Comment Spam? The canned meat? Comments about the Monty Python Spam song?
Long gone are the days of this word simply referring to a food item; A canned meat product made mainly from ham.
Now Spam invades our privacy, offends, annoys, and seems to be almost unstoppable.
We find it in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), we find it as torrential rain in our email inboxes, we find it in our forums, we find it as personal messages and comments in our networking sites, and we find it as comments to our blog posts.
Today we find Spam everywhere, and it finds us.
What is Spam?
Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.
Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services.
Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
What is Blog Comment Spam?
Spam in blogs (also called simply blog spam or comment spam is a form of spamdexing. (Note that blogspam has another, more common meaning, namely the post of a blogger who creates no-value-added posts to submit them to other sites.)
It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards.
Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors may be a target.
Read more in Wikipedia’s “Spam in Blogs” article.
How to Spot Blog Comment Spam
As the administrator, webmaster, author, etc. of your site, your comment settings should definitely be set to require your approval before being published. You personally and manually need to decide if it should go up.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have some automated help via plug-ins, etc. to auto-detect (and delete) obvious spam comments; You Should!
However, some comments in your moderation queue may look a bit convincing. Below are some tips to help identify common Comment Spam patterns.
Signs of Blog Comment Spam
These are just a few – some use some or none; some use all:
- First Name Only
Spammers are vague. - All single-case
All upper or lower case. - Comments are on Old Posts
Usually at least 6 months old. - Short message
Earlier on, the pattern was abnormally long messages, packed with links – but the pattern has changed. - Grammar & Spelling
Most are not native English speakers, so you’ll see glaring mistakes. - Scraped Content
These guys will often scrape content right off your blog and re-paste it as part of their comment! - Nonsense
The “comment” usually makes little to no sense whatsoever. - Titles
Commonly they’ll use the title of your blog post, site, article, etc. within the comment, like “I always Spotting SPAM Comments in your Blog so thanks” - High-Traffic Links
The links will be going to sites that require high traffic to make a profit. Porn, Gambling, Shoes, Jewelry, etc. are common.
Hope this helps in keeping your site Spam-Free and if you have any other tips on spotting Blog Comment Spam, shoot me a note and let me know!