Comment spam at new highs

Posted by multippt

Clearing spam in blogs have never been more easier thanks to Akismet. Click “delete all”, and all hundreds of spam comments will go poof. Why don’t spammers realize is that spamming no longer works the way it use to? Looks like they still don’t, and increasing the bulk of spam isn’t going to make things any better as well.

New comment spams are getting interesting month by month. New spam now point links to Google groups, which is a forum system in Google. However, since almost everyone of those advertisements looks almost identical, it’s incredibly easy for akismet to find it. Of course, Google has done its job of deleting the threads, making sure none of those advertisements see the light.

Bloggers know very well not to show spam comments, which is why almost 0% of spam comments make it at all. Akismet lays out comments in a way that it makes pin-pointing legitimate comments, which is why few bloggers actually check through the queue (and prefer to click on delete all). Of course, the good news is that Akismet is quite accurate, as accurate as the Google spam mechanism.

Of course, there are ways to combat spam, but it pose an inconvenience to actual commentators. Capcha systems are one way to prevent them, but not everyone can read capchas. Spammers are also able to crack poorly made capchas (that is, if the capchas are widely used). Of course, the mathematical capchas work as well, unlike image ones, most people can answer them even with visual disabilities. Though, it won’t be long before JavaScript obfuscated code becomes readible by spam bots.

Not all spam is made through spam bots or botnets. There is manual spam, which is made by cheap labour out looking for a penny off spam. The only “protection” against this is probably Akismet.

Getting links as a commentator

Posted by multippt

Commenting on blogs has never been more easier: Type in your name, email, website, and your opinion. All that should take only 5 minutes. However, not all blogs will give you a link worthy as a backlink - in fact most blogs will give you nothing much other than a platform to express your opinion. Despite this, there are some blogs that do give link favor in return for your activity, a fair trade ain’t it.

What blogs can be used?

Not all blogs will give links to their commentators; most blogs will not return link favor now that Google is encouraging the nofollow movement. There are some that do though, which brings us to Dofollow blogs.

Dofollow blogs

Unlike nofollow blogs, dofollow blogs do not implement the nofollow portion of links. Most blogs prior to 2001 were dofollow - because nofollow was not invented. Today’s a little different, nofollow is now everywhere. Fortunately, there are some who decided to remove nofollow from the comments - so, every comment with a link in it gets some nice juice, pretty neat eh? Let’s hope nofollow doesn’t reach forums any time soon.

Dofollow blogs consist of 1% of all blogs. The small number of them is a result of the nofollow movement supported by Google/Blogger (of course) and Wordpress as well. There are D-Lists that shows a list of such blogs, one such list is available at Courtney Tuttle. Don’t worry if none of the dofollow blogs fancy you, there are nofollow blogs as well which do fetch traffic.

The small amount of blogs participating in dofollow is probably because it results in link juice leakage, but it does off a nice incentive for commentators to stay and comment on your blog. The original intent of nofollow is to reduce spam - which apparently is not successful on most blogs. Well, at least Google doesn’t forbid removing nofollow from comments.

Your blog can participate in the dofollow movement with a handy plugin known as the Dofollow plugin (it wasn’t too hard to guess right? :) ).

The commentator contest

If dofollow blogs are good, blogs with commentator contests are probably better. This contest is Generally, all one needs to do is to remain at the top of the pile - and will get a link throughout the entire blog (usually) as long as they comment regularly. More popular blogs tend to employ this (including nofollow ones), giving it a nicer effect than new blogs employing dofollow. A magnet for long-term commentators if your blog has incredible popularity.

Your blog can participate in it using this nice plugin - The top commentator widget. Don’t forget to display the widget somewhere in your blog, otherwise it’s pointless.

Quality of links?

Sadly, links coming from dofollow blogs are not of the highest quality: your are isolated to a few pages. This is unlike the commentator contest, which gives a higher value, especially if it appears on every single page, most notably the main page. But, winning links in a commentator contest is much difficult than getting a link on a dofollow blog, which could be a consideration considering activity and the lifespan of a link. Well, at least links obtained from commenting are much better than links obtained in an exchange.

Win-win for commentator and blog-owner?

The idea of giving link juice to users in exchange for activity is quite a nice concept. Yes, it is a win-win situation for both, despite your site having a link juice leakage. Giving out links to commentators is a way of keeping blog commentators, and perhaps invite the normally quiet community.

Say no to no-follow

Posted by multippt

Tevine now has no-follow disabled (meaning they are do-follow) for all comments, trackbacks and posts. This means that if you put a link into a comment or post, it will be counted as a real link, similar to trackbacks.

However, there are some guidelines that you will need to follow when posting a comment here.

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