One of the things that most entertains me is blog comments spam (okay not really), and as this is a newish blog, all of the comments I get are spam and scams. Obviously spam and scams aren’t the feedback I’m looking for and the Staff Sergeant in me wants to put a proper beat-down on these folks, but this is not ‘Nam. This is blogging. There are rules. So I will do what anyone else would do these days, vent into my own echo chamber which is my blog.
As I started my career as a developer one of the first things I do when learning a new language or platform is to create a “Hello World” program just to make sure I understand the mechanics, and that’s what I did here too, the Hello World post.
This acted like a spam magnet, to date with 30 comments, none real. I certainly experienced comment spam with blogger too, but not in this proportion. Then again this blog doesn’t have the same draw of highly topical content as my Grumpy properties. They seem to fall into 3 categories:
- Blatant – these comments don’t waste time trying to trick you, and rely on the blogger who is too stupid or lazy to set up approvals on their blog comments and thus just get published. I’m not sure why spammers bother with this, as I would imagine the click thru rate must be something around zero. Maybe SEO or page rankings, that I don’t understand well enough to assess.
- Flattering feedback – these folks have taken the time craft, and I mean craft, not write, comments generic enough to apply to a lot of post, especially knowing most blogs are personal in content or tone, they attempt to flatter you into approving it in the least or clicking it. Some favorites, remember these are in response to an initial “I have a blog” post:
Excellent .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your blog
An fascinating discussion is worth comment. I think which you will need to write alot more on this topic, it may well not be a taboo subject but frequently people aren’t sufficient to speak on such topics.
This post is so help to me!
- Something is wrong with your blog/website – these are clever enough not to bother with the fact that they aren’t reading the post and therefore the comment may not be on topic. The go right to the best marketing angle ever – fear. Great post, but I noticed there something wrong with you blog/site! You need to fix it right away. (Oh and I found this product you should check out that can fix it!)
The other common thing about spam comments is the entertaining misspellings and poor grammar, like you see in the Nigerian email scams.
So, bottom line – enable comments approvals and look into spam blockers for the platform you’re on, but also read them from time to time, you might just get a laugh.