stopping comment spammers in their tracks
Earlier this week, I posted that my D List (of blogs using a “do follow” plugin) is still going strong, and that I continued to weed out comments that I felt were only being left for the link love from the plugin.
It’s probably a bit easier for me to tell when this is happening, because I have several blogs. This afternoon, for example, I got a comment on my 3DayMom blog, followed by a comment on BuyMeBlog, and then a 3rd comment here on GeekySpeaky - all left by the same person, of course. Gosh, what are the chances that he’s going down a list of do follow blogs, in alphabetical order, no less, leaving comments for the link back?
The comments left on 3DayMom and BuyMeBlog were at least of some substance, but by the 3rd comment, left here, the person wasn’t even trying anymore:
This is exactly the kind of comment abuse and PR theft that turns bloggers off from using the D-List. I’m sick of getting comments from people who don’t even leave a real NAME, just a business name. I’m not stupid, and I can see comment spam coming a mile away.
I was fired up enough to send an email to this spammer, saying:
I’m assuming, that since you’ve hit 4 of my blogs in a row now, that you’ve come across the D list and are leaving comments in hopes of promoting your own site.
FYI, your comments will not be approved.
Why waste my time, or his? I’d normally take this a step further, by visiting the site listed in the comment, and contacting someone there to make them aware of how their site is being promoted. I realize that legit businesses are being taken in by people who promise to promote their website via comment links, and those businesses need to be educated. In this case though, the site doesn’t appear to be a legit business, just a website with links to mortgage companies.
Don’t let spammers ruin your blog - stop them in their tracks by letting them know you won’t tolerate D-list spam and PR theft!
Edited to add: I just got a nice comment on my post about Facebook Pirates on another blog. Too bad the person put the name of a large financial website as her user name and in the URL field…but used a completely different Yahoo email. I emailed her back and said sorry, babe - no approval! What’s it going to take for comment spammers to stop?
OHHH!!!!!!!!!!! I had this happen this week!!!!!!!! I had someone with the NERVE to drop a comment on one of my ING posts, and leave HIS EMAIL for people to get a referral link!!! I deleted it and email him real quick that I was NOT PLEASED!
I wrote a plugin that’s making a fair number of spammers skip over my blog. They can’t get dofollows unless they have 3 (or more) comments with matching “name”, “email” and “domain”. The hired comment spammer know they aren’t going to get comments that match all three. I can tell by my referrer logs that a bunch from low-pay scale countries are visiting and not leaving comments. (I still get some of that, but a lot less.)
I’m getting my share of this crud, too. I’d liked the thought behind the D-list but, to be honest, I’m getting sick of feeling used. So lately I’m just stripping URLs out of any commercial or spammy-sounding site, along with multiple comments left by folks clearly just trolling for the PR.
I too have received a hundred of comments (though my blog hosted on wordpress.com uses nofollow) with single words (sometimes followed by ellipses…) as “interesting”, “sorry”, “nice” to some automobile or pharma page… Akismet didn’t classify them as spam… tired of individually marking them as spam, at last, I had to put these three words in filter to take those comments to moderation queue.
I think wordpress should have a feature to disregard site links based on filters
People who abuse the goodwill of others earn a special place in Hell. If you’re going to comment, then at least make a comment that adds something to the conversation.
I had dofollow on my blog, but I realized that most of the people who commented on it didn’t have their own website. I think that dofollow is dying a slow death, mostly because of the abuse.
The dofollow party is almost over! I recently discovered a trackback dofollow plugin. THat way at least others have to mention your blog in a post and you can some traffic later from it. Right now hardly that many people click on the comments… I am going to the Link Love and set it to 3 comments, but I bet most people won’t read the comment policy saying I need 3 comments for the link love!