On the cutting edge of spam

On my work blog, Mount Blogmore, we get dozens of spam comments per day. Our automated spam filter catches many of them, but enough get through that I get an amusing look at the strategies of spammers.

Unlike spam e-mail, where the goal is to get hapless netizens to click on a link or visit a site, most blog comment spam is designed to game search engines. Google and other search engines rely on “reputation,” as determined by links. If reputable sites like nytimes.com link to someone, Google and other search engines think that site is more important. If I were to link to the site, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.

But if thousands of blogs are linking to a site, it might make a difference. So spammers submit blog comments with innocuous content – but a link to their website in the user info. If you approve the innocent-seeming comment, your site is playing a small part to make someone’s site (sometimes shady, sometimes wholly legitimate) more visible.

The most common tactic I see is flattery, like these comments:

Thank you for writing this impressive subject material, I ‘m so thrilled about seeing your updates tomorrow!

and

I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but great topic. I needs to spend some time learning much more or understanding more. Thanks for magnificent info I was looking for this info for my mission.

Sometimes the flatterers try harder:

You’ve definitely started quite earning techniques caseful that amazing blog , It had been extremely fascinating for read. Can not let it ready to find out avoid fighting it reveal within the following school week. My apologies for the huge phone, merely Company truly supportive the following internet site , and after that a proven the, too since the superb reviews another rather men and women have written, credibly will support someone set just in case that it’s the really ripe selection for you personally. May be the real bestitem.

This one really jumped out at me, because the computer or person writing it took the time to personalize the spam by including a link to the post’s URL:

I learned about how amazing social boomarking sites like Reddit is for bloggers for getting visitors, so I bookmarked your site and mine to help us both out. I bookmarked this page: (http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/app/blogs/politicalblog/?p=7387). Hope you are fine with this, there is a chance your site could trend and you will receive tons of readers that appreciate your articles as much as I do! I would greatly appreciate if you would approve my comment as a return favor? Good luck, and keep blogging!

I’m also amused by the foreign-language ones, like this one promoting a webcam site:

Een webcam chat kan er voor zorgen dat je iemand kunt zien, je kunt zien met welke houding iemand een berichtje naar jou aan het typen is. Laat diegene een verliefde blik zien of laat diegene meer zien dat hij onge? ...

It went on like that for about 200 words.

I loved this next one for its slyness:

I believe one of your advertisings caused my browser to resize, you might want to put that on your blacklist.

Why thank you, fellow anti-spam warrior! I will express my thanks by visiting free-viagra-whatever.com.

A few other comments also took the tech assistance route:

hi I ran into a problem on your blog, the RSS feed doesn’t appear to be displaying like other sites normally do in my RSS reader. For some reason it’s a bit buggy when using Newsgator. Either way I still liked the site.

Interestingly, the more plausible spam comments get, the less obviously spammy the links seem to get.

Other spam comments are helpful (if irrelevant to the topic) infodumps:

The signs and symptoms of West Nile collection from gentle infection to extreme brain illness. This illness is regarded as to become an epidemic. It truly is popular in places exactly where the West Nile virus dwells. Even in these locations, people today don’t encounter any signs and symptoms on the illness. Folks don’t endure significantly even when there an outbreak in an region. About one in each and every 300 consumers are afflicted by infection for the west nile virus. This illness from time to time is asymptomatic. The signs and symptoms selection from gentle infection to serious brain issues.Many thanks regarding this particular data.

Instead of facts, some threw out off-topic opinions:

Family guy is the best show on tv… No question.

And the borderline-incomprehensible:

Kelsey Grammer heads for the game, one more time. You’d think shortly after three or more attempts, this individual might know a lot better, nevertheless an individual won’t teach the fella. We’ll find out precisely how very long this particular individual takes, I suppose.

Mount Blogmore is a political blog, so I was most impressed by the commenters that expressed a coherent political opinion:

800 abortions within California each and every day of the week… This has got to be stopped.

And particularly this one, posted in the midst of the Battle of Wisconsin:

Unions form the backbone of the country. There might not be numerous workers left, however they fight with regard to workers’ privileges. These types of privileges, then, tend to be translated to additional non-union jobs. Without unions, we all have been just individual workers trying to fight for the rights.

Both of those comments were on unrelated topics. But in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake, Blogmore included a post looking at nuclear power. And on that post, we soon received a minor flood of on-topic posts, with links going to odd sites but not ones immediately obvious as spammers:

absolutely horrible…our prayers should be with the survivors

And:

In US u can text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10 for Japan earthquake and Pacific Tsunami.

And:

The individuals of Jamaica express their sympathy to our ‘family’ in Japan. Take heed world, and know that all men are equal regardless of race or creed. What can take place to 1 man, nation or race can well as happen to any other. We are all brothers and sisters in this struggle filled world and only the coming together of the each and everybody can alleviate the tension and pain of an additional.

These were so subtle, I’m not even 100% certain they’re spam, unlike all the others. But they’re from unknown users, are commenting on topic but not really connecting to the ongoing discussion, and have odd links – plus, they got flagged by our spam filter, so I’m presuming they’re high-end comment spam.

The division between the simple flattery spam, which makes up a good 95% of all spam comments Blogmore gets, and the other stuff with more effort, is interesting to me, especially given that the higher-end stuff sometimes promotes semi-legitimate entities.

In fact, the New York Times recently published a long article looking at mass-market retailer J.C. Penney’s briefly successful efforts to game Google’s system with this kind of black-hat “search engine optimization.” It’s not just penny-stock scams and fake erectile disfunction pill pushers playing this game; I saw car dealerships and legitimate-seeming online retailers among the Blogmore comment spam links.

After the Times story ran, the online marketing company ClickZ ran an article called “JCPenney’s SEO No-No - How You Can Avoid a Similar Fate.”

Among its advice: “In SEO, patience is everything. Anything that appears to be a “quick win” is likely going to be detrimental in the long run. It takes time to achieve quality, relevant links, and to sustain rankings over time.”

And: “Focus on quality over quantity. A few links from trusted sources will go much further than hundreds of links of smaller, less relevant sites.”

My unscientific impression that the more legitimate sites had higher quality spam comments seems to suggest that something like that is already underway. And at the extreme positive end of the spam I noted at Blogmore, the line between spam and legitimate comment was really blurred. If I go around joining blog and forum discussions and put dhmontgomery.com in all my profiles, that might increase hits for dhmontgomery.com when people search for things like “David Montgomery.” (I’m currently buried under people like the president of the Philadelphia Phillies, a Yale labor history professor and a 19th Century history textbook author.)

I could even be making those comments for the prime purpose of optimizing the search engine rank of dhmontgomery.com, and I don’t think many people would call that illegitimate – it’d be clever marketing. If I went around posting “Hey, great blog. Check out my website at dhmontgomery.com” on every forum I found, that would be spam. But making topical posts for the primary reason of getting your link out there doesn’t seem inherently wrong, as long as the posts really are topical. And of course, making topical posts takes way more effort than pasting the same thing in.

There is, as far as I can see, one piece of upside to this deluge of blog comment spam: If I ever feel in the dumps, I can always log on to my blog and see dozens of people doing nothing but telling me how awesome I and my writing is. Some days, a spambot can be one’s closest friend.