Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray
22 August 2007 – 9:13 am
I am in complete agreement with the no-nofollow/dofollow movement in the blogger community. I’ve had the dofollow plugin on this blog a few years now. I love getting comments, and I think that an outbound link is the least I can do for someone who has spent time on a meaningful reply to one of my posts.
There’s a growing trend, however, of gray-area comments that have spammy link text and urls but a real or at least a real-looking comment. And while I appreciate any and all comments, in some cases I’m starting to feel a bit used.
I classify commenters into several groups.
Friends
These are the people I know, either previously or through their long-time participation on my blog and others that I read. As far as I’m concerned, these guys could get away with just about any link text, but I doubt that anyone in this class would abuse the trust.
Genuine
These commenters don’t have an ulterior motive within 100 feet of them. They’ve stumbled on an interesting blog post, respond with something meaningful, and … get this … don’t even put in a URL.
My Samsung DLP posts are loaded with these comments:
Can’t say thanks enough. You just saved me a lot of money. I watched in horror as my tv flickered one night immediately followed by a loud grinding that did not go off until I unplugged the tv. Found this web page quickly and took apart my tv to find that my color wheel was actually missing one of the panes of glass (broken).
–”Brad” - no url
Savvy
These are real people that I don’t know, usually drive-by or one-time commenters, who are probably motivated by the link to their site. They may have been interested in what I wrote, or at least were somehow moved to comment and will generally write something thoughtful. They’ll post a URL and the link text is generally something not very spammy. Either their name or a company name.
Great job on starting to work out. I just got back into it myself in April and couldn’t be happier with my choice, it clears my mind and keeps me focused on my projects a lot more. I hope you get the same results.
–Palm Coast, palmcoastsource.com
The company name might be there for SEO purposes, but it won’t be hair-raising competitive search terms.
Monkeys and Bots
I’ll put these two in the same category because the result is the same. Total gibberish that’s posted either by someone in a sweat shop or by a computer robot.
Wow!!! Good job. Could I take some of yours triks to build my own site?
Sveta, bonfici.org/lesbian-story
Very few of these ever get through the spam filters and actually bother me very little these days, except I do need to look through them to make sure no good comments got picked up.
Users and Abusers
Finally, there are those who walk the fine line of spamminess by using the goodwill of the blogger to allow search engines to follow comment links. These are ones who could otherwise be classified as “Savvy” commenters, but have crossed the line. They post something that looks real, or may even be real, but load up the name and url with spammy links.
but, what I have noticed is that Zappos is creating many duplicate pages by using these subdomains. As they list same products and content as that on main site. But strangely all that duplicate content ranks okay. hmmm
–Clarks, clarksshoes.us
This shoe guy has become a fairly frequent commenter, posting as “Clarks” and “Steve Madden”. Real names that may get by some bloggers, but as someone who promotes shoes, they caught my attention quickly. Vlad has asked about this same guy in the No nofollow, I follow, dofollow community on BUMPzee.
Sometimes they’re pretty good comments, like the above one. At least they seem like a real comment, but the more I watch them, they’re usually just repeating back what I’ve written about.
I’m inclined to let these go the first time at the risk of encouraging them.
But what if they keep coming back with the same sort of behavior?
And this is the crux of this blog post. What do we do about these guys?
Look the other way?
Delete them?
Edit them and remove the offending link?
Selectively no-follow them?
Is there a plugin that allows me to nofollow just certain comments? If not, do we need one?
Bloggers, what do you do with these guys?
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40 Responses to “Blog Commenters: White, Black, and Gray”
I had one comment from the guy, checked his URL and thought “datafeed site” with no personal information.
That breaks my comments policy as I require a link to a site that gives me information about who is leaving the comment.
I sent him an email and the email bounced.
I use Spam Karma, plus a plugin for Spam Karma which enables the default spam control so that you can hold all first time commenters in moderation.
It is adding a little additional work, but I am less worried about links, and more worried about a spam comment being sent to someone who has subscribed to comments, even with my disclaimers in every subscribe to comments email.
A better option possibly would be to have a plugin for Spam Karma that forces an email confirmation for the first comment.
Blogs on Weblogs Inc use that, and I think it is also, or has been an optional feature on Moveable Type for some time.
Ultimately the affiliate community in many ways is in the ultimate position to clamp down on spam, because most spammers are doing it to promote affiliate programs. The problem would be false positives, but if a network received complaints across multiple niches from the same affiliate account, it could raise a real red flag.
By Andy Beard on Aug 22, 2007
If the comment otherwise is on topic and relevant I like this answer: “Edit them and remove the offending link”
Just make sure your comment policy indicates that you reserve all rights to edit or delete comments that seem spammy to you. Subjective? Yes, but it covers you for comments that make you uneasy.
FYI: your script isn’t accepting all valid email addresses. See this format for errors:
name descriptor@domain.com
By TDavid on Aug 22, 2007
This guy caught my attention when he commented on my web hosting review blog. The comment was exceptionally good so I wanted to feature it in one of the upcoming post, until of course I clicked through to the website and realized that the name was fake.
I’ve noticed him on several blogs and since they all where from no-nofollow community I’ve posted there. But I did what Andy did, I sent him an e-mail and after it bounced I marked the comment as spam.
By Vlad on Aug 22, 2007
I should have also mentioned Lucia’s dofollow plugin, it helps on those longer phrased anchor text links, and for links from commenters who are not regular.
At the end of the day the worst possible thing a spammer can do is target the community on Bumpzee, because there are enough smart affiliates and bloggers to spot a junk site in seconds.
By Andy Beard on Aug 22, 2007
Maybe that Clarks guy was a bad example.
What if he did respond to the email? And what if hie site did indicate who he is, Andy?
That doesn’t change the comment itself and its spamminess. You don’t mind people keyword stuffing their comment names?
Thanks for the reminder to check out Lucia’s plugin. I’ll do that.
By Scott on Aug 22, 2007
Here is a relevant example
Shaun from Hobo SEO had his first few comment links deleted because I didn’t know him, he signed off as Hobo SEO, and the link was to a legitimate PR7 site that wasn’t “personal”
He even admits himself that when he first started commenting on community blogs it was heavily for the SEO benefit…. but the community grew on him.
He is now one of my most regular readers, I was the first person he added to his blogroll on his new personal blog, and I recently told him he should anchor spam me more because he is in a competition with another SEO for a particular term and could use the links.
He was also the first person to ever call me a spammer in a classic post “Andy Beard - Spammer!” which I subsequently linked to.
By Andy Beard on Aug 22, 2007
I am actually not sure what I would have done if I got back the e-mail. Asked him to get a blog?
On the other hand I am not sure what would I have done if he left John or Bob as his name.
By Vlad on Aug 22, 2007
Scott - just curious, but why is the plus sign being deleted from comments? LOL. My example above of the comment form here not accepting email is missing the plus sign.
By TDavid on Aug 22, 2007
Damned if I know. ask Matt Mullenweg.
I had no idea pluses were getting stripped.
Please pardon this little test… :Begin:~!@#$%^&*()_ :End:
[added]well look at that. There was a plus after the underscore. Bizaare.[/added]
By Scott on Aug 22, 2007
It has to be a plugin you’re using that’s doing it because the core wordpress doesn’t do anything bizarre with the plus sign. So Matt isn’t who to consult, it’s the plugins you are using that have something to do with comments.
By TDavid on Aug 22, 2007
Also, the default core Wordpress accepts the plus sign in email addresses.
How to figure out which one? Carefully go through your list of plugins that have something to do with comments, disable them, and then burn a test comment to figure out which specific plugin is the culprit. Somebody’s code, probably an overanxious regular expression, is axing the plus sign in comments and overriding the default email address field for leaving comments so that a valid email address with a plus in it cannot be left
One you discover the culprit, you can drop the plugin author a line of the issue.
By TDavid on Aug 22, 2007
I was joking man, wasn’t really blaming Matt!
My guess is that rather than a plugin (which I’m not using many of) is that it’s the K2 template and it’s Ajaxy comments that’s eating the plus signs. Just a guess.
By Scott on Aug 22, 2007
Another error. Man, this K2 template or whatever must be buggy.
I got a CAPTCHA request with no actual captcha image showing with my last comment (that still shows awaiting moderation).
Feel free to delete these off topic comments, BTW, I’m just giving you info you might find useful for debugging and this is more convenient than chasing down your email and going that route. Here’s a screenshot of what I received:
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/tmp/broken-captcha1.jpg
By TDavid on Aug 22, 2007
I am noticing a lot of these too. Because a few sometimes get through the spam filters and people don’t know they are spam at first, I’m planning an extension to help us catch spam we may have let through. (I just need to get off my heinie and write it. I’ve been too amused by Mahalo to write plugins. )
By lucia on Aug 22, 2007
Call me Rico Savvy, baby. lol.
I like the break down a lot here Scott. And the commentary on each category of commenters is great. You’ve kind of solidified some things I’ve been thinking about since we all started talking about SEOing our names in comments off and on a few weeks back.
I think I may be a little more mercenary than some others here, all of whom I nonetheless have respect for. I don’t draw the line so clearly at whether the link is SEO’ed so much as whether it is SEO’ed advantageously to me.
An SEO’ed link to a blog theme directory (or even a blog theme shop) along with a good post would fly by with no problems, because the SEO works to my advantage as well. But an SEO’ed link to a shoe store on the same blog would have to run a much more stringent quality test. But still, if the comment added genuine value I might let it go.
By Blog Strokes on Aug 22, 2007
Good post. I agree with everything you said and I understand the “drive by” perception of many dofollow bloggers - because it is often true. But there is also the fact that in all forms of collective communication like blogs at the very beginning, before comment spam was common, or say email lists in days of old, it is very common to have a few prolific commenters and many that never comment (and then type out a comment and then continuing to read for months or longer before ever commenting again).
For that reason, I just worry the spammers may make dofollowers not take commenters seriously without multiple comments. I don’t have a solution, because the drive by comments are much more frequent (in my experience) but I just want to pass that idea on so people understand it is not really an odd behavior to have very limited comments from many people. It is not a prima facia case that someone is a drive by commenter if they only post once and you don’t see another comment - I guess that is all I really want to say.
I think the tactic I will use to be more likely to delete the url if I have a question and have the comment posted. Occasionally, I am sure someone will think it is “unfair” that I removed the link to whatever but it is my blog so…
By John Hunter on Aug 22, 2007
Great point John. Due to some of the types of old posts that I have here, I’m lucky that I get many first-time and one-time commmenters every day. Therefore, I have a hard time putting up more barriers to them, like moderating first-timers or no-following them.
Andy’s got the best reason for moderation, though, so that people who have subscribed for email alerts won’t get the spam in email.
As for deleting the URL, yeah, it’s your blog. I agree and may go that route myself. Or remove the comment entirely (though sometimes they are good comments)
And Mr. Rico Savvy, I’d say you’ve reached friend status here and many places. I didn’t mention it, but I’m with you on being concerned about SEO effects of having the outbound links be somewhat relevant as well.
Lucia, I like the features in your plugin, which I’ve downloaded. I’ll give it a go and check it out.
Thanks for the comments, I DO appreciate it.
By Scott on Aug 23, 2007
A selective nofollow sounds like a good idea. And I definitely think it’s a fair practice. But it may turn into more extra work than you want. But then again, maybe it’s easier than I’m envisioning.
By PublisherZilla on Aug 23, 2007
Well, comments are such an essential part of blogging I don’t think it would should be down to the editor or publisher to moderate it.
The kind of plugin that would be useful should be incorporate community policing, whereby comments are rated or - by visitors/users and if comments are -3 for eg, they will automatically be deleted.
Now that would be a cool thing to add to wordpress!
By Kun Dang on Aug 23, 2007
The problem with those kinds of things, Kun, is that you end up with situations like you have a digg where a group of people suppress ideas based on philosophical or political agendas rather than actual merit or junk/nonjunk status.
By Blog Strokes on Aug 23, 2007
I always delete posts with urls in them unless there from regular visitors.
By stubsy on Aug 23, 2007
Kun, I agree that comments are important and that a blogger shouldn’t edit out comments just because they didn’t like what was written, such as criticism or disagreement. That would hurt the credibility and integrity of the blogger.
But we’re talking about abuse here. When you go to someone’s house, you don’t necessarily agree with them, but you do show some courtesy and respect. Spammers, overt or not, show neither.
Stubsy, now that’s pretty harsh. I think you’re turning potential new regular visitors away. Putting in URLs is a part of commenting on blogs. It tells you and the readers who I am. If you deleted a comment of mine for no good reason, I’d certainly not comment again and would probably not come back.
By Scott on Aug 23, 2007
TDavid, thanks for the info, I appreciate it. Just found your moderated comments and released them. I’ll leave them here at least until I can dig deeper.
By Scott on Aug 23, 2007
I’m inclined to agree with the policy of editing links if they appear to link to something undesirable or spammy. I think a selective nofollow is too generous.
I had a commenter the other day who left his name as “Moby” and linked to a very new, as in one “article” free Blogger blog about, you guessed it, Moby and where to download some song or another. The interesting thing was that the comment asked “how do I add your posts to Digg, I can’t figure it out”.
Sneaky. To me it appeared to be a blatant link juice attempt. Needless to say having followed the link, the URL was deleted but I left the comment with a polite answer. There was of course, never a follow up comment from “Moby”. There are more and more people using Blogger “blogs” with no content, filled with Adsense, crap pages and they seem to think that lots of links from other sites will bring them results in the SERPS. I know, dream on, but someone out there obviously plants these ideas in their thick heads.
I don’t feel inclined to give anyone any kind of link if I think they are chancers, and neither do I think, as one commenter has already stated, that I am duty bound to publish an all encompassing comments policy, I’m tired of comment and trackback spam attempts and if I think something looks suspect, I’ll deal with it however I see fit.
I’m like all bloggers, I enjoy thought provoking and useful comments, I don’t edit out people who disagree with my opinions, argue against my views or correct my mistakes but human comment spam is really irritating.
By Maurice (TheCaymanHost) on Aug 23, 2007
Oh and Stubsy I agree with Scott, your policy sucks, particularly as you feel at liberty to leave your own URL on other people’s blogs. That sir, we call hypocrisy where I come from.
By Maurice (TheCaymanHost) on Aug 23, 2007
It would be easy enough to write a “report comment” plugin, let the community comment and still leave it to the blogger to decide. This could help quite a bit with what I call “Daniel” spam– that is stuff that we are all seeing but eventually realizie is spam. (Yet, somehow, we aren’t sure the first time.)
I’m going to be making another pass through my plugin. The hard part is never the coding, it’s deciding what features are most useful, worth the cpu and worth having people spend the few minutes to “learn”.
By lucia on Aug 23, 2007
Its indeed a quality post given the length of the article.the blogger has taken great care to inform everyone who reads this article.spamming of messages is truly a problem.good job man.keep it up!!!!!!
By Clebsch Gordan on Aug 23, 2007
To tell you the truth, I found your site because I was googling using “dofollow movement”. I have an idea in mind that I will not comment on post that does not interest me, either I could not understand the post… or I just don’t have something to say about the post. Just like you.. I hate spamming comments.
PS: I like your category… maybe you can tell me on which category I belong
By Reztar on Aug 27, 2007
Given that you were searching for dofollow, I’d guess “savvy”. Why not stick around and work your way toward “friends”.
By Scott on Aug 27, 2007
Great stuff this do follow no follow ive been a fan since tha start
By shazad on Aug 27, 2007
I think it’s a tough issue. Now certain posts stick out like a sore thumb - ones with no useful content littered with Viagra references. Others may be tough to make a call on. Take this post for example, the name field is the name of my site, which also happens to have a competitive keyword in the name. Is this spam? Is this coincidence? Or is this a gray area?
I think it all comes down to time management. If you are willing to put in the time to police your comments for blatant spam, then that’s fine. If it becomes too much, then you may want to go back to the dreaded nofollow at some point when it gets to be too much of a burden that distracts you from more productive opportunities.
For now, it’s your site so you can keep on using your judgment!
By Guerilla Internet Marketing on Aug 28, 2007
Brian, I am not sure about Scott, but you have an about page on your blog that clearly identifies you as a real person, and I wouldn’t begrudge someone a relevant anchor link… unless you happened to make comments on 3 or 4 more “dofollow” posts in the next 30 minutes clearly identifying you as someone who is working their way down a dofollow list.
Subscribe to comments can be used in all kinds of ways.
By Andy Beard on Aug 28, 2007
Guerilla (or Brian),
I’m with Andy on this. The fact that you use keywords in your post’s link text doesn’t bother me so much.
Since you’ve put yourself up there as an example, let’s look at it. Sure, it’s keyword stuffed link text. But it’s not that competitive, and it’s a “real” blog with someone real behind it and not something that’s apparent sole purpose is to grab search engine rankings (judgement call).
Besides, an Internet Marketer blog is relevant to this one and to this post. So it “feels” ok.
If this blog was about sex and pr0n, I probably wouldn’t mind the comments with “sex toys” in the link text and comments from “Guerilla Internet Marketers” would probably just seem like that, guerilla internet marketing, and out of place.
To me, comments are the best part of blogging, so I’ll make time. The Viagra stuff never sees the light of day anyway, so it’s the gray area stuff that I must make judgement calls on.
By Scott on Aug 28, 2007
I am quite selective in my blog posts but even if I can see that someone has posted just to get a link back I will approve it as long as it is relevant and of some value. Only today I just removed the nofollow tag from my blog. Like you I think that if someone has left a meaningful reply then they deserve a direct link back to their website. Good karma I think.
By Paula on Sep 9, 2007
I know exactly how you feel my man.
So many people have taken the fun out of blogging all together. I remember back when you got a comment on your blog, it was actually someone speaking their mind about what you posted, but any more people just come by and do “drive by” commenting just so people will see their name, maybe click on a link and wind up on a page that is just full of all these products in which most are junk, or illegally sod internet marketing products.
The worst part about it, is they usually dont even spend the time to make the comment worth a darn ….
Actually thinking about it that’s not the worst. The worst is all the spam posts that I get on my own blog that are nothing but links to sex toys and viagra, created by these commenting bots. Thank goodness for the spam plugins!!
And if that doesnt take the cake, what about these marketers that cant even take the time themselves to actually post a comment, and they hire these people from other countries to make posts to blogs using their information.
What was the net come too …?
Michael D Price
http://michaeldprice.com
By Michael D Price on Oct 11, 2007
So far, I’ve only had two “questionable” ones. Everyone else is obvious. These two guys link to a site that is actually moderately relevant, though, and I just left them. And the link is only through their name…it is just clear that they haven’t really read the entry and are responding predominantly to the title.
One thing that did tick me off a little happened yesterday…I’m in the middle of moving my site which is abundantly clear if you go to the old one. Some guy came to my site, presumably from one of the various blogrolls out there, and cursed at me for not following when I was a part of the community. I have seen a lot of that toward people who either have it set up wrong or follow for so many comments.
My reaction was to leave the community with one blog and wait and see with the other. I do not know who these people are, but aggressiveness is not going to help the community at all.
By Dana on Nov 3, 2007
I personally think that using the nofollow can be good, however, it then punishes those of us who actually comment because we care and are interested. I sometimes wonder when I see blogs that have a nofollow link. Why do they even have the comments on there? What about their loyalty to their readers who come back time and again?
I just started reading this blog and think it is very informative. There are a lot out there with not much relevance. Thank you for posting this great post to help us bloggers out there.
By Jason Pearson on Jan 11, 2008
Jason, most people probably don’t even know what nofollow is and it’s on by default.
That’s sort of the reason for the whole dofollow movement, to help people understand this.
By Scott on Jan 11, 2008
Ah, yes you are right Scott. They don’t know. It is unfortunate that they are not informed of this nofollow. This is definitely an interesting controversy on the Internet lately and has been intriguing to read people’s opinions on it.
By Jason Pearson on Feb 12, 2008
NoFollow is nothing more than a restriction. It is unnecessary, and unhelpful to the community as a whole
By Vancouver Web Design on Feb 24, 2008