The following is the image of a comment:
This comment was sent to me today. You see, this looks a lot like a very legitimate comment, with a proper link, and other details.
But wait! Google a sentence from the comment. You will find that there are dozens and dozens of blogs and other pages, where the same comment appears. This is a comment spam! You see, I readily hit the 'Reject' option.
Here is another copy. In this, the link is different from the first one.
I don't know, who publishes these comments as the Blogger profiles from which they are posted are not available. But one thing is for sure. If you allow such comments to be published, you will victimize yourself to the duplicate content penalties. Please read this post to see how severe duplicate content problem can be.
This is why I have posted an image of the spam, and not the text itself.
This is not an isolated attempt. There are people creating identical comments and posting them across domains to see their links appearing in others' blogs. Here are a few steps to stay safe from these commenters.
Comment Moderation Tips
1. Don't ever let a comment go unmoderated. Automated spam filters like Akismet are still pretty useless. One thing you can do, if you get massive amount of comments, is disabling further comments in quite established conversations.
2. Enforce a very strict comment policy, and show an example by deleting any comment that doesn't follow the policy.
3. If you get an elaborate comment, do check in Google for one of the sentences to see if it is a legitimate comment or has copies allover the Net. Any comment that is elaborate, grammatically perfected, touching the topic only lightly, or not touching the topic at all, may be a spam.
4. If you find any such spam comment in any blog, let the blogger know of it.
5. Stop anonymous comments, and set your blog up so that only verified users can comment.
Examples of Comment Spamming in Blogger
Copyright © CuteWriting 2009. All rights reserved.
For republication, please contact us.
[This notice is void in case of contributions and posts in which the author is explicitly specified.]
Subscribe
For republication, please contact us.
[This notice is void in case of contributions and posts in which the author is explicitly specified.]
Subscribe
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 Opinions:
I once received a comment which was somewhat like the ones stated above. I have considered it a legitimate one. Now that I have read your post, I'm wiser.lol. There are also those who have many links attached to their comments. Thanks for this very informative post. All the best.
I have a good spam filter on my blog that catches most spam. One comment that has been making the rounds is from a person named Matt who is actually affiliated with a weight-loss program.
I agree, though. Bloggers must be diligent in looking at all of their comments carefully.
Thanks for informing.I did receive such a comment,which I deleted just now :)
Just speculating...
What if...
What if the website where the fake comment came from reaches a higher rank than yours? Wouldn't that backlink be a little more valuable to you now?
Not saying they will, of course, but I'm wondering how much damage it could actually do. Duplicate Content is not the problem everyone thinks it is. As a matter of fact, I'm writing a series of posts about just that. In the meantime, there's a DigitalPoint thread you might be interested in reading (about the Dup Content issue) here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1290847
@CJ: I am not saying duplicate content is tooo serious. But it is serious. In cases of extreme duplication, you can get hit. And yes, if the duplicate content blog reaches higher SERP, the link from it will be valuable. But that's no reason to justify this type of comments.
Post a Comment
Comments are very strictly moderated. If you don't want to waste your time, please read the comment policy at the blog usage policy. You will also find what to do if there is no comment form below...