A lot of new bloggers might notice that, after a while, they start to receive quite a few comments on their posts. All exceited, they rush to see who’s said what, and, noticing that someone has said “I like your blog, come check out mine” MIGHT realise they’ve been hit by blog spam.
I’ve been through this stage. I was excited when I was told that, while doing some research, so-and-so landed on my blog and really enjoyed reading it. I realised it was spam when I got the same comment over and over. Oh, and the fact that I could get my breasts enlarged if I visited their site.
There is a good article called “How to Spam with Blogs: A Tutorial for Every Wanna-be SEO” outlining a few of these spamming methods. Here’s a quote:
The problem with all blog spam is that it relies on SEO “tactics” that the search engines hate. Sometimes a nuisance, sometimes illegal and almost always results in more garbage on the Internet. There is nothing worse than having to wade through someone’s garbage to find good quality information. But one thing is for sure, for as long as blog spam works, one man’s garbage will continue to be a spammer’s goldmine.
On my blogs, because I’m using WordPress, there is a neat little plugin I’ve installed called “Akismet“, which, in the words of it’s creators:
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage†and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days.
Using this plugin, I’ve caught about 100 comments that are actually spam comments. This is nothing compared to what some blogs actually get. But it definitely helps.