Industry guru Dave Taylor answers free tech support questions about a wide variety of business and technical topics, including blogging, Google AdSense, MySpace, Sony PSP, Apple iPod, Mp3 players, management, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Microsoft Windows.

Still befuddled? Get immediate live tech support with SupportSpace!

What does this blogspam comment mean?

Dave, Help! My weblog is drowning in these seemingly nonsensical postings from people that have nothing to do with my discussion, yet don't actually point to any sort of existing Web site or even a valid email address. On the assumption that they're not doing it just to annoy me, why would they bother to spam my weblog with this kind of stuff?

Dave's Answer:

Ah, blogspam (or, if you will, comment spam).

One of the banes of running a Weblog, unfortunately, and as more spammers realize the value of inbound links from Google (which I talk about in How does Google figure out what pages are more relevant? Pagerank, if you're interested), we'll probably see more people spamming weblogs.

In terms of your specific query, I'm betting that you're talking about postings on your site like this:

IP Address: 69.193.88.30
Name: Johnny Lee
Email Address: jlee434@gmail.com
URL: http://www.johnnyXlee.com/

Comments:

I stumbled on this from Google and wanted to say hello!

I was puzzled by this too, I have to admit, until I did a bit of research and found a very plausible theory on the Movable Type discussion boards: these spam messages are really an advanced party, as it were, they're creating inbound links to an as-yet non-existent site, with the thought that their comments are less likely to be removed if they're not pointing to something offensive. Wait a few weeks, build up some inbound links on Google, and then when they do actually launch a site, blammo! Lots of inbound links!

Needless to say, just like any off-topic comments, I think it's in your best interest to delete these and try to keep some sense of editorial integrity on your Web site. After all, it's ultimately your name on the top of the page.

Hope that clarifies things!

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Simpy.

Categorized: Blogs and RSS Feeds , Building Web site traffic (Article 3771)
Tagged:
Previous: Why would I bother with a Weblog or Blog when I could just build a regular Web site?
Next: What capabilities does the Lynx text-only Web browser offer?

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

The approach I took was to remove the URL entry from my comment template. That way there's no incentive to add these types of spam to my various blogs.

Posted by: Leo at November 20, 2004 2:32 AM

I have seen other folk who have used the same strategy, Leo, but I have to say that I'm not a fan of it. I'd rather let legitimate visitors link back directly to their Websites / weblogs through my comment mechanism. My only requirement is that the comment be interesting, relevant, and advance the particular thread of discussion.

As an example... your comment. If I click on your name, I'm whisked immediately to Ask Leo and can find out more about you and see how you've changed your own comments on your site.

I know I could use a redirect, but I'm still a believer in the egalitarian Web and like to offer people who spend the time to join my discussions a chance to gain another inbound link. Why not?

Posted by: Dave Taylor at November 20, 2004 3:41 AM

At times I will change the link to point to http://chongqed.org/. This could quickly get old if I had a busier site but right now it is a fun thing to do and I just love their slogan!

Posted by: Karen at November 30, 2004 12:35 PM

I have had dozens of comments posted to several of my Blogs, especially b2bhints.com, todayshints.com, and getcouponshere.com that I have researched and deleted. I run on typepad and they put out a notice about this type of Spam. Every site must be careful as to what is posted on their site to protect their reputations and site integrity. Typepad allows you to block an IP and take other steps to protect your site.

Posted by: Steve at December 1, 2004 7:37 AM

Righto, Steve, but I think that blocking IPs is a losing proposition, personally, because spammers and similar folk have already demonstrated with their side-stepping of email spam IP blocking filters that they can move around faster than we can keep track of them.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at December 1, 2004 7:46 AM

It is a right royal pain. I currently have redirects on myself - though I hate the thought that I am not passing on PR properly to people who comment (not that thats a problem so far!)

This fits in with the new nofollow tag of course. I think a verification strategy is a way to go (ie check the links and flag them as ok?) and prior to that the links are redirected.

Got some interesting referrer spam recently - used a dodgy (ie non-http) link that on most browswers that autodiscover domains to pull up a site that comes up at the top of a search engine for the term...

I would guess there is no PR benifit but this is an ingenious way of getting traffic from people reading my site.

Posted by: frak at January 24, 2005 9:07 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!