Do You Outsource Comment SPAMing?
Commenting on blogs that provide benefits of DoFollow is one of the best ways to build incoming links. It give you deep content linking, especially when done on blogs with CommentLuv enabled and it passes Page Rank to help you build authority of your own blog.
It is one strategy I personally use and highly recommended in several posts. Problem I have is when people who comment fail to read comment guidelines and leave SPAM and what is even worse…
When Marketers I Personally Respect Outsource The Spamming Process!
Be it intentionally or not is secondary to the conversation as I still have to deal with that spam and here is latest example…
This morning while going through the Comments waiting to be approved I have noticed that couple comments actually lead to a blog of an Internet Marketer I personally have great respect for. I did hide the easily identifiable information that leads to his blog in image below out of respect and with hopes that he will address the issue. My goal he is NOT to create a controversy post and score few extra visits but bring problem to the surface!
Problem is – those comments are SPAM and completely ignoring my Commenting Guidelines that are present in comments form!
What is even worse – entire comment is nothing more than simply copy/paste from the blog post it is made on! I simply couldn’t believe that this blatant spam was coming from that person himself or even the part of his normal team!
There has to be a catch!
So I went in and investigated the source of the comment: 123.238.34.37. I have to mention here that I have marked as spam quite a few similar comments coming from that 123.236.0.0/14 IP range so I knew by glancing on it that it must be coming from some outsourcing outfit in India. Surely enough – WHOIS doesn’t lie…
I have no problem outsourcing tasks, including doing a promotion as long as commenting done properly, according to guidelines and also person commenting uses his own name or alias while linking to my blog! In fact we use commenting as described in my guides to promote some of our Niche Blogs.
Looks like spammer commenting on my blog had little to none education on how to properly comment and by simple association – be is intentional, through the job requirement or otherwise – it puts a dark shadow over good name of the marketer in my opinion! If he is not fired yet – he should be!
I simply can’t believe that marketer in question here outsourced the process to someone who arrogantly lazy to even make a proper comment in order to get links to his blog and completely ignoring comment guidelines, clearly provided!
I don’t know how much he pays this spammer but my question is:
Does One Link Really Worth It?
What do you, my reader think about it?
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
34 Responses to “Do You Outsource Comment SPAMing?”
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Retweet @TheSpotter: WordPress comment spamming – what is even worse – outsourced! What do you think about it? http://twurl.nl/aikgcf
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useful article by @thespotter Do You Outsource Comment SPAMing? http://tinyurl.com/cjswfr
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RT @thespotter Do You Outsource Comment SPAMing? http://tinyurl.com/cjswfr good article and important topic
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RT @MikePaetzold @thespotter Do You Outsource Comment SPAMing? http://tinyurl.com/cjswfr
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RT @MikePaetzold: RT @thespotter Do You Outsource Comment SPAMing? http://tinyurl.com/cjswfr good article and important topic
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What do you think of outsourcing comment spamming? http://bit.ly/143XdA
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[...] it is simply a primitive form of hack attack and I treat it as such! I have described my own fights against comment spam multiple times on this blog but now I use following plugins for [...]
I’m not sure I get your final question
but personally I hate people commenting just to get links.
Posts where the person commenting is called “cheap hair cut” and the comment is “nice advice, thank you”. It clutters the blog and blog owners accepting these comments are only hurting the quality of their blog IMO.
I can understand that it might be great to get additional content on the site and that Google might love that posts get a lot of comments but having 10 “thank you” posts simply isn’t worth it.
But that’s just me….
Mikael Riecks last blog post..How to Make a Fortune on EBay
If he did pay the spammer, we should pity him because the spammer not only cheat him money but also give him bad reputation
Maybe I can`t understand something, but I don`t think that dofollow community is good idea.
To do nofollow links is an initiative of blog owner, and his interest on it based only on attraction other people to his site. So he need accept any visitors, including spammers, because of his decision to do his blog dofollow.
Other benefits of doing your blog dofollow I can`t see..
wisp – you missed the point!
DoFollow is a one of the ways to share links love with people who take their time and participate on your blog, in form of leaving comment! I personally turn on DoFollow after 3 approved comments.
And if I follow you logic “he need accept any visitors, including spammers, because of his decision to do his blog dofollow” – than email spammers have just as much right to fill your inbox with their crap, just because you decided to have an email address and be part of the global network we call internet. Does that makes sense to you?
Alex
Unfortunately this is not a new issue. A few well known “guru’s” have been snagged in this practice…yet another reason to pay no attention to them, as if snother reason was needed.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Understanding The New Rules Of SEO
Dennis, I would agree, except this one I have a great respect for and somehow believe simply a failure to control the quality of outsourced work. Hence the reason I didn’t point the finger, plus I don’t believe in need to smear someone’s good name in order to achieve personal goals.
I do think it needs to be brought to attention, which I did.
thanks fro comment, as always!
Fair enough, In that case Zi would contact him personally also.
The thing is, some gurus are teaching this practice to newbies….for a price no less. Rosalind Gardner recently wrote about it also.
Dennis Edells last blog post..Understanding The New Rules Of SEO
Since everything can be outsourced these days, it was probably only a matter of time. How do you turn off or on the dofollow feature for indivdiual commenters? That seems like a good way to handle it, depsite still having to deal with the spam problem in the first place.
SueCs last blog post..Blogging For Money – It can be done
Sue,
I use LuciaLinkyLove plugin – works quite nicely for me!
Sue, There must be a plug-in that can register the country of origin. It would not be difficult to filter the IP address and set the countries that are allowed to comment. The outsourced countries are well known. You can also tell often by their grammar and usage.
Instead of outsourcing comments, it is more valuable to outsource articles and review it and spread it through article directories.
Roy Kuruvilas last blog post..Try These Off Page SEO Techniques
Twitter: barbaraling
says:
Outsourcing comments? I didn’t realize people actually do this! I spend an hour or so every morning myself visiting blogs and posts personally to give my insights. How else would the comments reflect my own opinions?
Barbara Ling, Virtual Coachs last blog post..Loving children, hacking vBulletin, Worshiping Coffee and more
Barbara, one should think that they couldn’t but the reality is that they often use names that are not related the the actual marketer and only the website will “give them away”. More often than not you’ll also find that the comment is close to worthless in terms of providing extra value to the readers.
Mikael Riecks last blog post..Using a Translator with Adsense is a Bad Idea
This happened the other day. The comment spam linked to XO communications, a big telco in the USA. It was obvious that the person had English as a second language.
There is going to be a big backlash against these paid spammers and some large corporation is going to be embarrassed by this…….
GregRs last blog post..Chris Pine Talks Star Trek in Auckland
There are worse things than unrelated comments. Imagine some huge company outsourcing SEO to the company that uses mostly bots. Then the whole internet would be spammed with retarded comments posted by bots – the good name of the company would be ruined.
Nieruchomosci Gryfinos last blog post..Mieszkanie 4-pokojowe w Czepinie
I recently started blogging as part of my site and had no idea about the dofollow links. I will check that out.
I do have a plugin that blocks quite a bit of spam comments. I guess that is from robots, not real people who enter the captcha code.
Stacey Mayos last blog post..It’s never too late (inspiring video)
This will be a continuing problem as more people outsource services. I too use do follow but personally moderate all the comments. It is important for me to take care of those that add value to my blog and pay them back despite having to deal with this garbage.
Thanks for the input Mike and I’m just like you! I think outsourcing is valid in some cases but not when it is done to represent you and not when it is done so poorly!
I have been engaged with Outsourcers for the past couple of months and I haven’t used them in this way for good reason. They can easily cross the line or worse yet, blatantly hop over it with intent.
I use outsourcers to get the time-consuming task done for my projects and agree creating links is better served with other means such as bookmarking and article marketing.
Bottom line is that if you want your organization to be respected, you need to closely monitor what they (outsourcer) are doing. And if you are too big/busy to do this then you need to hire somebody (that you trust) to do it for you.
Greg
Thanks for bringing this subject up, and also for continuing to endorse GOOD blog comments as a source of good link juice. Much of the “trade show speaking” SEO industry now pooh-poohs these blog links as if they have no value.
IMHO, this is due to a) many blogs going totally no-follow and b) all that offshore (and some onshore) outsourced blog comment spam.
I think they’ve forgotten that there is a whole tranche left of quality blogowners (like your place here) that still understands the concept of community, and that a focused engagement with those bloggers, that builds a relationship and provides REAL content value over time, can pay off. I just love your policy of moving to dofollow at comment #3. Or rather, *good* comment #3, where good is in the eye of the guy who cares the most about the quality of content on this site. Bravo!
Hi Alex –
I haven’t had outsourced SPAM comments at my blog yet that I know of. I do all my own commenting. I do check the URLs and IPs to see where they go. The reason I do this is one day I got a comment in Akismet that looked borderline. I decided to check where the links went even though the appeared harmless. The domain name was topic related. When I tried the link it redirected to a site that an unsuspecting visitor might find highly offensive.
Since then I check every time some one posts a comment with a few exceptions. I also added a captcha plugin (SI CAPTCHA) which I know is unpopular with many people. This came about because I was spending to much time going through the SPAM comments Akismet was catching. I didn’t want to just delete them without reviewing them because I had found valid comments in there before.
I was getting 40 – 50 SPAM comments in Akismet every hour when I decided enough was enough and added the captcha. Now I get maybe 1 a week.
Also I saw you were using LuciaLinkyLove here so I added it to my blog. Seems to be totally compatible. I also use CommentLuv. Another thing I did was add comment guidelines that are suspiciously similar to yours. I hope you don’t mind. I almost didn’t do it because it involved editing in PHP. But I took a chance and it worked.
Thanks – John
John Collinss last blog post..Push Button Article Idea Tool
I didn’t know there where companies out there that provided a commenting service. Seems a little slimy.
Brad Officers last blog post..Short Sale Help in Jacksonville
Well, spams are are a big annoyance. Can you suggest me which is the best anti spam plugin?
chinmoys last blog post..Free Software – 3D Photo Album
Just search for “comment spam” on this blog. I spoke out and made my recommendations several times