Comment Spam- Seriously, What's the Point?

by MidlandsMarketer

Posted: 13 years ago 11 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

I had to laugh when I saw this 'comment' (if you can really call it such) in the spam queue on one of my blogs this morning:

Thanks for taking this possibility to talk about this,
I'm strongly about this and I reap the benefits of garden
greenhouse structures this subject. If at all possible,
while you gain data, please update this website with new
information. I've discovered it extremely useful.

Although I found it amusing, I have to seriously wonder what on earth the point of this backlinking 'strategy' is. I get that this person obviously blasted a ton of sites using Scrapebox or some other tool, but why on Earth would you make it so weirdly specific? (The blog in question had absolutely nothing to do with greenhouses, FYI)

My only guess is that this was sent out to loads of blog in the hope of getting a few approved, but why bother with the comment in that case? Surely the only blogs that will accept this are unmoderated autoaccept sites, which would render creating any kind of comment completely pointless.

Ah well, I can only shake my head and chuckle as I delete this kind of garbage from my inbox- there's clearly still a lot of people out there who have no idea what they're doing.

#comment #point #spam

MikeTucker 13 years ago

Yep, they are just spamming for backlinks, either because they don't know any better, or because they sold some poor sucker a backlink package.
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jamesrich1 13 years ago

I often wonder the same thing of why people even bother going through the motions with comments like that.
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Michael Mayhew 13 years ago

Funny. I got hit with that same message?
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- MidlandsMarketer 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Michael Mayhew
  
  Funny. I got hit with that same message?
  
  Wow, I guess that just goes to show how indiscriminate this method is. (I assume that your site is also unrelated to the comment)
  
  I really hope that people aren't paying for this kind of rubbish, they may as well use the money as toilet paper for all the good it does.
  
  Funnily enough, I devote about an hour of my working day to posting comments on blogs. The difference here of course is that I do it to build relationships. For each niche I operate in, I have RSS reader accounts that inform me of any new posts in each blog. I'll read the post and then provide a relevant, on-topic reply. Often times I'll pick some kind of hole in the post where neccesary to engage the blogger in conversation, or I'll add extra value to the post with additional information. In my eyes, the point of blog commenting has nothing to do with Google Ranking (I never bother to check whether a blog is dofollow or not), but building your reputation with other bloggers in your niche and, importantly, their readers.
  
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mosthost 13 years ago

Backlink spammers tend to be idiots as this proves.
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- godoveryou 13 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by mosthost
  
  Backlink spammers tend to be idiots as this proves.
  
  So are overly judgmental people.
  
  You could say I have the background, experience and education to know that what you are saying is extremely one sided.
  
  Other people in the thread had it right when they simply left it at "I don't understand why they do that..."
  
  Would anyone like to know why it is done? Is this the right board for the explanation? if not, I'll high tail elsewhere, but I did need to step in on that one comment...
  
  BTW mosthost - I also live in the Cleveland area - just west of Kamm's Corners on the westside... Maybe we can share a discussion over a cup of coffee instead of instantly assuming that just because one person does something differently that they MUST be an idiot...
  
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manicmethods 13 years ago

Haha. At least they targeted it at something, Greenhouses, whether this is relevant to your site or not

I get a lot of the "Thank you for your great writing in this article about what I'm interested in."

What I've done is added to the Wordpress Comment Blacklist (Under Discussion) the following:

http://
insurance
surgery
bit.ly
cars
car
guest poster
writing style

These are tailored to my site etc but this should give you an idea. I pretty much have filtered out all the crap comments.

Good luck!
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- fluffythewondercat 13 years ago
  
  or because they sold some poor sucker a backlink package
  
  ...on Fiverr.
  
  Then they come on the WF through a sockpuppet and do the "I bought this gig on Fiverr and it really works!" thing, which is reinforced by the positive feedbacks from the poor suckers who leave feedback before they even know if the comment spamming worked...
  
  fLufF
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YasirYar 13 years ago

I also wonder sometimes why they write such specific comments when they are going to spam a random bunch of websites of no particular niche. I guess you're right that they are hoping just a few get approved. Maybe if an article is indeed about greenhouses, this comment might be accepted by a lenient moderator - who knows?

They probably get a few comments approved out a thousand that they post, and of course the auto accept sites allow them in directly. They should just write more generalized comments to get them approved in more places, not that most moderators would approve random general comments either
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JSProjects

13 years ago

I'm not a big fan (at all) of sending thousands of backlinks from automated comments directly at my main sites. If you're going that route, I'd suggest pointing them at your tiers.

Oh, and, it's nice to see GOY pop-in.