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Do you ever CALL blog spammers and ask them to stop?

by VegasGreg
25 replies
I don't mind people leaving relevant comments and dropping the occasion related link, but when I get a blog spammer that drops 20 links per comment and 5-10 comments at a time, I get really ticked off.

I continue searching for contact numbers on their sites and finally found one. So I called.

I am pretty sure I freaked out the lady that answered "hello". This said customer service number, but just some lady answered. I asked if she owned the site in question and she said she was a part of it.

She then realized that I wasn't buying her wedding products and I "politely" asked her to stop spamming my blogs. --There was long awkward silence--

I gave her a few 'white hat' SEO tips and advised her to alter her ways.

We shall see.
#blog #call #spammers #stop
  • Profile picture of the author AndrewCavanagh
    Yes, using the telephone can be amazingly effective at getting people who like to hide behind their computer to change their behavior towards you.

    Once they realize they're dealing with a real person who might take real action against them their whole attitude tends to change.

    It's interesting that many online marketers forget that they're really in the business of marketing and that includes two main things:

    # A real business. You're not confined to just working and acting online. You can use mail, the phone, fax, see people in person etc etc.

    # Marketing. The internet is just a means of communication. You can use other methods to get your message across. Breaking away from your computer and learning to use the most effective means of communication can give you amazing results.

    Kindest regards,
    Andrew Cavanagh
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  • Profile picture of the author Shannon Spoon
    I think it is a waste of time and energy to go after spammers.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
      Originally Posted by Shannon Spoon View Post

      I think it is a waste of time and energy to go after spammers.
      You obviously have not been spammed enough then - or reached your spam limit.
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  • Profile picture of the author OnlineMarketingSys
    While you may have frazzled this women, the majority of people are not going to care and probably will just hang up the phone on you. Really you need to start focusing on making money yourself and not wasting time on trivial matters, if its becomming a problem turn on akismet or block commenting.
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    • Profile picture of the author shakingspear
      Originally Posted by OnlineMarketingSys View Post

      While you may have frazzled this women, the majority of people are not going to care and probably will just hang up the phone on you. Really you need to start focusing on making money yourself and not wasting time on trivial matters, if its becomming a problem turn on akismet or block commenting.
      While this is true in the long run (you don't want to do this every time you receive spam), the story is still pretty cool.

      I've never called anyone. I'd probably end up buying something from them by mistake.
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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBeard
    I have called out companies that organize blog spamming in the past

    They, or a friend of theirs decided to build a few blogs on WP.com to damage my reputation, did some link building to those sites, issued some press releases and even posted their articles to Sphinn.

    The funny thing is the article on Sphinn was ripped to shreads by tons of friends over a period of a few months and I didn't even realise it.

    Thus the warning... if you don't have a very strong grip on your reputation management for your own name, be very careful what action you take against blog spammers, as sometimes they will use their resources against you.
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    • Profile picture of the author Groovystar
      Originally Posted by AndyBeard View Post

      I have called out companies that organize blog spamming in the past

      They, or a friend of theirs decided to build a few blogs on WP.com to damage my reputation, did some link building to those sites, issued some press releases and even posted their articles to Sphinn.

      The funny thing is the article on Sphinn was ripped to shreads by tons of friends over a period of a few months and I didn't even realise it.

      Thus the warning... if you don't have a very strong grip on your reputation management for your own name, be very careful what action you take against blog spammers, as sometimes they will use their resources against you.

      Hey they say there's no such thing as bad publicity. Did that get your site more attention and more customers?
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  • Profile picture of the author SteveEO
    Originally Posted by VegasGreg View Post

    I don't mind people leaving relevant comments and dropping the occasion related link, but when I get a blog spammer that drops 20 links per comment and 5-10 comments at a time, I get really ticked off.

    I continue searching for contact numbers on their sites and finally found one. So I called.

    I am pretty sure I freaked out the lady that answered "hello". This said customer service number, but just some lady answered. I asked if she owned the site in question and she said she was a part of it.

    She then realized that I wasn't buying her wedding products and I "politely" asked her to stop spamming my blogs. --There was long awkward silence--

    I gave her a few 'white hat' SEO tips and advised her to alter her ways.

    We shall see.
    It might be a waste of your precious time and credit. Focus on making money online, ignore spammers, when you ignore them they will stop.
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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBeard
    Impossible to track

    They didn't link to me so no referral data, and at the time I was fairly active on my blog so even if there was some traffic from it, it would have been so far down the daily stats, let alone monthly I would have missed it.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Chris
    I used to run a blog (not monetized, just for fun) and a retailer would spam the hell out of my blog with comments like "That was an interesting read" or "You have a unique outlook on things" and they'd leave a link to the website. I checked out the website, got the phone number to the store and called it. I asked for the owner and once he identified myself I told him "I'm the owner of such and such blog and you or people working for you have spammed it with dozens of garbage comments just to leave your link. I let it slide the first three or four times because I know it's hard to get your site known, but it needs to stop now." He was silent for a few seconds, then said okay and started to apologize. I hung up while he was talking and he never commented on my blog again.
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  • Profile picture of the author humbledmarket
    Banned
    That must have freaked her out. As someone mentioned many people just hide behind their screens believing the internet is Wild Wild Web when clearly it isn't.

    I admire your action of taking the effort to stop such spammers however it might be time consuming and difficult to do the same thing for every single spammer. not to mention not everyone includes a phone number in their site so most of the time it would be fruitless. Essentially I guess I just block their ip and that's about it. To bad we can't do more about it.
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  • Profile picture of the author CliveG
    Originally Posted by VegasGreg View Post

    I don't mind people leaving relevant comments and dropping the occasion related link, but when I get a blog spammer that drops 20 links per comment and 5-10 comments at a time, I get really ticked off.

    .....
    For WordPress (and probably other blogs too) you can set them up so that comments with more than, say, two links are not accepted, and comments with one or two links are held for moderation.
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  • Profile picture of the author excoder01
    At one point, one of my blog had 100 spam comments a day.

    Should I track and call each of them (even international calls)?

    Waste of time -- I just disabled the comments or ban range of IP addresses.
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    • Profile picture of the author theemperor
      Sometimes spammers can help you!

      I once had a pligg site that got spammed to death. I didn't care much it was an auto blog and let it be.

      My site was even listed on black hat forums as one to spam.

      The spammers built backlinks to their spam on my site, boosting my home page PageRank to 2 with no effort from me :-)

      Cheers spammers. I removed their spam eventually anyway and sold the site on.
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  • Profile picture of the author Preben Frenning
    I also hate the ones who use software to visits site's T.T

    Like when I get 300+ visits from a spam website not linking to me. - Every month.
    I actually emailed one of them, and sent another a message on facebook! - But no response. We'll have to live with them. Or severely black-hat their assas so they get slapped out of google (Sucks if they don't though...)

    I can live with blog comments, as I just delete them, and they're gone for some time. But those messing up my stats...
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  • Profile picture of the author VegasGreg
    Thanks everyone for the replies.

    Just for the record, I don't waste a lot of time doing this. It really only took 3-5 minutes to make the call and I was multi-tasking at the same time. And there are really only 2 sites/spammers that continue to be annoying and 1 has no contact info available whatsoever (and I am good at research).

    For the most part I have comments disabled or moderated before approval, but I still get the notifications. Even having the settings of 2 links or more set for moderation doesn't always seem to work.

    I just thought it would be interesting to call and see their response and I have a wicked sense of humor. One cannot be all business all the time. You have to have a little fun here and there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Orator
    I suppose it depends on what kind of blog, and how important it is to you. I generally disable comments on my micro sites, and moderate comments on the other ones. Calling the spammer... a rather aggressive move but I could see how it would destroy their view of internet anonymity.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lilach
    What I don't understand is why they bother spamming our sites? I just hit delete (or spam) and they are immediately removed. It is a pain as I have to manually go through my comments and remove them.

    I find some of them quite offensive, I'm not even going to post what one of them was on here as I don't want my name associated with that kind of filth. I'm certainly not going to click on their website and find their phone number that's for sure.

    Lilach
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Worner
      Originally Posted by Lilach View Post

      What I don't understand is why they bother spamming our sites? I just hit delete (or spam) and they are immediately removed. It is a pain as I have to manually go through my comments and remove them.

      I find some of them quite offensive, I'm not even going to post what one of them was on here as I don't want my name associated with that kind of filth. I'm certainly not going to click on their website and find their phone number that's for sure.

      Lilach
      Most people dont moderate their blogs properly or at all. You would be surprised how many people dont know how to spot spam comments. It's only those who are aware of and care about SEO since having links to "Bad Neighbourhoods" can damage a websites reputation in Google's eyes.

      Not everybody who owns a blog does so for the sole purpose of making money from it, nor do they really care.

      Chris
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    • Profile picture of the author Highdefinition
      Originally Posted by Lilach View Post

      What I don't understand is why they bother spamming our sites? I just hit delete (or spam) and they are immediately removed. It is a pain as I have to manually go through my comments and remove them.

      Lilach
      Because sometimes there are those that don't care if their sites get spammed.
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  • Profile picture of the author Colin Theriot
    I would call them and talk to them about their comments. Thank them, try to start up a conversation. Really dig deep. And then ask them if they are happy with the size of their wang. Because, if not, I know where you can get some ph4rmac0logy that make it large enough to fit a wristwatch. Speaking of... I know where you can get cheap r0lex.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    Originally Posted by VegasGreg View Post

    II am pretty sure I freaked out the lady that answered "hello". This said customer service number, but just some lady answered. I asked if she owned the site in question and she said she was a part of it.

    She then realized that I wasn't buying her wedding products and I "politely" asked her to stop spamming my blogs. --There was long awkward silence--
    lol ... that's wild. Far too time consuming to try to call them all, but that must have given her pause.
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  • Profile picture of the author JayPeete
    Originally Posted by VegasGreg View Post

    She then realized that I wasn't buying her wedding products and I "politely" asked her to stop spamming my blogs. --There was long awkward silence--

    I gave her a few 'white hat' SEO tips and advised her to alter her ways.

    We shall see.
    If I had the time, I would love to do that Greg.

    Great work man... LOL!
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  • Profile picture of the author Janedoe
    People often blog spam with other people's domains, for various blackhat reasons. So the person you are calling may just as easily be an innocent victim as well.
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    • Profile picture of the author AprilCT
      I moderate comments. None go up until I see them first. It's really sad when you have more spammers than real comments. That's going to be a real chore when I put up a bunch of sites.

      I don't follow links to the spammers, too much potential to pick up a virus, and I really don't have the time to run the site past my virus control first. Spam is just deleted.
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