Not too long ago comment spam consisted of repetitive words, or short phrases, like ‘play online-poker’ written 50 times in a comment. With better spam filtering by modern blog systems (like WordPress), comment spammers have had to take a kinder, gentler approach… making their comment seem like it may actually be a real comment, unless you look close that is. Here’s a typical example of the kind I am getting now:
“I luved what you’ve wrote. Your blog is great! I luv the way you express things! I’ve read lots of blogs but I find yours a lot more interesting than the others! Keep up the good job!”
The comment above would have been followed by one link, to an instant payday loan, or a thrilling game of online poker.
Make sure to look closely at your comments. Don’t be fooled by the lack of typical spam words. And delete these types of comments when you find them.
Hey Paul
Have you recieved this one yet
Anonymous said…
I was surfing for stuff and came across your blog. Not what I was looking for but I’ve left an invitation for you to visit me if you are into lose weight quickly. Let me know what you think.
: )
Nope, haven’t had that one.
When rel=”nofollow” was announced earlier this year, many people thought it would end comment spam, but it simply changes the game from trying to add links for search engines to something more like this.
For those not familiar with how it all works, when a search engine like Google sees rel=”nofollow” on the code for a link, it doesn’t add that link to the search index, so spammers can’t just post dozens or hundreds of comments with links and have search engines think “oh these are really popular links they should go higher in the results page”.
Spammers will still do that, but it’s less likely readers like us will click on something obvious like “refinance your house” than click the commenter link on a carefully worded comment that might make us want to read the commenter’s own site.