Comment Spamming Warning By Google !

[intelinside]

I just came across this post on GWMC:

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Hard facts about comment spam

I am just curious how they will implement this because this way people will be able to comment spam about their competitor's websites and get it banned. What do you people think?

[Fernando Veloso]

Another DUMB move by Google.

So now WE need to:

- be on computer 24/7 to check whats happening
- add our sites to webmasters tools (NOT!!)
- Request a reconsideration (WTF?) IF a competitor decides to SPAM using our site's link

Really interesting, don't you think?

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by intelinside

I just came across this post on GWMC:

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Hard facts about comment spam

I am just curious how they will implement this because this way people will be able to comment spam about their competitor's websites and get it banned. What do you people think?

That post was commented around here heavily back in December.

Just my opinion...but...

(1) Google says a lot of stuff that they just don't follow
(2) I don't know how Google could ascertain whether it is a valuable comment or not
(3) I'll believe it when I see it
(4) Google won't penalize you for incoming links that you can't control

[Intrepreneur]

Google are correctly identifying a problem and warning others of this problem so they don't end up wasting their time with it. Also remember Google did an update "Caffiene" so things like this were sure to follow. Maybe it's good advice.. just wait and see because the SEO game is changing and most likely for the better.

[intelinside]

I don't think they will implement it soon or ever. Why don't try comment spam for 'google.com' and get it banned

[qwekelly]

Google will probably just devalue the links, but I think they've said this before.

[capone2009]

Quote from the author in the comment section:

Considering what we said above, it's useless to think of harming your competitor's ranking by spamming comments with their name, since it usually won't affect their ranking if their sites are complying with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

So it doesn't hurt your site, it rather just doesn't count i think.

[Ryan6]

Seen threads on this before. If you look at their example, you can see no comment with just several links for something like "buy viagra" or whatever it was. There's a big difference between dumping dodgy links without any comments and actually taking time to provide a relevant and worthy comment with a link back to your site.

[Nemanja]

you don't need to worry about that, just do some non spam comments and comment only on related blogs/posts

Nemanja

[intelinside]

Why don't blogs remove the 'website' field from the comment form or prevent the Anchor tag in the comments fields altogether to counter this spamming issue?

[Fernando Veloso]

Considering what we said above, it's useless to think of harming your competitor's ranking by spamming comments with their name, since it usually won't affect their ranking if their sites are complying with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Useless?

Usually??

Complying?



Do i need to say more? Read again if you need to, BUT be sure to read it again.

[Wakunahum]

This article has to do with comments that YOU allow on YOUR OWN site.

What Google is saying is that if you leave comments on automatically approving them, you will end up with alot of spam. You are allowing these links to be on your site by letting them post there which makes your page look junky.

Potentially, they will rank your page lower because you allow this to happen on a page you control.

This has nothing to do with comment spamming your competitors or your own personal comment spamming if that's something that you use. It has to do with what's on your site.

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by Wakunahum

This article has to do with comments that YOU allow on YOUR OWN site.

What Google is saying is that if you leave comments on automatically approving them, you will end up with alot of spam. You are allowing these links to be on your site by letting them post there which makes your page look junky.

Potentially, they will rank your page lower because you allow this to happen on a page you control.

This has nothing to do with comment spamming your competitors or your own personal comment spamming if that's something that you use. It has to do with what's on your site.

Nop. Read again please.

If I spammed comment fields of third party sites, what should I do?

If you used this approach in the past and

[Wakunahum]

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Nop. Read again please.

I know that's in the article.

But I have a firm belief the search engines would be ruined if you could spam a competitor's link and hurt them. It would just be everyone spamming everyone else's stuff to ruin their rankings.

It would just be a matter of knocking off the top rankings by spamming comments which would ruin Google's search business.

[bgmacaw]

Yawn....

If you make your site a linking "free for all", yes, your links will be devalued and you may eventually be deindexed. It doesn't matter if it's a blog, forum or whatever.

If you use "free for all" links on blogs as your primary linking method your site will lose ranking because those links won't be counted or very devalued.

Nothing new here at all.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Yawn....

Now that's a good response.

If you've been leaving comments in blogs, hoping it will
pump you up with google, you have no idea what type
of company google was and is. They have always devalued
blog comment links. They have even tried to get people to
stop allowing such comments. Came up with a tag all their
own, nofollow, and hoped it would work. Unfortunately,
the nofollow warped into something never intended and
spam comments keep proliferating. Google IMHO has now
really, really just delineated all links in comments. Links for
links sake are not going to help with google. They help with
traffic, but that's a whole other ballgame. If you are spamming,
er...leaving your link in blog comments, just stop. You are
and have been wasting your time.

People here waste their time looking for "dofollow" blogs, even
though it's like hunting for unicorns. They don't exist. People and
this mentality have ruined blog posting.

I have even gone a complete 180. I don't allow comments. Period.
Even the spam-without-spamming-was-still-spamming. I have
instituted site submission directories and forums.

Paul

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by paulgl

People here waste their time looking for "dofollow" blogs, even
though it's like hunting for unicorns. They don't exist.

O really?

[Charley Brown]

I'm not buying it.

The same was said for directories/site submissions/forum links, but those still have value.

They will say the same about social bookmarking as well...

its all about trying to keep their algorithm under wraps and secretive.

Essentially its all about diversity.

[halfpoint]

Generally speaking, when Google says something means one thing it usually means the opposite.

The only reason so many people continue to leave blog comments is because they flat out work. Unless Google has plans to devalue every outgoing from link from Wordpress and other blog platforms then the blog comments are still going to work.

Taken from the link in the OP;

FACT: Having original and useful content and making your site search engine friendly is the best strategy for better ranking. With an appealing site, you'll be recognized by the web community as a reliable source and links to your site will build naturally.

Oh so that's how you do it. Stop building links! Sit back, relax and let them come magically and then you'll be ranking well for all your desired keywords in no time!!

I won't believe any of this until I see it.

[searchnology]

You see it everyday....Digg, Last.fm, Facebook and sites like them didn't build links themselves, their links grew organically because of their quality content/features. The truth is that you only need to artificially build links when you have a tiny site in a tiny niche with little content. Most folks that need to do this have small blogs, single sales pages or thin ecommerce sites.

Originally Posted by Pat Jackson

Oh so that's how you do it. Stop building links! Sit back, relax and let them come magically and then you'll be ranking well for all your desired keywords in no time!!

I won't believe any of this until I see it.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by searchnology

You see it everyday....Digg, Last.fm, Facebook and sites like them didn't build links themselves, their links grew organically because of their quality content/features.

These sites bought publicity because they had significant venture capital funding to pay for it. They didn't use "build it and they will come" but various methods of paid traffic generation.

Others used link baiting and similar techniques, which are also effective. Others were launched in association with pre-existing authority sites or on personal popularity within a niche or in general.

Only a tiny handful of sites got there on the 'they will come' model. For most of us, trying this method will be a long wait for a train don't come.

[DASHBOY]

That is a bad news for all the webmasters. But, I don't think that it can be implemented. Because, as other guys told above, competitors can do the same. However, there are possibilities to omit or devaluate those kind of links.

[MusicisMagic]

This makes no sense. Clearly, it can't happen because of the competitor sabotage factor.

[EvcRo]

Originally Posted by MusicisMagic

This makes no sense. Clearly, it can't happen because of the competitor sabotage factor.

I 100% agree. This is just another move by Google to calm down spammers and ofc they won't succeed as long spamming takes 1 button click in an automated program.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

O really?

Yes, newsflash: There is no such thing as a dofollow blog.

If you leave a link that does not have a nofollow tag with
it, it does not become a dofollow. I have no idea where
people think that came from. Google chooses to follow
links at their discretion. They also choose to ignore links
at their discretion. There is no such thing as "dofollow."

Why would you think google would not choose to put a
value on links? Their whole search model is based on what
is the most relevant site to show.

And everybody here should applaud google for evolving how
it values the truly best sites. If you have one, good for you.
If you don't, well, work harder at doing the right things.

Blog comments, when you really think about it, should have
little to do with ranking a relevant site!

Your site has fantastic, fresh, unique, worthy, great content.
And you don't care about losing out to some fool who spams
blogs?

Paul

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Blog comments, when you really think about it, should have
little to do with ranking a relevant site!

l

But the fact remains that blog comments DO help search engine rankings. Google DOES follow the links and I DO get linkjuice from them.

Until they don't, I will continue to use them.

[searchnology]

I don't think there is such a thing as "build it and they will come" for any serious website. I was specifically pointing out to the poster that natural link building is actually common-place if you have good content/product but every serious business is usually also engaged in some sort of publicity/advertising/joint ventures whether they go about building proactive backlinks or not.

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

These sites bought publicity because they had significant venture capital funding to pay for it. They didn't use "build it and they will come" but various methods of paid traffic generation.

Others used link baiting and similar techniques, which are also effective. Others were launched in association with pre-existing authority sites or on personal popularity within a niche or in general.

Only a tiny handful of sites got there on the 'they will come' model. For most of us, trying this method will be a long wait for a train don't come.

[MarkAse]

It would make sense that comments having a larger amount of characters would give you more value then a comment with just a set of links. I will say, I think they have already stated they now devalue links that are posted one after the other, this seems like much the same thing to me.

I'm 100% sure that leaving an intelligent, well thought out comment, is always going to help, at least in some small way, in SERPS.

[intelinside]

Originally Posted by MarkAse

I'm 100% sure that leaving an intelligent, well thought out comment, is always going to help, at least in some small way, in SERPS.

I am with you. Google can add more intelligence in reading those comments using LSI algo to check out if it's a spam comment or a good comment.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by searchnology

You see it everyday....Digg, Last.fm, Facebook and sites like them didn't build links themselves, their links grew organically because of their quality content/features. The truth is that you only need to artificially build links when you have a tiny site in a tiny niche with little content. Most folks that need to do this have small blogs, single sales pages or thin ecommerce sites.

The truth is that you only have so much room at the top of serps for truly great content.

Google had to have some way to make a further distinction between site pages that all had great content. The way they came up with had to do with links. Backlinks and their quality became the new barometer after great content for determining relevance.

Now that everyone and their next door internet marketer has gone after backlinks who knows what else they will come up with.

If you think about it the majority of web sites on the Internet will never build sufficient backlinks naturally to mean anything.

I mean if you look at something like "green tea" let's say. Google shows 7,780,000 web sites that presumably have "green tea" and exactly so in their anchor text.

Out of those 7,780,000 how much room is at the top? Exactly 10.

Do you think there is a possibility that at least 1000 have great content about green tea? Yup.

There is no way that great content by itself can be used as a determiner for ranking. There's too many with great content.

And there is no way that most sites will ever naturally deserve or get backlinks. There are just too many that have the same sort of content.

In this case over 7,000,000 out of which there are probably thousands with great content about green tea.

We have to build backlinks. Not because we are so small or unworthy of a backlink naturally but because so many people have developed so many sites with decent content on them. We live in an internet world that is overrun with decent content (and these days with spam too ).

Most sites will never be a Digg, or Facebook, or any of the others that build natural backlinks the way we all should in Google's ideal world. A world that is neither real or possible.

Carlos

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Only a tiny handful of sites got there on the 'they will come' model. For most of us, trying this method will be a long wait for a train don't come.

The build it and they will come methodology is utter foolishness. It is illogical and something more akin to being useful in a fairy tale than a serious strategy for internet marketing.

Imagine if you will for a minute if one were to take such a ridiculous notion and apply it in the real world.

A mom and pop business goes up...say a clothing store. How long do you think it would take for such a store to fold up and fail if it used the build it and they will come approach? Not long at all!

In the real world businesses MUST pursue their customers. They must assertively get out and initiate to find and retain customers and to keep bringing them back. They don't sit on their butts and wait around for customers to come to them.

That's utterly foolish in the real world and one would be laughed out of existence for suggesting among experienced marketers that such a passive approach is either useful or that business should be done this way.

Of course these days you never know. There's a lot of foolishness going around LOL.

Yet in the internet world we have somehow come to accept what is truly foolish as the new mantra of how things should be done. A mantra put out by Google.

Utter foolishness.

If a business cannot survive and cannot succeed without making an assertive effort to market itself and publicize itself to potential customers in the real world neither can it truly succeed in the internet world if it does not likewise make a concerted effort to market itself through the means that bring it's web site to the attention of potential visitors. With respect to an organic listing in the Yellow pages of the search engine, backlinks is what earns us a place in that book. Unless we pay for backlinks we must acquire them in some other way. But whatever way we acquire them...they must be acquired. Or we will fail.

I am not one to do just anything for the sake of money. I believe in getting backlinks in a way that does not violate the Google TOS (at least in a way that Google will come down on) and does not violate my conscience. I think it can be done and I am doing it. With honesty and integrity. But we must all be assertive in getting them.

To think that we can just build a site and expect our potential customers (visitors) to eventually find us on their own and that this is the way to internet success is the epitome of foolishness or incredible naive.

Carlos

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by intelinside

I don't think they will implement it soon or ever. Why don't try comment spam for 'google.com' and get it banned

What exactly do you see them implementing? There is nothing on that entire page that says anything at all about implementing anything. They are simply pointing out a problem and how they feel it best to address it on the part of blog owners who are overrun with spam commenting.

There is nothing to get worked up about on that page. Absolutely nothing as far as I can see.

They don't talk about devaluing anybody's blog or anything of the sort though I can certainly see valid grounds for them thinking there is something wrong with a blog owner who allows tons of comment spam on their blog. I mean which blogger in their right mind who cares about their blog is going to allow all the junk comments being left with no value or benefit to the blog and it's readers?

If a blog owner has the power to moderate comments then they can certainly be held responsible if they allow their blogs to overrun by spam. But again Google says nothing there about penalizing blog owners.

Carlos

[intelinside]

Originally Posted by carlos123

Google had to have some way to make a further distinction between site pages that all had great content. The way they came up with had to do with links. Backlinks and their quality became the new barometer after great content for determining relevance.

Right. That barometer is actually an algorithm by the name of 'Hill Top' ( ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/reports/csri/405/hilltop.html) use by Google. From the algo:

"Our algorithm operates on a special index of "expert documents." These are a subset of the pages on the WWW identified as directories of links to non-affiliated sources on specific topics. Results are ranked based on the match between the query and relevant descriptive text for hyperlinks on expert pages pointing to a given result page. "

So, after evaluting the content, they look for 'expert documents' and what are 'expert documents', check the link I mentioned.

[intelinside]

Originally Posted by carlos123

If a blog owner has the power to moderate comments then they can certainly be held responsible if they allow their blogs to overrun by spam. But again Google says nothing there about penalizing blog owners.

Carlos

This can be one of the interpretations but if bloggers are not doing their work right, Google will have to do something itself to deliver quality content itself otherwise they will jeopardize their position of being at the top of Search Engines industry.

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by intelinside

This can be one of the interpretations but if bloggers are not doing their work right, Google will have to do something itself to deliver quality content itself otherwise they will jeopardize their position of being at the top of Search Engines industry.

I don't think Google is going to get toppled by blog owners allowing comment spam on their blogs. I don't think I have ever seen blog comments of any kind being indexed at the top in the SERP's. It's always the blog itself that either gets indexed at the top or not.

Google will never ignore blogs just because they are filled with comment spam. It would be better for them to simply ignore all blog comments if it came down to it.

They are just trying to inform blog owners about how best to handle this to make the internet a more useful place for all (normally I don't give them much credit for being so altruistically interested in anything but their bottom line but in this case I think it's just an attempt by Google to promote what is good).

Nothing to be concerned about if you ask me. Absolutely nothing. There are lots of other things that one might rightly get concerned about but them trying to encourage the clean up of comment spam is not one of them in my opinion.

That's a good thing. To clean up comment spam I mean. Too many people leave useless comments. Maybe a lot of members here do...I don't know.

Carlos

[jazbo]

Do not mix up the word "ignore" with "penalty" in terms of worst case scenarios.

[itlnoor]

There is a way out. It is not to spam. SPamming is not just Google's problem. It is our problem. with those Garbage comments we are faced with a bigger challenge. We must help Google in this. Make blogs a great place by contributing to the topic of the blogs.

[rockstar99]

They probably have something worked out like if they see your link on 10+ blogs with the same keyword in a comment than your busted.

Even then, they will have to know which part of the page is comments. Probably not hard for them to figure out.

[paulgl]

A well thought out, long blog reply is still spam.
Google caring what a reply looks like? Get real.
I can't figure out why you think google is just going
to keep valuing blog replies.

The only blogs that would really count for GREAT
backlinks are probably "nofollow." Those authority blogs
have solved the problem.

Why would google rank a site better just because the
link appears in a whole boat load of blogs replies?

Spam is not really the word for it. Abuse is the right term.

Why would you continue to do something that is abusing
the system, thinking it is somehow going to get you #1?

Why would you think google is not going to care eventually?

I don't get the mentality here.

But, rock on!

Paul

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by paulgl

A well thought out, long blog reply is still spam.

So a well thought out, long web page is also spam? Just because the owner seeks to get a better search engine ranking by writing such a well thought out and useful content page?

I disagree that these types of things are spam.

I view spam as anything that does not provide useful content in and of itself and is solely oriented around trying to promote oneself or one's web site.

Carlos

[echealth]

I have one question to this. What about my scrapebox subscription? This little handy guys is excellent at picking out blogs to comment on which do count as backlinks right now, and because of that I will have to continue doing blog commenting until they stop helping me get indexed. This allows me more time to write quality content anyways which is the whole idea. In the past 6 months I have gotten about 20 so called natural backlinks of people linking to my content. I pose the question of what SERP position I would have if that were my only source of backlinks? Seriously, what is the consensus? (I am new to doing SEO but have a good understanding of it but haven't had time to do any experimenting as yet.)

[echealth]

I just remembered a great example of a guy who has no idea about seo or even web design for that matter (he is related by marriage) and his site is over 10 years old and he updates it daily without fail adding fresh content. And guess how many backlinks he has on this site? 1! I wish I could give him his second but my post total doesn't allow me to, hopefully someone will be nice enough to do it for him. stupidfrogs.com if you care to take a look! The natural backlinks never came

[carlos123]

Originally Posted by echealth

I just remembered a great example of a guy who has no idea about seo or even web design for that matter (he is related by marriage) and his site is over 10 years old and he updates it daily without fail adding fresh content. And guess how many backlinks he has on this site? 1! I wish I could give him his second but my post total doesn't allow me to, hopefully someone will be nice enough to do it for him. stupidfrogs.com if you care to take a look! The natural backlinks never came

You might want to tell your friend that he take half his content and turn it into article directory content pointing to his other half. If he does that he might start getting some more backlinks.

Not to overdo it in terms of putting up too many articles at one time but a couple per week should be just fine.

I don't fault your friend so much. I mean to be sure no one should bother creating a site that does not at least make some attempt to understand if not entirely apply basic SEO knowledge but the greater fault I think lies with Google. For putting out the BS it does in an effort to keep the Internet floating in feel good baloney (such as the foolish notion that if you build it they will come for any but the biggest and most well backed web sites) that helps it's search engine continue to dominate.

And I guess I fault the rest of us (including myself) who, although we are not taken in so readily by Google's baloney, toe the line and make use of Google for our own purposes while continuing to support them in their continued growth and growing arrogance.

Carlos

[echealth]

If I were to advise him on SEO for that particular site, I would firstly tell him to fix the structure for sure, secondly I would tell him to get a scrapebox subscription and to subscribe to Angela's packets. His domain is old, short and easy to optimize actually, especially if he moved it off of frontpage over to wp. He is a nice guy and the site is obviously just a hobby but I would bet that some people on this forum myself included could turn that domain into an adsense monster in no time.

[echealth]

I just onlywired and pinged using ping.fm. I am going to scrapebox in a little bit and lets see what happens to the site over the next few days. Of course I have no idea what he wants to rank for so therein lies a challenge. Moreover the site is not monetized at all, so what good will it do to SEO it anyways except as a little experiment to see what happens to the rankings on Alexa where it is currently not even listed!

[Tom Goodwin]

(1) There are ways to find blog posts without long lists of other blog comments. I have many links in blog posts (been there for at least a couple of months) on PR5+ pages where I am the only link in any comment to the post. And yes, they do NOT have the no-follow attribute.So, i'm not sure what you are talking about. The best blog posts are the ones that auto-close comments after 30-60 days so no one can come in after you.

(2) Thinking that google is going to care does not mean (1) that google will change its formula and (2) that google could possible penalize a site for its incoming links, because it won't.

Originally Posted by paulgl

A well thought out, long blog reply is still spam.
Google caring what a reply looks like? Get real.
I can't figure out why you think google is just going
to keep valuing blog replies.

The only blogs that would really count for GREAT
backlinks are probably "nofollow." Those authority blogs
have solved the problem.

Why would google rank a site better just because the
link appears in a whole boat load of blogs replies?

Spam is not really the word for it. Abuse is the right term.

Why would you continue to do something that is abusing
the system, thinking it is somehow going to get you #1?

Why would you think google is not going to care eventually?

I don't get the mentality here.

But, rock on!

Paul