Anyone who blogs is no stranger to comment spam. It seems that no matter how large or small your blog is, you’re going to get spammed. At the moment, I get a whole lot of comment spam from people in Russia. I don’t know what they’re trying to push but chances are it’s for some sort of male enhancement drug, prescription pain killers or something else equally useless. But last night I got an email that really surprised me.
Another blogger received a spam comment on their blog which was totally irrelevant to the topic of the post (of course) and it included a link to NOH in the link box. The email box contained an email address which I’m fairly certain has nothing to do with the spammer either since it’s more or less a dead website that is only being maintained for the email address (or so they say). Needless to say I don’t intend to send an email to that address for fear that I will get bombarded with email spam as well.
But I started looking through the nearly 600 spam comments that Akismet has filtered out (about 40 per day) and noticed that the post they were linking to in the spam actually has exactly the same comment on it from another site and a different email address from the same domain. So, perhaps it’s just something the spammer does, rotating the link from the last blog they spammed and changing email names as it goes along.
What I don’t understand is why does spam continue, especially spam like this? I mean what is the spammer achieving when they link to someone else’s site and have no links back to their own pitch page or webcam girls? To be totally honest, I don’t understand spam in general but I guess there must be some people out there that visit those links or buy those products which keep people motivated to do it. And I have to admit that some of them are getting really crafty. I might even allow a few of them onto the site if they are relevant and they’re not just plugging total crap. But come on–make a little effort folks. If you’re talking politics to Ayla or saying how moving a recipe for chili is, you’re clearly not going to make it through.
I also have to wonder how much of this spam is due to companies who are trying to build their site rankings and have hired an SEO company to post blog comments for them. If I found out that’s how my hard earned money was being spent, I would be miffed to say the least!
I’ve contacted the hosting service who is registered with IP address of the evil spammer so hopefully at least one spammer will be dropped off the internet, even if it’s only for a few days. I’ve also installed the plugin WP Ban and will be blocking reoccurring IP addresses that leave spam bombs behind. No more access to this site for them. It will take forever to get them all but since some of them leave 5-10 comments at once, this should cut down on things rather dramatically.
Well.. at least, if your having a bad day and feeling down about yourself, you can pretend that they are loving admirers… Just chalk it up to being a celebrity, and not having time to open all your mail…? 🙂
Totally true. Some of them are so crafty now that you think they might actually be real comments…then you look at the post they are talking about and you’re just like, “ok wait, Ayla made a politically intelligent post? I doubt that very seriously.” 😉
Sorry you are having such a time Tiffany. I got lost with your post as to what they are doing….linking back and such. I guess because I don’t have backlinks it doesn’t happen ((oh, I get the male enhancement comments…til I did word verification). Glad you found a way to foil them.
.-= Janet´s last blog ..Tuesday’s Trees- Virginia Pine =-.
Well when you submit a comment it gives you an option to provide a link to your website, etc. They are just entering my site in that link portion. It’s weird but whatever. Doesn’t seem to have caused any harm…for now. And I love the new WP Ban plugin for WordPress…it’s absolutely fantastic. Already cut my spam in half just by excluding ONE IP address. Generally I don’t even think about spam on my blog because it all just gets filtered into the spam folder and deleted automatically, but this particular occasion with my own blog in a spam comment was quite different from the norm.
Hi Tiffany
This is just a perfect article and perfect timing. I believe spammers started to visit our blog last weekend. I got 5 comments from 5 different email addresses but all related to the same website. All comments were polite but totally not related to our posts. I will be watching for them and eventually contact hosting company. What do they want from us anyway? Thanks for this article and I hope they left for good.
p.s Congrats to Germany on their success in Vancouver during Olympic Games.
Kinga from Canada
.-= blueloom´s last blog ..Kitchen reno – painting cabinets =-.
Aren’t they just unnerving? Do they really get such a big boost or good results with all these spam comments that it gives them a positive impact? I don’t know that I’ll ever understand he motives. But yes, I get tons of those comments now too. Sometimes they would be really nice comments…until you realize the post they commented on is totally irrelevant. And if they dug a little deeper, they would have found a post that DID fit and I probably would have thought it was a real comment. I guess that spam should be some sort of compliment to say that your blog is big enough to be noticed…but they just irritate me to no end. And thanks for the Olympics love. We missed the last half of the Games because our cable died…but we were starting to lose interest already anyway. The TV is just too distracting for us 😉