Checking out comments on my Blog

Posted in Blogging, Comment Spam by Tim Brownlaw - Jan 07 2011

Here’s an interesting little snippet I came across when checking out some of the comments on one of my other blogs.

Comment Spammer “Try Hards”

On the odd occasion when I have a pretty good idea that a comment is Spammy, I sometimes check out their site to see if they are legit or not. After all, I like to be fair!

But I do wonder about the “Try Hard” Spammers. Give it up! ( this is aimed at the spammy Try Hards and not you) I manually approve the comments on all my blogs and if you’re writing crappy comments, they aint going to get accepted!

The Borderline Cases

Apart from the blatantly obvious Spam comments, you do get some that have you thinking… is this “Fair Dinkum” or are they just “having a lend of me”. ( excuse the Aussie Slang)

Things to look out for…

1. The comment doesn’t quite fit the post they’ve commented on. While I do love being told my Blogs are creative and a great to read and they’ve been searching all over the Internet and found the answer on my site, as much as I love to have my ego massaged, it still aint going to get accepted.

2. The URL they leave. Again these are sometimes obvious as to their intent. Mainly being Cheap or magic pills sites… Instant Deletion. But you do get the odd ones that look innocent. So I check them out. More on that later as I’ve just checked out a couple of site with some interesting results.

3. Strange Names. You do get what looks like real peoples names, but if you comment on my blogs with some marketing slogan or some I cannot even write on here. Good bye to you too~

4. Weird Email Address. If they look weird, why aint they using their name or something recognizable. I love those you get like bob@…. and their name is Dorothy something or vice versa. Get it right will ya!

5. I think there was a number 5 but the doorbell rang and I’ve kind of lost my train of thought.

Anyway back to the story.

I was checking out some of these “links” people leave.

One was a non existent URL. It came up as Not Found so I checked it to see if it was available, and lo and behold it was. Someone just did a little finger dance on their keyboard and made something up. I was thinking of accepting the comment, registering the domain and pointing it back to one of my site. But I thought that’s not real honest, so I didn’t.

The next was the one that really inspired the initial spark to this post. Again and I checked out the site, it wasn’t there. So I looked it up and found it was registered. Now it was a marketing related link, and while it wasn’t really relevant to the post it was commenting on, I still went to look up who it belonged to.

Call me weird but if I see a site that’s down, I’ll try to find out a contact email and let them know. I’ve had people call me and let me know about issues on the odd occasions I’ve had them with some sites. Nice huh!

Anyway, what I saw was something I’d never seen before and sparked my curiosity.

Note: This Domain Name is Suspended.

Scary huh? This was the message I saw in this guys WHOIS info. Now everything looked legit. He had a real name, address but the contact email did appear dodgey. Maybe that is why!

Now the reasons for this, (from my brief research so feel free to enlighten us if you know more on this) can be due to either…

1. The registration renewal fee has not been paid. Possibly..

2. The registrar has had complaints and suspended the domain. After all he’s probably been Comment Spamming too many Blogs and got someone annoyed.

3. Registrars will email your contact email address asking to confirm your details are up to date. This is a legal requirement by ICANN for registrars to perform. So if he was asked… Although I sometime reply to these emails, I do check my details and I must pass the test. So sounds like his email address might be the issue. Could have bounced, who knows. (no I’m not going to email him to find out.)

It’s No Secret!

If you play by the rules, everyone will be happy. If you don’t…

And the “rules” as they apply to acceptable behavior in regards to websites etc, are not real hard to follow.

It’s a blatant attempt to get backlinks.

I know everyone talks about how wonderful backlinks are… but I’m still funny over them. And everyone is trying to get backlinks on other peoples blogs. Hence why the Comment Spam in the first place… It gives these gooses ( or they think it does ) more credibility. Really! How nice that they think my blogs will do that for them!

And if they do make an appearance on your Blog, and they are blatant crappy spammy websites, they’ll drag your site down in to the mire with them. And you don’t want that.

So be vigilant. There are steps you can take to prevent this happening to your Blog, which I’ll have to leave for another post. I’ve just been informed that some friends and a bottle of whiskey are making an appearance in a few minutes.

Google themselves have an interesting slant on Backlinks. Check out their Website SEO guidelines and have a read. There’s some good info in there. What it all boils down to is “Make your site Interesting and useful to someone and we’ll give you lots of Google Love”. Hmm well those are my words, not theirs, but they would have said that if they thought of it!

Jut before I forget – one note on Google and SEO tricks and Backlinks etc…. Humans from Google do perform manual checks on websites… It’s not all automated, you aint battling against some clever script you can outsmart… So don’t even try. I mean, the whole purpose is to give some helpful advise and make it worth your time reading my rather long, all over the place at times blogs…

Feel Free to Comment too!

Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear your views. But if you are going to try and sneak in a Spammy Comment, don’t be disappointed that you never see it. Also remember I have to manually accept your first few comments before the will magically appear… So don’t fret if you don’t see them straight away. You’ll still be able to edit them etc if you make a mistake…

There’s another topic for a post.