically mark them spam rather than agonizing over whether to approve them or not.
I think your comment policy is just right Lillie although I have no idea how to use DoFollow i find KeywordLuv really useful.
louise,
You don’t have to do anything for DoFollow. The link to your site is a do-follow link, meaning that Google will count it as incoming link for you, which is is good for your Google ranking.
I love this site. Even better, you are using keyword luv. Have any of you seen any good results? Thank you again.
Holden,
I think I get more visitors and especially commenters as a result of the combination of DoFollow, KeywordLuv, CommentLuv, monthly commenter thanks, and replying to every comment. How much of that is attributable to any one of those, I can’t say.
Wow, this blog actually supports comments, not like others, I would like to hear the voice of people reading the blog in the comments, not only the egoistic blogwriter that does not accept his readers opinion on the story…
Pete,
I enjoy hearing what my readers have to say. Often, they have better ideas than I do.
Sometimes It happens to me mostly in my emails I got a lot spams in my inbox. It really makes me irritated. In your experience, spammers is attracted to your site. I wonder where do I got the spam messages in my inbox. Do you have an idea about it? or how to fix it?
Amanda,
Just as you’re going to get junk mail if you have a postal address, you’re going to get spam email if you have an email address.
You should be able to reduce the volume by the settings in your email program. Or look into changing email providers–some do a much better job than others of filtering out spam before it gets to your inbox.
Karen,
What a great description: “members of the Spam Crime Fighting Team.” It is sad that we have to spend so much time and energy in that role.
I don’t have any idea how to set up Do Follow on Blogger either. If it’s manageable for you, moderating comments is a good idea. If you do make your blog Do Follow, though, it will be much more difficult to manage comments.
Jason,
I posted my comment policy after reading a post at Lorelle on WordPress suggesting every blog should have a comment policy. I think it’s a good idea—commenters can see you’re not singling them out but following a well-thought-out, established policy. Of course, the spammers don’t read or care about policies.
Soham,
You are absolutely right. There are many useless blogs just as there are many spammers. I’m glad you put mine in the category of being worthy of comment!