Google’s written some hard facts about comment spam (Andy Beard and Shaun Anderson have some interesting follow ups – and it’s good to be aware of how comment spam can get your blog penalised).
Like most bloggers, I’m plagued by comment spam – but I’ve found a good way to spot spam: Backtype. It’s designed to let you see all the comments you’ve left on many blogs – but you can use it to check comments that other people have left that link to a specific URL.
Oh noes. 502 bad gateways …
Let’s start with Matt Call who left a comment, giving his URL as freecallindia.info, saying that:
“I had difficulty navigating past your website because I kept getting 502 bad gateway error. Just thought to let you know.”
Blimey, that’s helpful, right – I should be worried. I was a bit suspicious that his surname was “call” and it linked to a telecoms site with call in its name. So let’s check out Backtype, and see comments linking to that URL.
Freecallindia: notice any similarities …
Ah. There appear to be over 100 comments, all saying the same thing, all left by several people with different first names but the same surname.
I’m an authority
Some guy apparently from onlinecarinsuranceclaims.com left a comment about what an authority I am. Thanks. Finally, some recognition. But then I checked what other comments on blogs linked to that site.
Onlinecarinsurance: notice any similarities …
Yes, a series of comments (more than I’ve shown here) about insurance, menace and huge corporations. Preceded by one saying:
Nice strategy Ajith.. though they say every backlink counts but I prefer dofollow links.. So I do check pagerank, type of link that are allowed.
Right, thanks for the heads up.
Maybe he did think it was a nice post …
Someone giving thesoftstuff.net as their URL left one of those “nice post” comments. They’re always spam, true. But, you know, maybe this guy meant it, and thesoftstuff.net sounded OK … Let’s use Backtype to check the comments he’s left on other blogs.
Thesoftstuff: notice any similarities …
Nope.
Some others …
You get the idea:
- Randy, who gave his URL as crushandshred.com, left a reasonable sounding comment. Check the blog comment profile for that site, and you see a lot of people whose surname is Crushed leaving comments … Update Randy has commented below that he always leaves useful comments, which his original one might have been. His latest one is certainly useful.
- Alex from instanthealthinsurancequotemaryland.com gave me a tip on an SEO post. He informed me that “Appropriate keywords make your search simple and also help your data searching quick too”. Seems he gives out this advice a lot …
- Then Danni from AcneTreatmentDigest.com came along. His comments fall into two types. He had a lot to say about the death of Patrick Swayze – now he leaves the same message on loads of blogs about how “using Adwords for the last 2 years and i can only say that it increased my online sales by about 20%”.
These were all the undeleted comments I had awaiting moderation. Good old Backtype. Let me know if you spot anyone with backlink profiles worth a look.
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- … alternatively, the Adwords Keyword tool is spot on
- Advanced comment systems are bad for SEO: IntenseDebate, Sezwho and Disqus.
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