Comment Spam

In the beginning there were blogs.

And yea, God saw that they were good.

After all, what a fantastic way for anyone to become an online publisher.

Sure, the word \”blog\” doesn\’t roll off the tongue. It sounds more like you are about to upchuck yesterday\’s hot dog.

But being short for \”web log\”, it does work in a \”oh well I guess it will do\” kind of way.

The beauty of blogs is that you can post your thoughts in a matter of minutes (as I doing right now).

The thing that makes it even better is that readers can comment on your entries and add value to the discussion.

Over the years, unscrupulous marketers have created tools to create backlinks to their sites by posting comments on any blog they can find. By creating backlinks from a number of blogs, they hope to increase their own search engine rankings.

Not on my watch, bub.

Now WordPress and Moveable Type have built-in spam filtering tools that catch a lot of the garbage.

However, the best defense against comment spam is a good offense. In this case, I moderate ALL comments on my blog. In other words, if I don\’t want to publish your comment, I won\’t.

Here are examples of the newest tactics comment spammers are using to attempt to game your blog.

Notice how generic the comment is. It could go with ANY blog entry and slip by the attention of publishers who don\’t know what to look for. This person is NOT commenting on my blog. They are trying to get attention to their site by using the keyword \”temperature control\” and linking to the url displayed in the comment.

Aw, isn\’t that sweet of russia_2009@mail.com to say such kind things about my entry? \”It will be interesting that further?\” Huh? Oh, wait. The url they are linking is for a russia women dating site. Great…

This clown isn\’t even being subtle. \”Hello, I am going to use your blog to promote my cr@p.\” Ain\’t gonna happen. Well, if anyone wants to visit this person\’s site, you can see the url. Hmmm, I guess he DID use my blog to promote his cr@p! ;-)

So there you have it. Comments like this never make the cut on my blog. I delete them before they are approved.

And if you wonder why your comment doesn\’t display after you submit it, it\’s because I am reading it to make sure it is legitimate.

Comment away!