I outsource some work overseas, but I’ve moved away from single contracts and now have someone on a regular long term contract to work with me, but this post isn’t about that, it’s about some of the spam I’ve been getting on this blog recently!
I use both Akismet and WP-SpamFree to keep this blog reasonably clean of spam, but more has been getting through recently (well through to the point where it’s held for moderation). I wanted to tell you about the two most recent (and persistent offenders)
Battery Man
The most recent items are all about batteries and hard drives on my posts about MyXerver and my PINES USB Battery Pack. The spammer merrily went through several posts telling me his iPod Touch was dead and would I help, until he got to my post about spam comments, when his spam comment with links to a battery site simply said:
i konw this is a spam comment..
I almost let that one through it was so funny! But really, if you used a real name (instead of having me believe your name is battery) I’d let you link to your site!
Outsourced Link Building
The second one was quite strange and I’m not entirely sure how much information to give out about it! Let me explain…
The poster systematically went through a lot of posts, using a real name and linking to a UK company (I’m not sure whether to release the name of the company as they were probably unaware of the problem!). To be fair I would have let the comments through if it hadn’t been:
a) so obviously systematic .
b) so many pointless comments like “great post”.
What I found annoying about it was the IP address was in Bangladesh, no problem there we all outsource, but the email address being used was for a UK SEO company – yes, yes I know they’re entitled to outsource as much as the rest of us. But I wonder if their customer knew that spammy comments would be used in their SEO campaign? I somewhat doubt it?
I debated revealing the UK SEO company (and I know a few people on Twitter have asked me to do so at the time I was watching the spammer do this), but I’m not going to for now.. I’ll probably drop them a link to this post and ask for their feedback?
Interestingly, I did a search for links to their client’s site in Google and only two blogs allowed comments through – nothing else. So it can’t be that effective surely? Do you have any experience of this on your blog? Contact us for more info or if you Looking for website designers in Cardiff
I’ve been having the same problem over the last couple of weeks. Lots of complimentary comments that link to some sites selling stuff that nobody wants. They all use different names but have the same sort of grammer and spelling mistakes, some are just duplicates across multiple posts.
Stuff like this never used to get through the filters so I’m wondering why it’s just started happening. I’ve turned on comment moderation for now until things quieten down.
.-= Matt´s last blog ..Working with the Twitter API in C++ =-.
I’ve only really had these two that the filters haven’t caught (although it caught some of their comments).
The latter one, I was really annoyed by, with it being instigated by a UK SEO company!
Dear Sir/Madam
How are you today? I hope that every thing is ok with you as it is my great pleasure to contact you in having communication with you.
Being based in India, we are able to provide our services within your affordability. We are handling offshore clients and providing them low cost link building services, organic SEO, Social Bookmaking, Directory and Article submission, web designing & web development services etc…..
We have a proven track record and are quite capable of ranking sites higher in search engines. For our success stories mail us and we will provide you a list of clients divided into industrial segments where we have delivered high quality SEO services.
Looking forward to hearing you.
Thank you & Best Regards
Bikash
This is why there was a problem I think, there’s a lot of people doing what you are doing Bikash!
The biggest problem though is when you mislead the customer, I’m quite sure that the client paying for SEO had no idea somebody would be paid to linkspam blogs?
About 4 years ago I was working for a company and many other businesses were outsourceing SEO and link building to us. I was the lead SEO and I can say that not many of my colleagues were doing the job properly. Link building looks easy, just like data processing, but it is not. It is very tricky and even just directory submissions is kind of expert work.
I totally agree with Fiona link building looks easy but if not done properly it can devaste you as well.
Link building should certainly be taken seriously. There is nothing wrong with blog commenting, as long it is serious commenting and not spam.