Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 7:17 PM
Webmaster Level: BeginnerIt has probably happened to you: you're reading articles or watching videos on the web, and you come across some unrelated, gibberish comments. You may wonder what this is all about. Some webmasters abuse other sites by exploiting their comment fields, posting tons of links that point back to the poster's site in an attempt to boost their site's ranking. Others might tweak this approach a bit by posting a generic comment (like "Nice site!") with a commercial user name linking to their site.
Why is it bad?
FACT: Abusing comment fields of innocent sites is a bad and risky way of getting links to your site. If you choose to do so, you are tarnishing other people's hard work and lowering the quality of the web, transforming a potentially good resource of additional information into a list of nonsense keywords.
FACT: Comment spammers are often trying to improve their site's organic search ranking by creating dubious inbound links to their site. Google has an understanding of the link graph of the web, and has algorithmic ways of discovering those alterations and tackling them. At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links. Think of all the more productive things one could do with that time and energy that would provide much more value for one's site in the long run.
Promote your site without comment spam
If you want to improve your site's visibility in the search results, spamming comments is definitely not the way to go. Instead, think about whether your site offers what people are looking for, such as useful information and tools.
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.
Moreover, Google provides a list of advice in order to improve the crawlability and indexability of your site. Check out our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.
What can I do to avoid spam on my site?
Comments can be a really good source of information and an efficient way of engaging a site's users in discussions. This valuable content should not be replaced by gibberish nonsense keywords and links. For this reason there are many ways of securing your application and disincentivizing spammers.
- Disallow anonymous posting.
- Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
- Turn on comment moderation.
- Use the "nofollow" attribute for links in the comment field.
- Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
- Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.
My site is full of comment spam, what should I do?
It's never too late! Don't let spammers ruin the experience for others. Adopt security measures discussed above to stop the spam activity, then invest some time to clean up the spammy comments and ban the spammers from your site. Depending on you site's system, you may be able to save time by banning spammers and removing their comments all at once, rather than one by one.
If I spammed comment fields of third party sites, what should I do?
If you used this approach in the past and you want to solve this issue, you should have a look at your incoming links in Webmaster Tools. To do so, go to the Your site on the web section and click on Links to your site. If you see suspicious links coming from blogs or other platforms allowing comments, you should check these URLs. If you see a spammy link you created, try to delete it, else contact the webmaster to ask to remove the link. Once you've cleared the spammy inbound links you made, you can file a reconsideration request.
For more information about this topic and to discuss it with others, join us in the Webmaster Help Forum. (But don't leave spammy comments!)
134 comments:
i would like to know why you linked to the reconsideration request... i dont comment spam but i do comment on a bunch of blogs and i usually add my site (there is a field for it) is there a chance that comment spam could cause a penalty in google? and im assuming that if it did happen it would show in webmaster tools? thanks!
Awesome tips, this tips should make ODPM services more powerful. Thanks
Nice post, this is actually good confirmation of our stance on comment spam for link building, which we wrote a post about a few months back.
http://www.lilengine.com/grow/natural-link-building-using-comments-598/
Great to have confirmation from Google about this. We have moderation enabled and Akismet plugin, which stops about 90% of spam comments.
Yeah that's fantastic post... Actually I was waiting for this, I mean I want Google to be talk on comment posting activities.
Thanks for sharing..
I never had a problem with Blogger blogs. Often Spam comments will found on all Word press blogs. It's very important to read and approve comments.
Thanks
Sankar
nice update..........
Anyways!! If comment is affected then what is the best process need to increase back links.
Backlinks will come naturally if you have good content.
Now ODPM service would be more helpful.
Thanks
Sulabh
I would also like to know why you linked to the reconsideration request tool.
Are you trying to say that commenting on blogs may cause a site to be penalized?
I hardly ever comment on blogs, unless (like now) I really feel compelled to.
So if comment spam can indeed trigger a penalty, does that mean bluewidgets-com can comment spam blogs, while pretending to be greenwidgets-com and get them penalized?
If so, can greenwidgets-com do anything to protect themselves from rogue competitors?
Cheers
James
If competitor use comment spam to hurt others ? how to solve this?
Whats to stop someone from comment spamming their competitors site to get them penalized?
It will be really easy for our website's competitors to do spamming of our sites and get us banned? what is the solution for that?
I'd recommand Askimet http://akismet.com/ as an additional measure to prevent comment spam on your site.
I'd also advise against the use of captchas (they are seen as a major pain in the ass by the majority of web users)
'FACT: Abusing comment fields of innocent sites is a bad and risky way of getting links to your site.'
Please, could you clarify 'abuse' as you see it...
Is any use of a keyworded link considered 'abuse' - ie is the previous comment/link by SEO considered an abuse?
If SEO's comment considered an abuse would it be less of an abuse had he written something less inane?
Can Google assure us that this is not just having a pop at Wordpress and Wordpress sites - given that Blogger sites have been designed by yourselves?
So Google you are saying that all of the people who posted a comment here using a keyword term to link to their blog or website will get whacked?????
Thanks Google for this informative Post. Can you suggest some of the Best ways for Creating Back links for a Website.
Dear me...
The comments/links here are starting to eloquently highlight the problem Goog are aiming to solve - DIH - you really are taking the ****!
Hey guys,
we are really happy that you liked our blog post :).
We noticed from your comments that a couple of concerns are rising. So we would like to clarify a few things.
Linking is only one of the many factors involved in the ranking process. If you are basing all of your efforts on creating unnatural backlinks and doing other techniques that are against our Webmaster Guidelines, that would probably affect your ranking.
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.
Thanks again,
Paolo Petrolini & Adel Saoud
Neil, nice post. http://site.com!
Well the above is certainly going to be the act of comment spammer.
I have a different opinion on blog commenting altogether. Blog comments are wonderful way to engage with website customers. Especially with web 2.0 evolving comments are the only way to interact and make web experience a two way communication.
Anyway all good stuffs tigers spammers too. Many spammers type one line comments to get backlinks. In my opinion below guide lines can be followed.
1. Every blog must be moderated.
2. Blog admin should not allow comments that are one liner or only links or that is simply typed to get links.
3. A quality comment can be credited back with a dofollow link. Again it is my perception.
4. And with relevant website, it is not bad to drop a link in addition to some quality commenting. It obviously enhances user experience.
5. Quality website will have quality moderation. If it is so, they can accept legitimate links from a legitimate commenter.
6. In my opinion Search engines should not devalue links in comments. Because a valuable comment can only be published by quality website admin!
7. But search engines can find a way and devalue links that are being spammed in blogs.
8. While this is a tough job, I assume google is clever enough to do this.
I hope Neil, you are saying to stop commenting in blogs!!! Thanks buddy.
These are just my 2 cents!
Dear Paolo & Adel
I hope you'll feel inclined - and answer! - some of the other questions raised; specifically mine :) ...
Excellent summation. Must share with everyone in my network. Have been preaching this for years. Now coming from a reputable source is great news.
I think all of the suggestions are good, except for using nofollow links. nofollow links really only benefit search engines for identifying untrusted links. They do very little to deter comment spam. Comment spammers are going to spam their comments regardless of whether or not the site nofollows comment links.
I think it's good, but I'm not sure.
More and more ways to get "punished", not good for competition.
I am not a web master, but coyld not find better place to make a suggestion to Google developers.
By the nature of my life I don't have one assigned computer, thus can't use browser's "bookmarks" or "favourites".
Since I do use Google account it might be productive to turn Google Bookmarks into a drop-down thing similar to the ones used in browsers, built-in into iGoogle.
Please don't suggest using Delicious. It's eve more cumbersome that Google Bookmarks.
Actually it's a great move, because it's for the best of the internet ..
Some crappy websites get indexed on the top because they made some spam comments in PR7 and PR6 blog posts ..
Great post and extremely helpful. I'll definitely share this with my clients. I have askimet on my blog and it catches most of the garbage. Do you know if there is a similiar issue with trackbacks or pings?
what can i do if someelse spamming links to my site?
its not under my control...
So what will stop my competitor from comment spamming my site so I get blacklisted by google?
But Does this not turn People off Commenting on Blogs and Voicing their Opinions because they Might Have an Unrelated Blog
That doesn't sound right to me. discounting those links is one thing and penalizing the sites where the links point to is quite another. if that ever happens, would not that be so easy to destroy the competition? what would prevent a dishonest competitor to blast out thousands of comment spam using the URL for their competitor? i think search engines will learn to devalue those links but penalizing a site for links on a 3rd party site dont make any sense.
it will be nice to make a special page for reporting these sites
all a page for all block hat SEO sites...
the report page of google till now is mainly to spam results and pages that are spread via e-mails !
I think the second commenter missed the point...
Several commenters here missed the point.
Google, this post is several years too late. But better late than never in this case.
Comment spam is a huge pain in the neck. The difference between a real comment and comment spam is usually very, very obvious.
I was gonna post a link to a site that can make your do little grow 3 inches bigger, but this article made me think twice.
There's one more important method of dealing with comment spam, i.e. bayesian filtering. It's the same thing that protects your mailbox.
There are free services:
http://Akismet.com
http://Defensio.com
And open-source project:
Sblam http://code.google.com/p/sblam/
Many people do it just for the sake of rankings, and I'm glad Google has issued this warning.
I think to pursue ranking in the days to come would be more competitive and far from the actions of such cheating.
When will Blogger get rid of anonymous posting and instead have the standard Name/Email comment posting?
Nofollow? Really? Will we ever get tired of flogging that dead horse?
Nofollow has never stopped a single instance of comment spam. They don't even seem to check anymore, they just leave the comment, usually automated anyhow. It takes more effort to check for nofollow than it does to post a spam comment.
I think defending the less than useless nofollow takes away from energy that might be put to some actual useful pursuit.
- Disallow anonymous posting.
No. I'm not going to force my visitors to give up their identity or come up with an alias.
- Use CAPTCHAs and other methods to prevent automated comment spamming.
Annoying and worthless. When was the last time Google updated their CAPTCHA algorithm? Not only can they be decoded by machines, they also have the images decoded by people in farms. Wasting my visitors time is the only thing a CAPTCHA does, especially one as old as Google's.
If you're going to use a CAPTCHA go with reCAPTCHA. At least then you won't be COMPLETELY wasting your visitors time since they'll be transcribing books in the process.
Turn on comment moderation.
I personally choose not to do this because it annoys me when I post a comment and it goes into a queue. It gets in the way of having a conversation with another commenter. But it's not a bad suggestion, just not for me.
Use the "nofollow" attribute for links in the comment field.
Not a fan of link condoms so I don't use them on my site. In the past year I had to delete 2 spam comments. It wasn't the end of the world.
This is the INTERNET. You are SUPPOSED to use hyperlinks! Has everyone forgotten that?
It's amazing how many people are more concerned about "link juice" and pageranks instead of trying to put out good content. If your website is good, people will come and a few bad outgoing links (in your COMMENTS noless) won't prevent them from coming back. I dunno, I'm a huge proponent of word of mouth. I know people like what they find on my site they'll come back and tell friends.
Priorities, people!
Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
I don't like that idea. ALL your visitors suffer. what happens when someone tries to post a link relative to the blog post?
Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.
I guess doing this could negate any worries you have about spammrs. Pretty sneaky, too. Your commentors might inspect the hyperlinks and see the nofollow is not there and assume the hyperlinks are getting spydered. Did I say sneaky? I meant to say cruel!
Why am I against all this stuff?
- Inconveniences your visitors but not spammers.
- Assumes the worst of every visitor who comments. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Where's the trust? Where's the love?
- Less people will comment if you make them jump through hoops.
- Less people will comment if their submissions are going into a queue. Especially bad if it's only you or a tiny staff that can't be keep track of the queue 24/7. Why bother commenting if it takes 3 days for your reply to show up.
But hey, that's just me. I trust my users, even the anonymous ones. This might be why I never get spammed.
Also, I make sure that everybody who comments knows our stance on this. I make it very clear in the comment form. See for yourself:
Photos: NYC Japan Street Fair 2009 | MY STADY
Why tell them all that? Simple: trust. Instead of assuming the worst in my commenters, I assume the best!
By the way, can those of you that are against it tell me why you don't like anonymous comments? If someone by the name DookieSkyRunnr67 any less anonymous than someone who doesn't sign their name?
Many of my visitors post anonymously. Honestly, I think, no wait, I KNOW half of them do it because they're lazy. They sign the comments with their names, hahaha! It's nice to have a lazy option. It could also be Blogger's comment system confuses them. I've seen a few people get confused.
My anonymous commenters are just as important as those with names.
Google PLEASE DO NOT PENALIZE sites for comment spamming, just discount those links if you must.
It would be very easy to nuke a competitor out of the SERPs by buying "comment packages for $5."
So if we post a comment then we should not leave the URL of our site just below it.... If we do so, it will be considered as a spam....
Wow. Thank God I'm here to read this post. I thought if I leave a comment with a link to my blog is the right way for link building. Is that consider as a spamming although I give a good comment to the blog? Anyhow, thanks for this awesome post. Appreciate it.
Very good move guys... This will definitely improve the quality of the internet. Very bad news for spammers...
I know it's a development and learning thing, but I'd like to see some posts and comments about how to write my blog better to inspire good comments...
So all in all what we have here:
1. Even though Google says it is impossible to ruin your competitor with links from comments, it is obvious that there is a certain Google comment links filter that FLAGs a site that has several backlinks from comments
2. I completely agree with Mr. Medical that a link from an article's comment to a site with the same or relevant theme COULD be considered a legitimate links and I hope Google does understands that too
3. I would count a comment links if it comes with a solid contribution about the article...
I thought that the nofollow attribute does not work anymore for a site internal links: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
Did Matt Cutts or myself miss something?
I think Captcha is a good solution to avoid spam content on emails.
What about spam blogs? Just wade through blogger.com for 5 minutes and you'll see at least 1/2 are gibberish auto created blogs. I flag them all the time, but some effort should be made in creating something that halts this kind of crap.
Comment spam is a real problem for our company blog. Do Google really able to find and devalue those spam technique users?
If...if Google did a better job of indexing, maybe this would not be such an issue. A spammy link is a spammy link, and Google's algorithms and databases combined should be working to see when a link doesn't "seem right" in relation to any high-quality content it's appended to. I can't think this is that hard. Instead, legit webmasters are penalized for other's shenanigans.
So now Google "suggests" we suspend anonymous comment functionality, disable or prohibit links within comments, institute "nofollow" even if it's not necessary on every comment - which is an action that will actually get your blog delisted from Google if you do it in the main body of your posts or in your blog's sidebar (it will get you tossed into supplemental results/sandboxed quick - been there, done that), all of which makes commenters jump through hoops and bars them from making discussions as complex and complete as they would be otherwise. All this to prevent page ranks from dropping? They can't be serious. Yet they are!
On my blogs I enable anonymous commenting. Once in a very long while I keep a spammer's comments so I can reply in a way (when I can see that the spammer visited personally) that I hope will discourage him or her from wanting to comment again, at least not on my blogs. My blogs don't have nofollow functionality built in and I don't know if I would use it if they did, since I don't care about leeching page rank enough to screw every other website owner out there just to guard my own turf.
I'm not going to change how I do things over Google's directives and I hope no one else does, either. Google needs to figure out what's what on the Web and get off legitimate website owner's tails. Google wants to act like they own you and your content, and tries to make you believe they can control your actions, but they can only get away with it for as you feel compelled to follow along. If enough of us stop following along, maybe Google will stop shoving arcane rules like the ones in this article down our throats. Or maybe we'll stop caring if they do, since all of us will have moved on to bigger and better ("Bing!") by then.
I can only join the concern raised by fellow commenter here. I read a lot of blog posts and, if relevant, I leave a comment, sometimes with a link. Such comments are not spam, as they contribute to the discussion, and I should not be penalized for them.
I think Google should warn bloggers about comment spamming from their URL. If the thing continues Google can take appropriate action against them(By appropriate, I do not mean penalize the site, let Google and other experienced blogger decide that. I am quite lame here). They can add this feature as they released Malware detail feature some days ago.
I often comment on blogs and my blog has some relevant content regarding the posts then I write my post's URL in post. Is this the reason I am getting PageType error when I submit the Adsense application to Google? I posted this question in Webmaster blog but I didn't get answer.
I don't understand where in the following statement some people are getting that G is going to penalize the blog or the commenter for making a relevant comment? If the comment is relevant to the post, then it is not considered spam. Look at the examples above. Those examples are the types of comment that G is looking at. Bottom line, it all comes down to content. Your blog posts should be relevant to the topic and comments should be relevant to the post.
"Google has an understanding of the link graph of the web, and has algorithmic ways of discovering those alterations and tackling them. At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy link drops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links."
The following is all about your readers experience, not penalties.
"It's never too late! Don't let spammers ruin the experience for others."
So how would G know which are good and which are bad. Just like everything else with G it is all about keywords.
How often can you offer something of value in a comment without using a keyword from the post? If you can, then I would suggest you don't.
Also think about what KWs G might be looking for to indicate a spam comment. i.e. Nice comment!,Great Post!, and the various other word combination's that are so common.
These algorithms are much more complex then just being able to tell the difference between a topic and a URL. Look at it like it is on page seo at the micro level.
Having a link, be it ad or other wise, on your site to something that doesn't match your topic/theme exactly isn't going to cause you to be de-indexed. So why would G slap a site with relevant comment posts that may have a URL that is to something irrelevant?
Keep your content, with everything you do, in line with what the searcher is looking to find.
Toledo SEO
@John
> How often can you offer something of value in a comment without using a keyword from the post? If you can, then I would suggest you don't.
Are you kidding me? All I see are more hoops. More hoops when I'm commenting; more hoops when my visitors comment. So do I have to put a disclaimer now?
WARNING: WHEN POSTING A LINK IN THE COMMENTS BE SURE TO INCLUDE A KEYWORD FROM MY BLOG POST OR ELSE GOOGLE WILL MARK THE SITE AS SPAM. FORGET THE FACT THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHICH WORDS IN THE POST GOOGLE CONSIDERS A RELEVANT KEYWORD. GOOD LUCK.
Screw that.
I always remind people that the Internet is not the United States. Freedom of speech does exist. For the most part people let you say what you want but some websites of course have rules and restrictions and that's perfectly okay.
On MY site I don't restrict or impose rules on what my commenters say. But this keyword nonsense means they now have to incorporate it into their original message and change the meaning.
Say I wrote a blog post about rabbits. Every single comment needs to have the word rabbits in it? Why?
If anything, this keyword nonsense will make the comments resemble spam comments more than anything else.
If the stupid Google algorithm thinks I'm spamming someone's blog because I didn't include fucking keywords then so be it.
John, unlike you I refuse to to let the tail wag the dog. I'm not bending to the whims of a search spider of all things. If it's not sophisticated enough to know the difference between comments and spam then maybe we need to attack the problem another way. This keyword nonsense is an inconvenience.
Machines are supposed to reduce the amount of work we do, not add to it.
Some comments have mentioned use of http://akismet.com for finding spam comments. But this service does not supports blogger.
Google can make compatible engine of Akismet with the help of Akismet developer team and provide option in blogger to enable or disable it. Comments detected as spam should be backed up so that owner of blog can decide to reconsider it or delete all at once.
@ Alain-Christian
I was trying to make a suggestion that would help those of us that have products that we would like to promote, on sites that may not be related, pass the scrutiny of G.
Whether we like it or not, it's their game. We can do what we like as far as our sites go, but when it comes to getting traffic from the biggest SE on the WWW then we wag. Sorry but it's fact.
I visited your site and do respect and value your stance. But for me this isn't about ideologies but rather putting food in my families mouths. We all whore ourselves out for one reason or another. In the end it comes down to how much I'm going to get paid to do so.
No, it's not pretty, but it is the truth.
>WARNING: WHEN POSTING A LINK IN THE COMMENTS BE SURE TO INCLUDE A KEYWORD FROM MY BLOG POST OR ELSE GOOGLE WILL MARK THE SITE AS SPAM. FORGET THE FACT THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHICH WORDS IN THE POST GOOGLE CONSIDERS A RELEVANT KEYWORD. GOOD LUCK.<
(compliment: This did make me smile:)
IMO, the article is saying to improve your visitors experience at your site by cleaning up spam comments, which you already do. And you take action to prevent it from happening in the future. Isn't that just what G is doing by not giving any value to the spam comment?
Unless I didn't see it, the article doesn't say that they are slapping your site but they are not giving value to a comment they view as spam.
Another point, as far as using a keyword in the comment. If you do any marketing on the web, you already know that the title of the post should be keyword rich. How hard is it to comment on the "Rabbits" post with a KW from the title? ...Rabbits, Do They Know Their Poop Is Round?
NOTE: IF YOU WANT TRAFFIC OR A LINK OF VALUE TO YOUR MONEY SITE YOU MAY BE ABLE HELP YOUR CAUSE BY USING KWs IN YOUR COMMENTS. IMO
Nobody has the power to MAKE you do anything. And I'm certainly not saying I'm right about the KWs either. It's just a logical deduction on my part. Only G knows what they want for sure and I get more pissed about the gray areas of G then anything else they do.
But it is their Search Engine and hence their game.
Toledo Internet Marketing
i'm not talking about spam but what are the other ways to get height page rank without spam.i think you want to say that we have to read the articles and put our links(1 link) with the comment is this what you want to say or not??
Thanks for sharing..
Producing a great site and great content is definitely a great plan and something I aim to do. But the fact remains, when your first site goes up if you have zero links no one will ever see the site.
As someone who genuinely participates in communities I think there are many occasions when adding links in comments can add real value. I hope Google can see this.
The reality is that a site does need a certain critical mass before its quality can take over and do the work to get itself seen. If no one in control of an established site ever sees the amazing new website of mine it will never rank.
I guess this is why those who have established sites find it so much easier to launch further new ones than beginners. I don't think quality always comes into!
this is a BIG bunch of bull crap...
let's spam competitors till google make them disappear...
yeah, right, and my grandmother is a monster truck...
@psytrance
You really shouldn't make it so easy for people to make dirty sex jokes about your grandmother.
@John
> "...when it comes to getting traffic from the biggest SE on the WWW then we wag."
Why are you trying to get traffic from the comments section in the first place? You're pathetic, John! If your only agenda for commenting on a blog is for backlinks then don't bother. You're as worthless as a spammer.
The comment section is NOT for link building.
>But for me this isn't about ideologies but rather putting food in my families mouths.
*plays sad little violin* Boo hoo! If your content was any good you wouldn't need to resort to comment spamming, would you?
> How hard is it to comment on the "Rabbits" post with a KW from the title?
You don't always have to use the word rabbits when talking about them. See? I just said 'them.' The comments would read like it was written by a chatbots. It's stupid to have to impair natural speech patterns that way.
>"NOTE: IF YOU WANT TRAFFIC OR A LINK OF VALUE TO YOUR MONEY SITE YOU MAY BE ABLE HELP YOUR CAUSE BY USING KWs IN YOUR COMMENTS. IMO"
Link SPAM is what I'm trying to avoid here. That above encourages it. No thanks.
The only thing that bothers me is Google leaving it up to their spyder to decide what's relevant. First of all, how do they even know where the comment section begins and ends?
They're going to have to tell us or suggest a micro-format because otherwise it doesn't sound too legit.
@Alain-Christan
"Why are you trying to get traffic from the comments section in the first place? You're pathetic, John!"
First, if you look at just the comments I've posted in this thread it's obvious I don't comment spam. I offer my opinion and any help that I can.
"The comment section is NOT for link building."
Better tell G that.
"plays sad little violin* Boo hoo! If your content was any good you wouldn't need to resort to comment spamming, would you?"
What is your definition of spamming? Offering something of value to the reader/author in exchange for a link to my site doesn't qualify as spam in my book.
So your content is soooo good G just puts you at the top of the list? Didn't realize it worked that way.
"You don't always have to use the word rabbits when talking about them. See? I just said 'them.'"
Yeah, and you said rabbits.
"Link SPAM is what I'm trying to avoid here. That above encourages it. No thanks."
So if I visited your site and added something to that was worth reading, added value to your NY Japanese post,in the comments, but included a link to my URL you would consider that spam? Do you realize that the content posted not only helped your site because it was new, relevant, content but it also was an expense of my time?
"The only thing that bothers me is Google leaving it up to their spyder to decide what's relevant. First of all, how do they even know where the comment section begins and ends?"
So far I've been accepting of your point of view and beliefs. Since you have decided you'd rather try to flame me than engage in an mature debate on this subject, I'll leave you with one final thought.
The last quote, of yours I posted, shows how much you don't understand
about this topic. Why pretend you have an understanding when your completely oblivious? This is where you should put the hooka down and grab some Oreo's. You have officially smoked yourself retarded. Get some rest, and the short bus will be by in the morning to take you to work.
Well to avoid comment spam Google has described some good ways by which you can fight comment spam, out of those suggestions I would only obey one of them which is Comment Moderation where you can control spam. The other ways which google has described are Use "NoFollow" tag to all comment by using any plugin or meta tags. I mean doing so search engines will not be able to find the any new comments in the faster or natural way.
My website also had been spammed when It was having a blog related to it. The website deals with the used cars & second hand cars for sale online. So I used to get lots of spam comments asking for prices despite of having them on the website at accurate place, then I started using blog comment moderation to avoid it and now its smoother than ever.
Spammers known well that is spam comments tracing by google and site will be penalize by google but no reaction of stopping comment spam they do not worry about penalize by google their aim is reaching site to end users at any cost.
Frankly, it is really quite sad that this article even had to be written. Comment spam is certainly rampant... the weird thing is that my sites still get it despite the fact they nofollow the links in the comments. Guess people are not doing their homework... in a number of ways ;-)
I understand that google is trying to prevent spam and rank manipulation but since when did it becomes a search engines job to police web spam?
why can't these webmasters monitor and police their own sites and comments? It is their site, they opened the doors by allowing commenting and it should be their responsibility to manage the content on the site including comments.
If you don't have the time... don't run 20 blogs that are nothing but adsense sites or turn off commenting.
@John
>"...I don't comment spam."
Then WHY is there a link to your website at the end of your post? It has nothing to do with the discussion. Jokes on you though, the link is malformed.
> "...In exchange for a link to my site doesn't qualify as spam in my book."
Your agenda is to post a link to your site, not to help. Do you only return lost items in hopes of getting a reward? Despicable.
> So your content is soooo good G just puts you at the top of the list? Didn't realize it worked that way.
If you think high rankings on search engines' the only way people discover websites then you might want to consider a different line of employment. I've never had to game the search engines for an audience. Google helps your audience find you the first time. If your content is good enough they'll bookmark your site/RSS for subsequent viewings.
>Yeah, and you said rabbits.
I'm not going to come up with an example, and frankly, I think you know what I'm getting at anyway.
>"...You would consider that spam?"
I would question your agenda, yes. There are a number of ways to comment in blogger, including the standard name, email, link option. There's no need to double-dip.
> Do you realize that the content posted not only helped your site because it was new, relevant, content but it also was an expense of my time?
LOL, your time? Dude if your time is that valuable don't do me any favors, especially if I have to pay for them in a roundabout way. I don't expect payment or even a thank you when I post comments. Neither should anyone, really. I certainly don't feel like I should be getting paid for my time or whatever. I like because I like helping, that's it. You don't walk the old lady down the street then hand her a receipt when you get to the other side. What's that about?
John, if the only way you can get people to go to your site is by trying to game the system then it's probably not worth a look in the first place.
Using good spam plugind in WP, has helped me kick spamers
Hi,
It’s an interesting article. Thanks for sharing.
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I would love to think that last comment was ironic, but I fear it wasn't...
:)
Posted ironically? Doubt it.
Ironic? Very yes.
I agree with Carter on the first comment. I visited lots of sites I give comment to them and I and usually add my site to (there is a field for it).
I make comments on webmasters forum too, I put my signature that links to my site as much as possible but I don't make spammy comment, because I know you really hate them.
I have made three times request consideration for my site to Google Webmaster Team in crawling and indexing. It seems there are two pages on my site doesn't show on search result. And the pages are :
http://risma2006.blogspot.com/2009/09/mengembalikan-jati-diri-bangsa.html
and
http://risma2006.blogspot.com/2009/07/cara-daftar-btp-bisnis-tiket-pesawat.html
What do you think about it.
Hello,
You have shared good points here about comment spam. Thanks a lot for sharing and keep up the good work.
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Great post. Check the links from my webmaster tools is a great and quick way to check for spam.Thanks for the info
Good post on Hard facts about comment spam.I just came across a free video in http://debtfreeliving.blackbeltrecruiting.com/ that tells how to sponsor 20 a month. It contains good information and I hope it hepls everyone.
Thanks,
Leo.
Excellent help! Thank you for this great tutorial!!
website development
good one its very nice i like it impressive man keep it up i m impressed
as usual google thinks they are god and as usual the good suffer from the bad. if i use my companies sitename in a comment it has some commercial value for sure, but on the other hand it is a fact that i state my comment with my business in mind. in other words i comment on thins that affect my business. do you mind if i use my companies name in that vase?
This is a two edge sword. Competitors can use this to affect ones site. On the other hand it will help reduce junks for the web.
Think, everyone! You have no control over how links to you! Google is essentially saying that someone else can bury you by intentionally posting spammy links to your website via comments in other websites. And you could do the same thing to one of your competitor's websites. Come on, Google, you can't be serious about this.
Great post and extremely helpful
I will share this information with one.
thanks for the spam explained. It's more powerfull to keep our post clean in information, very usefull!
Sounds to me like they are trying yet again to nofollow comments. If I want to dofollow my comments I will. It's supposed to be MY blog and I'll do as I please.
If I don't want to moderate and allow gibberish I will. If I don't want gibberish I'll correct it in my own fashion.
Thanks but no thanks daddy I can do it myself!!
I run a PR5 blog, which is why take comment spam very seriously, which is why I have a very strict comments policy spelled out on my blog. Comments are a way to build your reputability and relevance on the Internet, not only for the comments I leave on other blogs, but especially for the comments left on my blog and that my readers may click on. No comment makes it to my blog unless it is absolutely relevant. I try hard not to be a comment spammer myself, although I probably am on this blog, since it relates not at all to anything my own blog, but anyway.
I actually closed my personal blog due to comment spam so I understand the problem.
But I do not think Google should be telling other webmasters how to manage their sites in regards to nofollow links, allowing links in comments, requiring captchas, etc.
I do not think a Google bot can or should determine what is a relevant comment on a blog. That should be the sole responsibility of the site admin to clean up their site and make it useful for their visitors.
I have a PR5 blog so I take these matters very seriously. First, I have Akismet, so I rarely see any spam in the first place. Second, I have comment moderation on. I only get a couple of comments per day at the most, so the workload is manageable, and since I’m not blogging about current events there’s no “urgency” in publishing comments immediately to generate a readers’ discussion. Third, I always check every link left in my comments. If the link is deemed non-spam, it stays, if not, it goes, perhaps the whole comments goes. Fourth, I have written a “comments policy” on my blog, and I follow it very strictly. I would never consider using captchas, though, except for on my contact form.
Not quite understand
If one of my comments is considered as spam, would my site be banned from SE (Google)?
How many comments should be considered as spam to get a site banned?
I made maybe ten comments for my site and I placed a link as my signature and only few are under a keyword, but my site has been banned for that keyword. I have forum signatures with my site's name (not keyword)and I really don't know why I am banned. I am not going to chase some blog administrators to remove my link from comment signatures (it is not so uncommon that some admins don't provide e-mail address, so it's like chasing own tail). Should my site be banned for life just because there are few comments with keyworded signature?
And I have a question about PR. Almost all my subpages got some PR on first update (PR1 and some have PR2). If my site is banned for certain keywords, would my site get lower PR on PR update?
Thanks
ha ha....... its all bullshit and is created by their own stand Google on one side is encouraging links by giving weightage in their algorithm. It would not be wrong to say that Google is the biggest promoter of spam links.....And now they want to flow the message that they hate comment spam and will penalize sites having links in spam as they have a magical algo which can distinguish between spam comments and legit Comments ..... I don't understand how they will find out that the spam comment posted is done by a site owner or a spy competitor who wants to rank higher by getting their competitor
penalised...............
Infect Google employees have gone crazy and don't understand or are unable to find out a way by which can combat spam linking. Lets see how Google site will perform in the SERPS as the majority of links pointing to Google site pages are from the comments posted on blogs and forums.
If they really wanna do omething then they have to change their algo which seems to be outdated and incapable of standing out and holding up with the advancement of web 2.0 technology and social nature of Internet ........ As far as link spamming is concerned I too hate it! and if Google find out a way to combat link spam then it will make our online experience much better. There is a simple
way to do this but I don't think Google is serious on this topic.
Well, I was wondering what if someone visits blogs a lot and leave comments, without trying to increase his/her own sites traffic, what would be Google's stance on that?
Very interesting. I wonder if t his applies to youtube stuff.
For example, if i spam this blog with my youtube video link.... what will happen? Now... if i wanted to start spamming all blogs with my youtube video link that has a link to my website in the information.... what then?
At that point, will google give trouble to the video account on youtube? will they give youtube less ranking as a whole, even t hough it's theirs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA1CGIxxuaU
There... let's see what happens.... i was condidering quitting that band anyways, so if they screw me for posting the link, so be it......
# Use the "nofollow" attribute for links in the comment field.
# Disallow hyperlinks in comments.
# Block comment pages using robots.txt or meta tags.
those points actually dont help, they keep spamming everywhere.
If you want your website to be accessible to readers with differing levels of physical ability, please do not use CAPTCHAs. CAPTCHAs are very hard to solve for visually impaired internet users, and the audio clues for captchas are hard for hearing impaired users. I have both a visual and hearing impairment and I need a third party CAPTCHA solving service in order to use any website that requires them.
Other people have pointed out that CAPTCHA isn't a way to deter spammers, all CAPTCHA does is make websites less accessible to handicapped viewers. I assume the point of having any website is to maximize viewership and traffic, alienating handicapped users runs counter to this.
Wow I guess I better stop spamming the porn sites.
Awesome tips, this tips should make ODPM services more powerful. However, if the Whats to prevent comment spam from their competitors site, so that they be punished?
I believe that these proposals are good, in addition to using nofollow links. Really nofollow links will not only help identify the trusted search engine links. They rarely stop comment spam. Comment spammers will spam their views, regardless of whether the site nofollows comment link.
Very nice and informative for bloggers.
My blog is hosted on wordpress. I have turned on Akismet on my blog. This tool prevents 99% of spams. I have also turned on comment moderation. I review each comment before approving it.
I disagree that a one-line comment is always spam. I like to look at photography blogs, and sometimes a great photo deserves a compliment, but it doesn't need to be a dissertation.
I also find comment moderation to be a disservice to readers. I don't spend my whole day at the computer, so folks who comment on my blog would have to wait until evening to get approved. Consequently they try to to resubmit the comment and it gets duplicated. A nuisance all the way around.
Sometimes it's easy to decide what is a spam comment. Other times it is not so easy. Some readers have trouble writing the English language. It's their second language. Their comments are brief and not very good. Maybe they are poor and trying to make a few dollars on their sites. It's easy to decide they are spammers. But maybe they enjoyed their visit and are just trying to tell you so. I can hear the cynics laughing but..
I learn something today from this guide.
Thanks
Awesome tips!
thanks
I would like to report a SPLOG blog site republishing rss content from various site
Its using blog generator robots to generate over 140,000 blog post. Its using doorway page and abuse the rss feed with link to foul google search engine. Terrible spam links can be found at hostingcoupons.org/feed/
sadly this spam blog site ranked high in google.
I appreciate this post, addressing comments head-on. I have been struggling with this issue too. I never thought to put a post on “comments”, which makes so much sense. At least visitors are put on notice to add value. Thank you for a great idea, and you express your concerns very well.
Great post!
Oh no, now I'm a spammer, oh well...
This entire thread is hilarious, and proves how stupid bloggers are in general.
Until there's no money to be made on the internet, then internet marketing will NEVER go away. Deal with it.
All the people who cry foul are the ones that aren't making more than a few bucks here and there with their silly little personal blog. And if you think return visitors means anything for your bottom line, forget it, you're also probably not making any money.
Sure, some people can make money blogging, but in my experience most bloggers have no clue about the real world of marketing. Period. No-follow will not save you.
If you don't like the fact that there are a billion people on the internet with their own agendas, then get off it. You don't belong, and you're in for years of headache and ignorant complaining.
i dont comment spam but i do comment on a bunch of blogs and i usually add my site.
Rock & Roll T Shirts
People should stop doing this, to be honest I just delete them and they never get past my dashboard.
Its made me think though as I am going to post this comment with my Google profile which is under the name of my business, is that a problem???
Anyhow its good you are teaching people the right way to do things as search is going to be a better place for it!!
Not all people are spammers. Only the webmasters of porn websites and health websites are spamming too much. Also the people are earning alot in the forums by selling the blog comment list. Google crawler can easily find the links on the blog in the form of comment. Because the scripts used in wordpress, blogspot are common and google engineers should use the script as criteria and penalize the sites found in the comments by its url.
Also google hate the paid links but if we search the keywords in google search only paid sites are available in page 1 and page 2 in organic search. The google engineers can judge easily which websites are well ranked by paid links. The logic should be implemented to penalize these type of websites. In future, its hard to earn online by small business man.
This is the news of november 2009 but people are commenting on blogs without any fear.
Not all people are spammers. Only the webmasters of porn websites and health websites are spamming too much. Also the people are earning alot in the forums by selling the blog comment list. Google crawler can easily find the links on the blog in the form of comment. Because the scripts used in wordpress, blogspot are common and google engineers should use the script as criteria and penalize the sites found in the comments by its url.
Also google hate the paid links but if we search the keywords in google search only paid sites are available in page 1 and page 2 in organic search. The google engineers can judge easily which websites are well ranked by paid links. The logic should be implemented to penalize these type of websites. In future, its hard to earn online by small business man.
This is the news of november 2009 but people are commenting on blogs without any fear.
m not a spammer.my blog is disable?now what i do.my blog is very important for me.
@Azeem, have you posted a formal complaint to Google
Thanks for the explanation Sir.
now I more understand about comment. Because, sometimes, there are comment looks like same, and it's difficult to do, to delate or not. is it tool comment or human comment.
because, i'm afraid if the commentator is human.
and how about the link to our blog from other site, it is such as "autoblog"? because we can not do with it?
thanks
It's very great post about comment spam
Thanks a lot
It's useful
Comment spam has become a very painful for all blog owners. Thanks to NoFollow tag which has helped a lots in cutting down spammers way to your blog.
Is there any penalty for mutual exchange of links between two websites? ie Site A links to B and B links back to A.
Awesome post..
A+ form my side.
jignesh.
What happens if someone intentionally creates lots of spam comments linking to your site, knowing that he may lover your site's reputation? How can we protect ourselves against such attacks?
In my opinion giving not any weight to the comment for the search ranking purpose should be good to reduce the spam but penalizing a Website for this reason is dangerous because a competitor just has to post some spammy links pointing to a 3rd party website to make negative SEO against it and that's not normal.
I'm already against the rel="nofollow" tag because this is the job of the search engine to deal with this kind of problem that are not impacting a websiteand its in anyway.
By doing like this, Google is changing the map of the Internet because before doing anything a webmaster has to mind about penalties and optimization before the relevancy for its audience...
To resume, a webmaster should only have to filter the non relevant comments and a search engine should only improve his algo to not give weight to the spammers.
What happens when spam blogs hotlink to images on your site. This has happened to one of my sites and as a result it is now deindexed in google, how unfair is that?! You really can't stop people or bad neighbourhoods linking to you!
Really surprising.This entry shows a great use of videos and images to enhance your blog.
Also, the subject matter is interesting and current.
Definitely one of the blogs that caught my eye.
People are desperate to get their sites ranking for themselves, and clients. Writing articles, and getting backlinks is a much more civilized way of doing this, but many do not want to write good, unique, and helpful information to get that link.
I came upon this blog searching for "Is there any such thing as a backlinks spam?" Thank you so much for this post. Now I know that sufficient comment backlinks are not bad it's just the act of abusing other sites for high rankings.
Original content? You keep banging the same old drum there my friend...
But what's that? All the natural search results above me are there through comment links, paid text links, blog roll sponsorship? But surely a completely unnatural footprint of links and zero natural links would set off an alarm?
Yeah it's okay I know the Google answer... we'll find them, they won't be there for long, not a long term strategy etc etc
I could have made the panda algorithm in my shed and produced better results.
very nice information. i like this..
This is one of the use full information. But in deed most of the google projects can be visualized if they post it as a video tutorial............
very useful information.Thank you.
Comment spam is stupid and useless. Those persons are just plain stupid , nothing else. Why even try that kind of things. Real comments can actually help people, i am so tired to spammers.
I've seen some very obvious spam comments, like the examples provided in the article, but there are some comments in which people are posting genuine thoughtful comments with links in them. Where does Google draw the line on spam and acceptable backlinks?
i am very happy to know that kind of information thak you very much
I am glad to get these information.Thanks a lot.
My URL:http://www.gp-jnet.com
I opened with Google Choome but can't opened and show:
Peringatan: Ada Yang Aneh!
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Jika Anda paham bahwa mengunjungi situs ini dapat membahayakan komputer Anda, tetap lanjutkan.
I've checked in Webmaster Tools and emerging command download Wordpress 3.3.1 and I have done.
I request assistance from Webmaster Tool Manager.
I'm really pleased that I found this post. I'm new to blogging and have recently noticed more and more comments coming in from the same site but with different email addresses. I replied to the first two without realising this but have marked the others as spam. Thanks for the heads up.
Good God, everyone got the wrong end of the stick here.
Google *can* tell you how to run your site if you want to show up in *their* search engine - you don't have to do what they say, but you might not show up.
Personally I hate comment spamming and strongly believe that all the captcha stuff is not the solution, certainly with the prevalence of online identities (facebook, twitter, g+) i see no reason why someone shouldn't say who they are when commenting. It's plain old rude not to, you're more likely to keep the conversation relevant and polite.
So my solution - google ignores all anonymous postings and uses information about the author to decide if a link is worthwhile! simples! (They are already pushing this way)
We need to get rid of the 'old' web, it's changing, links should be second place to social right now.
(as an aside i can't beitve i'm doing a cptcha AND logging in to do this - annoying!)
Iain
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