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Is this spam? Or real comments?...

by Stephen Lessey
43 replies
Hey there warriors,

I recently started a new blog a couple of weeks ago and then yesterday I kept getting bombarded with notifications of comments on my posts.

The first thing I thought were that these are spammers, but looking more closely, there isn't anything spammy about their username, email and they link to yahoo, bing and generic urls.

Take a look at some of the comments:


Has this happened to anyone before, should I approve them?
#comments #real #spam
  • Profile picture of the author playa4thee
    I am getting the same kind of comments on a new site I launched in Wordpress too. If you see that the comments once you approve them can let anyone go to that person's site or url they input when you click on their names then chances are it is spam and they are using that as way to link to your site..
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  • Profile picture of the author Vlad Romanov
    All those comments are obvious spam...
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  • Profile picture of the author DianaHeuser
    I am getting a few of those myself. Completely unrelated to the topic, but very complimentary.

    Spam + Flattery = Spatterly

    Maybe they think I need validation and I will be so grateful that I will click on their links.
    My guess is they are just building backlinks.

    Di
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  • Profile picture of the author rusty1027
    These are spam, and as playa said - they most likely have links attached to them. You've listed 8 comments - notice that every one of them has at least one spelling mistake? That's an attempt to make them look genuine. Do we really think that 8 consecutive people couldn't put together a simple 6-8 word sentence without a single spelling mistake?
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    • Profile picture of the author Vlad Romanov
      Originally Posted by rusty1027 View Post

      These are spam, and as playa said - they most likely have links attached to them. You've listed 8 comments - notice that every one of them has at least one spelling mistake? That's an attempt to make them look genuine. Do we really think that 8 consecutive people couldn't put together a simple 6-8 word sentence without a single spelling mistake?
      Actually it is a way of tracking your approved comments... Chances are there is no one else who wrote the same sentence with the same mistake, so you can easily track approved and indexed comments using google.
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    • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
      Originally Posted by rusty1027 View Post

      notice that every one of them has at least one spelling mistake? That's an attempt to make them look genuine.
      No it's not. It's phishing. They are making specific spelling "mistakes" so that they can google that word to see if they can find it.

      If they can, they know the blog is either not moderated or is allowing spam comments - then they will return and add their spam comments plus links.

      Install an anti-spam plug-in and you won't see the spam comments again. Also using a captcha plug-in reduces spam.
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    • Profile picture of the author Stephen Lessey
      Originally Posted by rusty1027 View Post

      These are spam, and as playa said - they most likely have links attached to them. You've listed 8 comments - notice that every one of them has at least one spelling mistake? That's an attempt to make them look genuine. Do we really think that 8 consecutive people couldn't put together a simple 6-8 word sentence without a single spelling mistake?
      I didn't even notice that...well its obvious delete them all and get a spam blocker plugin.

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author Jon Patrick
        Originally Posted by rosetrees

        They are making specific spelling "mistakes" so that they can google that word to see if they can find it.

        If they can, they know the blog is either not moderated or is allowing spam comments - then they will return and add their spam comments plus links.
        Very insightful! And I don't often post just to say that.
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  • Profile picture of the author trevord92
    Quite often this is a test - the default on Wordpress is to automatically allow subsequent comments once the first one has been approved.

    If you haven't already switched that option off, you can do so in Settings => Discussion. It's one of the options in "Before a comment appears".
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  • Profile picture of the author Justin Says
    It's pretty obvious that those are spam comments primarily because they are just random. They could relate to almost anything.

    I suggest integrating something like Facebook into your comments, you can use plugins like WordPress › Facebook Comments for WordPress « WordPress Plugins
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex Barboza
    They work like this:

    When somebody spams you can block their details like I.P or email with some plugins. After you block them their comments won't show anymore or are deleted automatically. So, if they don't spam any link they are gaining your trust so that you or your pluging don't block them.

    Days later, they will send more comments but now with spammy links.

    This has happened to me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Damielle
    They're definitely spam my friend, got a few of these myself.

    Just a bunch of general comments about how awesome my writing is without actually commenting on the content in the post.

    Checked out the links and they were all going back to the same site. So basically one person tries it then tells all their friends that your site will allow their spam.

    Approve them only if you are prepared to spend a lot of time going trough more spam.

    Try to use an anti-spam plugin. Akismet is a good plugin if your using Wordpress and normally comes with your average wordpress installation. you just need to sign up for their API to activate it.

    Hope this helps
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  • Profile picture of the author Stephen Lessey
    Thanks for the tips, I had a feeling they were spammy but wasn't sure.
    I'll definitely install akismet.

    Its interesting that these people get paid to spam
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  • Profile picture of the author Isaiah Jackson
    Those are spam dude, I would know I once installed a blog and wrote my first blog post for it then about 10 minutes later it was being flooded with comments. but it was no big deal for me I installed Facebook comments for wordpress
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    • Profile picture of the author FredJones
      Those are clear spams. They are probably linking to inner pages and see whether the comments gt approved. If you approve the comments they are probably going to mine them and use your sites later for posting genuine backlinks to their own sites. At least, that's one likely thing. If they cared about commenting and not spanning, why would they try to track (using spelling mitakes) plus why would they link to any site at all (come on, it does take a little bit of work to link to Bing etc).
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    • Profile picture of the author sonic74
      it's spam....I had a couple of blogs with these kind of comments but I noticed a great boost in my rankings after these comments !

      But if you don't moderate it they will come more spammers to your blog !
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  • Profile picture of the author John Ralph
    It sure is spam, meaningless comments unrelated to your post! Usually with a backlink, trying to get a sneaky link.

    Just delete them!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Hersh
    I'm getting hundreds of comments like this in my blog. The only thing that drives me crazy is that most of the are in Russian :-)

    Just delete them mate, and wait for some real one's.

    Cheers,

    Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Franklin
    Yes, I have also seen this and it is diabolical, what they are doing is looking for an auto approve URL, or they are looking to see if you approve them, once you do they take your website and distribute it to a network of auto submitters, so it is really not a good thing to respond to, just trash it out, its spam.
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  • Profile picture of the author seraveegn003
    obviously is spam !!
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  • Profile picture of the author EugeneA
    I tend to only approve comments that evidently link to the topic of my post.
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  • Profile picture of the author supershoesclub
    why not check the user's ip to see if it is the same person to leave th comments.just clink the pending comments,you will see the ip in the below. if your site didn't have too much traffic.I think it might be a spammers. you can check it there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Le Project
    looks like absolutely spam eh
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  • Profile picture of the author JCorp
    They all seem too general to be genuine comments. For all I know, your article could've been talking about how to tweeze nose hairs. Spam.
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  • Profile picture of the author nadavs
    This is spam. I had one or two of those on my website and since they linked to Yahoo and Bing, I thought they are harmless and approved them. In the next days I was flooded with the same type of messages on almost every page. They even passed my CAPTCHA.

    I blocked the ability to link to Yahoo, Bing, and Google, and order was restored.

    So yes, it's clearly spam. Delete these and try to get some spam protection.

    nadavs
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    • Profile picture of the author Morganzolar
      100% spam

      I suppose it could've been worse spam though (every cloud . . .)

      MZ
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  • Profile picture of the author Simon Ashari
    Defs spam.

    It's there to bypass the initial comment. Once you approve one comment all their other comments are posted without approval by you or notification to you.

    Be very careful approving them.

    -Simon
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  • Profile picture of the author mileagedriver
    Spam..I usually have same kind of comments and I will never approve them.
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    • Profile picture of the author mikeink
      Looks like SPAM.

      I wish some spammer would through in a T-Bone once in awhile.
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      Well let me see. OH yea need to start work on my ???????? again.
      Been working for slave wages to long.

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  • Profile picture of the author A14
    Banned
    I can say this is more than real or spam comments , I mean they are intermediate , these are comon comments everywhere for every posts as long as my 16 wordpress sites are concerned :p
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  • Profile picture of the author dmitch31
    If you put up a blog without some kind of good SPAM blocking plugin, then you're going to get hammered with hundreds of spam comments like the ones you listed just so the spammer can post a link on your blog. You need a good SPAM plugin. If your blog is a self hosted WordPress blog, I can recommend the G.A.S.P. plugin. It works very well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Casper C
    As others have mentioned, those comments are indeed spam. As time goes on and you see more and more of them, you'll get a knack for what is and isn't spam. Once in a while you'll come across one where you're not sure if it's spam or not, but just use your instinct. And more importantly, use Akismet.
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  • Profile picture of the author SandyDuPlessis
    They are paid spam. I got hundreds of those on a new forum. I followed the links and almost all of them linked back to one specific company, posted by a variety of people, usually in their 20's from various parts of the world. I changed the requirements to manual authorization, but the spam kept coming. I am now going to have to close the forum down, because I don't have time to go through so much spam in order to find which are legitimate applications.
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    • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
      Spam. The intentional typos are so the spammer can search for the typo phrase to find likely targets to come back and post a similar spam post linking back to their real target.

      .
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  • Profile picture of the author Kezz
    I have two simple rules for comments on my sites, and that is after the battery of spam filtering I have going on:

    1. Your comment has to add value to the article or conversation in some way, or it doesn't get approved.

    2. And if your comment has a backlink to your site, that's cool too, but you have to provide extra super duper value in order to "pay" for the little advertisement you'd like to place on my site.

    That makes it an easy decision on what to let through, and what to block out. Works a charm.
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  • Profile picture of the author myfatcash
    One word and one liner comments are spam to me. There are some who even copy and paste other people's comments. Hope mine's not.
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  • Profile picture of the author Arthur Barn
    I am also getting a lot of comments. I know most of those are spam. How i wish somebody can help me how to blocked these spammers.
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  • Profile picture of the author apolwar
    Originally Posted by Stephen Lessey View Post

    Hey there warriors,

    I recently started a new blog a couple of weeks ago and then yesterday I kept getting bombarded with notifications of comments on my posts.

    The first thing I thought were that these are spammers, but looking more closely, there isn't anything spammy about their username, email and they link to yahoo, bing and generic urls.

    Take a look at some of the comments:


    Has this happened to anyone before, should I approve them?
    I'm laughing at 'Brilliance for free' line. lol Obvious spams that are in a hurry to post and don't correct their spelling mistakes.
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  • Profile picture of the author davidtong
    If you want to keep them (and if you have the time), just edit the comments (correct typos), remove the URL links including profile link, then you'll get rid of the spam links while retaining comment count (if that's what you're after).
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