I get tons of spam comments on this blog. I think it’s a common problem rather than it is because this blog is so popular(it isn’t). One of the tools for dealing with spam here is Akismet, the other one is me.
Akismet is a spam filter from the guys behind WordPress and I must say it works very well. If you use WordPress I recommend you install it, it’s a real time saver. There are other ones, for example Six Apart made something similar but I haven’t tried it.
Most of the junk stuck in the filter is so obviously spam I don’t think any blogmaster would intentionally okay it. Probably there are many blogs out there that are set up to just let everything through, unmanaged.
The statistics must say that spamming the crap out of blogs works for search engine ranking. But whose statistics is that? Not from those selling the tools for automatic spamming is it? Nooooo, of course not. I’m not to say that it doesn’t work, but I would be suprised if the search companies didn’t do all they can to try and detect it. At the heart of their business is to provide quality search results, if they can’t do that they go out of business.
Besides the obvious spam there are blog comments that don’t look like spam but still is in my opinion. I got one today that could easily have slipped through if I didn’t pay attention. It looked like one of those comments you want to have on your blog, well written. What made me suspicious was that it was a bit too flattering, come on this blog isn’t that great. So I made a quick check and Googled the text and lo and behold, I wasn’t the first one who’d received that very same comment. Thanks!
The comment may very well be the thoughts of the author, maybe he/she just happen to think the same about a few other blogs as well and copied the text to save some typing. At the same time, maybe not. I don’t mind linking to your site, hey - links are what makes the internet! But please be a bit smooth and write something a little bit more original!
For the spam that Akismet eats up for me - it must obviously work for someone, why else would it exist? But think about it, even if it doesn’t require much effort to spam thousands of blogs with junk messages with an automatic tool. What do you think that’ll do to your ranking once Google has noticed how your site climbed their chart? It’s not guaranteed that they’ll exclude you all together, because if they did they would open up for the type of marketing warfare where you gain rank by sinking your opponents, but it certainly won’t do you any good. Trying to fool the search engines only works for a little while, then it backfires.
In the end, links that count are those found in humanly readable content with a relevance between where the link is found and what it points to. Links that humans could end up clicking. But we shouldn’t think too much about it, what’s not relevant for me may be relevant for someone else. So, if you’re human just link!
Let me know what you think in a comment, preferrably not spammy but near anything goes.
Still, don’t get upset and please accept my comment…after al, I did read your post. Interesting blog btw.
