Blog Spammers, What's Wrong with You?

How is this not a waste of time?

[Teshka]

Does anyone NOT delete spammy blog comments within a day? At least with my software (Moveable Type), the comments are the first thing you notice when you log in. What's the point in doing it when it's just going to get deleted by the blog owner? Message board member lists I can somewhat see since those are more likely to go unnoticed... but feh, in blogs? What a waste of time all around.

Ok, I'm done ranting. Thanks :)

[graywolf]

They do it in an automated fashion

They are looking for abandonded blogs

They do it because it works

[ogletree]

Also there are a lot of amatures out there that heard blog spamming will help them. The smart ones activly look for abandoned blogs and would only do it once and leave it alone if the first one is deleted.

[Rugles]

There is a lot of abandonded blogs out there that are worth the effort, believe it or not.

[swiftshot]

I equate abandoned blogs with no traffic, so I don't see how it still benefits anyone.

Teshka - I'm not familiar with MT-based blogs. I use WordPress, myself. They have a lot of support and plugins to use in the fight against spam. When I first started with them, even though I had some spam defense in place, I got spam about every other day. Now that I've upgraded to their latest platform and installed a few other plugins, I've been spam free for almost a week, which is how long I've been upgraded.

I'm sure MT has these things as well, but if you're in the mood to switch, go visit wordpress.org.

[Conard]

They are not hitting blogs for eye balls.
They could care less if another human being ever sees the link that they put there with a bot...

[swiftshot]

Conard,

True, but don't you think SEs are smart enough to keep a list of known spammers, thus skipping over those that they find in blogs? Even if spammers change, as I know they do, it won't be long before they're identified again, and again.

Besides, once the "nofollow" tag becomes more prevalent, I anticipate spammers won't be so eager to post anywhere, blog or otherwise. :)

[zCat]

You may find this Register article informative:

[theregister.co.uk...]

[swiftshot]

Interesting article indeed, zCat. Thanks for sharing that. :)

In the article I noticed these spammers like to call themselves "search engine optimizers". Puh-leez! "Search engine cheaters" maybe, but they're not what I would call a true search engine optimizer -- one who uses ethical methods of showing up organically in a search engine.

Yes, it could be asked, "What's ethical?". But surely, if you remove the money gained from this method of "search engine optimizing" (because it far too often clouds one's judgement), the understanding of how it abuses bandwidth and how it's just downright annoying, reason might win.

Oh, and I think the part about using abandoned blogs should be reduced a little lower in the list of reasons why spammers do this. The article pointed out that the drive for doing this at all is to get people to click on their links. So if a site is abandoned, the SEs have no reason to consider moving them higher in their rankings.

[Philosopher]

Swiftshot

If the engines could get a list of known spammers and simply ignore their sites, do you think that they would have instituted the nofollow tag in the first place?

In regards to the implementation of the nofollow tag stopping spammers, you need to remember that in order for the nofollow tag to be implemented, the blog owner will need to update their blog software.

Spammers target primarily abandoned blogs. This means, no deletion of the comments and no updating of the software to institute the nofollow tag.

Quite simply, while the nofollow tag will stop future bandoned blogs from being a target, it won't stop the HUGE amount of abandoned blogs from being a target...and working.

[nuevojefe]

True, but don't you think SEs are smart enough to keep a list of known spammers, thus skipping over those that they find in blogs? Even if spammers change, as I know they do, it won't be long before they're identified again, and again.

kidding right?
..and they'll repeat the process again, and again...

[webnewton]

While comparing from the past the blog spam has reduced to great extent. I hope this nuisance will be over soon.

[Rosalind]

Abandoned pages will always be with us, it's just a matter of what we can do to lessen its impact. There are some of my ideas in this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

I think that making changes to popular guestbook and blog software will have the biggest impact, but it will take time.

[Rugles]

>>>So if a site is abandoned, the SEs have no reason to consider moving them higher in their rankings.

How would a SE bot know if a blog is abandoned? With spammers adding content (with a few words and some links) it appears the page is not abandoned.

[swiftshot]

Rugles, true the SE bots don't know (at least I don't think they do), but one thing I overlooked is that that's only part of the equation. The other part is that these spammers are hoping for eyeballs on the blogs they're spamming, wouldn't you agree?

And if nobody's looking at those blogs, then it seems all the spammer can hope for is to be among the gazillion results on the SEs. That's probably all right with them anyway, come to think of it.

Be that as it may, I'm not expecting spam to go away anytime soon. :)

[Rugles]

No, they are not looking for eyeballs. They are looking for the bots to see the links. The get a little Page Rank from the link. More importantly, they want the bots to see the anchor text. That is why the SE's recently recomended that blogs use the "no-follow" tag.
This blog spamming, guestbook spamming, log file spamming, link farms and drive-by forum spamming is all about the search engine robots and nothing else.