The Start of the problem
From “Today’s Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen”, displayed with special permission. For many more cartoons, please visit Randy’s site @ www.glasbergen.com
I got a ping back for my recent Storm Trooper Disco blog post, and looking into it I saw that the link went to a junk wordpress blog that had scraped part of my post. At the bottom it had 4 links to different sites as “site design” credits. Obviously, they are attempting to get link juice/value from comment spam, then pass it on to their sites/clients sites. Looking at these sites receiving links from this spammy blog, it looked like they are real, valid businesses. Perhaps, I thought, their webmaster/SEO is using underhanded tactics and not telling the actual owners of the company… that would mean that possibly these legitmate business owners are inadvertently funding comment spam, so I decided to contact them and make them aware of the spamtastic web tactics that were being used to “promote” their website. Naive? Maybe, but I felt I needed to take action! Here’s What I emailed and submitted via their contact form.
Fight the Source
“I don’t know if you are aware, but the person who is doing your internet marketing is using bad business practices.I received a spam comment that referenced a blog that had scraped some of the text on my site to make a small post, with a link pointing at my post, in order to get a “pingback” and hyperlink to the page. At the bottom of this spamtastic blog website, it says:Designer Webdesign Coded by MCSE, Noise Survey, Mock Theory TestMCSE and is hyperlinked to your website!
This tactic is obviously an underhanded trick to attempt to gain links and pass the value on to your website. I beleive that you should check your webmaster/SEO’s business model/practices immediately because these types of tactics could be at worst cause for a penalty and at best send little or no real long lasting value to your website. If you are paying a marketing service, then you are actually supporting a type of spam, much like those companies who pay for email spam to be mass blasted to email inboxes. Please, take the time to review this problem, I think you’ll see it’s the right thing to do!”
What About You?
We’ll see if they respond to my email and messages… What about you? Are you doing anything to fight blog comment spam? Have a better approach? I’d be really happy to hear anyone’s thoughts on other methods… or perhaps..it’s a lost cause.
8 responses so far ↓
Mike Wilton // February 27, 2009 at 4:13 pm |
While I think it’s great you are fighting the good fight be careful when outing people like that. I don’t know that I would have gone to the company directly if I didn’t know for certain that their marketer was the one in fact responsible for the spam. Why you ask?
Well for one they’re spammers, you piss them off you’re probably gonna get bombed. Two; you don’t know what other types of malicious activities spammers may be involved in which could in the end cause even bigger issues for you or your blog.
Finally; ‘Fight the source’…You bypassed the source completely. If I were going to pursue something like that I would have started with the source and not the businesses they work for. I’d kindly asked them to take down the scraped content and then gone from there.
You don’t know if by chance the marketing company outsources their link building and maybe weren’t aware of the spammy practice. Assuming these companies take action you may have hurt this business and they may be completely unaware.
jeremypenguin // February 27, 2009 at 10:10 pm |
Good point, if they’re willing to spam, they’re more than likely willing to participate in other nasty tricks.
My thoughts are that at the very root, businesses are the source of spam because they’re the payroll. If spammers don’t get paid, then they don’t spam, so that’s my reasoning for going to the root business, but you’ve got a valid point that their marketer may have outsourced…
AndyW // March 2, 2009 at 8:15 am |
Yes!
One my sites is based on the Pligg CMS and which is a major target by spammers.
I got fed up with these spammers so I took a more proactive response.
I sent them an email but the email only contained one word. That word began with c and I simply can’t repeat it amongst polite company.
I was simply trying to goad them into a response – so far none have taken the bait.
Immature? Sure, but what the hell.
Rick // March 8, 2009 at 3:49 pm |
I cannot figure out why all my comments are not going live I think that my comments are being blocked for some reason on blogs can anyone tell me why? I make completely real comments no spamming tools used here.
Thanks for any input on this.
Rick // March 8, 2009 at 3:52 pm |
All of my comments on other blogs ar being blocked and not going into moderation using the information I use to comment on blogs. I had to use different information to post this comment can anyone shed any light on this.
I am making completely normal hand typed comments. Is it my email address? Is it my domain? Or what? I need some sort of answer as to why this is doing this?
jeremypenguin // March 8, 2009 at 4:55 pm |
Hey Rick-
Weirdest thing, when you used your information the first time, wordpress actually placed your message in the Spam Queue… Seemingly Automatically. I check my spam queue for real messages… That’s odd.. Maybe It’s because you’re using “Rick” as your name, and it matches a lot of bogus comment entries? DM Me, and we can try a couple of tests to see what goes to the spam quque and what doesn’t – http://www.twitter.com/footinmouth
Rick // March 8, 2009 at 5:04 pm |
DM????… maybe being stupid here but what is that? I really appreciate the help with this.
jeremypenguin // March 8, 2009 at 5:10 pm |
Howdy Rick-
Sorry i assumed you were on twitter -
A DM is a private tweet-
If you follow me on twitter- I’ll follow you back, then we can communicate better than through the blog roll and maybe we can see what’s causing you to get spammed out of most comment systems-