How to Identify and Stop Blog Comment Spam
Susan Gunelius wrote this post on July 29th, 2010 in
11 Comments
As a follow up to Jonathan Bailey’s great post yesterday, Blogging Pitfalls: Becoming a Spammer, I wanted to talk about comment spam a bit more. Bloggers are often inundated with comment spam, which can get so bad that they might even reconsider moderating comments.
Unfortunately, there are some forms of comment spam that have gotten out of control over the past year or so, and bloggers need to be aware of these spam tactics, try to identify them, and mark those comments as spam using their comment spam detection tool (for example, Akismet). Identifying comments as spam helps your spam tool better identify them in the future, so hopefully, they won’t get through to your moderation queue anymore.
But how do you know if a comment is spam if it’s not the usual link-filled or gibberish spam comment that can be identified with a cursory glance? That’s the problem with these newer forms of comment spam — they often look like legitimate comments, until you take a closer look at them.
These days, there are comment factories that pay people a few cents to leave a comment with specific keywords linked back to a specific web page for the sole purpose of increasing incoming links to that page and therefore, increasing Google search rankings for that page in related keyword searches. If you visit a freelancing website like oDesk.com, you’ll find many of these “jobs”. They’re quick and easy, and people snatch them up despite the low payment.
I refer to this type of comment spam as the “nice blog” or “great information” comment, because the comment will usually sound at least somewhat legitimate. However, if you take a look at the URL entered into the comment form as well as the keyword phrase tied to that link, you’re likely to find something suspicious. If you follow the link entered into the comment form, you’ll probably find even more evidence of a spam link. In simplest terms, a link on a blog dedicated to discussing finance that leads to a website filled with ads, no original content, or with a URL like postnasaldriptreatment.com (I got that on one of my posts recently, and I assure you, the post had nothing to do with post nasal drip) is almost always spam.
There are also many comment spambots that find a blog that actually publishes a spam comment through phishing and then continually sends spam comments to that blog. You don’t want that to happen, which is why it’s essential that you identify and mark spam comments as such to the best of your ability. In time, you’ll be better able to identify spam comments. The first step is being aware of what to look for and “teaching” your comment spam detection tool how to deal with similar comments in the future. Those tools aren’t perfect, but every little bit of information you give them helps them get better.
Here are a few comment spam examples that fit the two scenarios listed above (paid comments for links and automated comments), which might help you to identify similar comments on your own blog. These were taken directly from the comment moderation queue of one of my own blogs. Suffice it to say, they have since been marked as spam if they were not detected as such by Akismet first. Note that these comments were copied and pasted directly without correcting any grammatical errors.
Comment Spam Example #1: Submitted to a blog post written to help women in business
“i am always watching for any product launch on the internet as i am a gadget addict myself.,’”– Comment linked to electriccementmixer.info
Comment Spam Example #2: Submitted to a blog post written about business thought leadership
“Keep posting stuff like this i really like it”– Comment linked to pharmacytechnicianblog.com/pharmacy-technician-program with the keyword link text of Pharmacy Technician Program
Comment Spam Example #3: Submitted to a blog post written about the top 10 cities to capture Small Business Recovery Act dollars
“K12 education is always the best..-”– Comment linked to titaniumearrings.org
As the three examples above demonstrate, if a blogger didn’t take a closer look at them to see what post they were submitted to, what keyword link text was used in the comment form, and what URL was provided in the comment form, then that blogger may have published these comments opening the doors for similar spam in the future. Don’t let that happen to your blog. Be diligent about fighting comment spam!
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I am pretty strict with my approval of comments for this very reason. But it is usually quite easy to pick out the people who are just commenting for a link because there is no value added.
My personal rule is:
Add value to post = approved.
No value = Deleted
This is something that I have found since I switched my blog to dofollow. I can normally spot them pretty easy though.
I am now more concerned with trying to weed out the dodgy web urls that people leave when commenting.
I’ve been experiencing this kind of sneaky spam since last year. And it has only gotten worse this time around. It’s a good thing I’ve developed a quick eye for such spam comments that look legitimate.
What’s kind of annoying though is it seems that Akismet is slow in learning about this, a few comments still manage to get through.
When I started my blog about a month ago, I wasn’t even aware this existed, but what a lesson! I screen every comment and I’m concerned about the amount of effort this will take if the volume increases substantially.
When it’s not clear, I’ve googled the comment verbatim, and it normally shows up in dozens of other blogs’ posts. As you say, they’re typically generic comments with links to (sometimes bizarrely) unrelated sites. My personal favorite example so far was a glowing appraisal of my reasoning skills, which was submitted to a post of a picture of a monkey, and linked to a site discussing the dangers of lasik eye surgery.
Really useful post, Susan. I wanted to comment because I am getting a lot of comment spam on a blog that I manage for a client but I noticed a wonderful – and genuine – comment from one of them recently. I quote:
“When I originally commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get four emails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service? Thanks!”
The comment was linked to a site that sold ’square bathroom rugs’. My blog has nothing to do with bathroom rugs, square or otherwise.
But I take great comfort from the fact that he now understands the pain of having an inbox filled with unnecessary comment alerts.
Thanks
John
And here’s a follow up. I just followed the advice of one of your fellow commenters and Googled the phrase verbatim. Sure enough, the spammer has been using it everywhere, so maybe not as satisfying as I first thought.
Not sure what they wanted to gain from it. Would it help them if I acted on it somehow? I’m still not publishing it.
John, The commenter is trying to get links back to the site that is used in the URL field of the comment form. Sounds like it’s probably an automated comment spam bot. The best thing you can do is flag it as spam (if you’re using a comment spam detector like Aksimet). If it persists, you can copy the IP address the comments are coming from and input those in your comment blacklist in the discussion settings of your WP dashboard. Hope that helps!
Thanks Susan. They’re quite sneaky these chaps, aren’t they?
useful article on spam
I can appreciate someone leaving a post on my blog to get a link or something but what gets to me the most is when what they say has absolutely nothing to do with my blog or the article they are posting on. At least challenge me to figure out if it is spam or not.
Akismet does get rid of a lot of them though. I used to get at least 8-10 spam posts a day to the blogs I manage and now maybe one will slip through the cracks and that is one a week if that. Save yourself some time and hassle by using it.
I guess my main question is… does it really help the google rankings? It is so unfair if it is where I am adding content to climb up rankings and some guy is spamming everyone to get ahead of me
Till now, Akismet is working great to stop any spam comments to my blog. But some of them do feel like legitimate comments and I have to take a closer look in order to judge them as spam or not.
But I also do as the Susan says, I look for the relevance of both post and comment and judge them. Not too time consuming because Akismet does a pretty good job in filtering out spam comments.