subversive |s?b?v?rsiv|
adjective
seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution : subversive literature.
Spam on the internet has just been getting worse and worse. When I first started FG around 5 yrs ago the internet was a gentler place. The odd person would leave comments, some were derogatory but all were by real people. Then around 3 years ago the spam bots came. They could seek out things like comment forms and automatically post things like porn links.
It wasn't that big a deal. You put up something called a "Captcha" that asks a skill testing question or you require people to make an account and log in prior to commenting. I opted for the latter and it worked fine until last year. In the ongoing arms race the spam bots caught up. They (yes, I am personifying the spam bots) suddenly developed the ability to create fictitious accounts (this required receiving the login and password in an email) and started posting content on FG.
Around this time I had gotten busy and wasn't maintaining the site for around 6 months. When I returned all of a sudden I had 1400 fictitious users and a shit load of comments and events (I allowed users to create events) to delete. What a nightmare! However, these entries were easy to pull out of the database. All you needed to do was search for "porn" or glance through the user names. They were gobedy-gook, nonsensical obviously created by some random assortment of characters. Clearly, a machine was doing this.
So when I upgraded FG a month or so ago I figured I would try out the "Captcha" approach and allow anyone to post comments. So far it has worked quite well, but I have been noticing a new type of spam comment. One that is far more subversive than ever before. One that for all intended purposes is almost not spam.
The commenter has a human readable name (e.g. 'Janni') and the comment text is even contextual. When you read it the comment doesn't say a whole lot but the topics it talks about is appropriate for the thread. Then you get to the homepage link. On the comment form I allow you to leave your homepage so that if you have a site you may publicize it. Here the homepage link will take you to some spam website like http://www.insurance-list.info.
For example, in the forums there is a topic on helmet law crackdown, were people were discussing the merits of helmet use. If you scroll down to the bottom there are two comments in a row by someone named 'Janni.'
The first comment is as follows:
I agree with you there are
On March 20th, 2008 Janni (not verified) says:
I agree with you there are so many bad things in the streets that threaten the health of the pedestrians and cyclists that the police should care about.
At first glance it seems that it should belong in the thread. It doesn't really add or subtract from what others are saying. For the most part it doesn't draw any attention to itself. However, if you click on 'Janni' it will take you to a spam insurance website! When filling out the comment, the commenter (aka spam bot) filled out their "homepage" as a frickin' insurance site! Now that is subversive! If I didn't scan incomming comments I would never catch it!
So why do it?
Google ranks pages according to how many people link to site. The more incomming links the higher the site is ranked. Therefore if you can hide links in other sites you can boost your rankings.
Wow the world sucks, eh?
Comments
those comments are most likely left by human SEOs. i know because i filter through this stuff all the time too. it's pretty disgusting actually, but people do actually get paid to sit there all day posting links, even if irrelevant contextually.
Ahhhh a human spam bot. Of course. What a boring job! Human machine indeed.
For those not in the know SEO = Search Engine Optimization and its a big bucks industry. If your site comes up first on Google's rankings it can be a huge. Much more than plunking millions into an advertising campaign.
I guess I should take it as a compliment that they the SEO agents decide to take on my site.
Well, they probably found your blog through a blog search program. I've seen ones now that actually specifically search for sites with DoFollow tags on their comment links. The blogs that show up on the search programs generally have the most spam comments.
Could you give a link where I might find one? I would like to follow this up.
hi guys. :)
ok I feel compelled to defend my profession here, we're not all like that. some of us practice ethical seo, dont use bots or $5 an hour offshore linkbuilders and read, learn from and enjoy blogs, and yes comment on a few where appropriate, like this...
you'll find our link goes to our site, and if clients want blog comments done we show them how to do it and launch them into blogworld to speak for themselves with instructions to add to the web, not detract from it, & most love it once you get them started.
i cant speak for, nor defend all seos nor would i try, but as with everthing where there's money there's both good & bad.
seo-auto-bot over and out ;)
having revisited this thread several months later, how ironic to find that "Insurance" comment just below my previous one, a perfect example of an auto spam bot just as you are talking about in this thread.
further apologies for the rest of my profession, what can I say?
Kev @ SEO Ibiza
Actually not all comments are spam. I have a blog and I approve relevant comments with keywords in the name. It is normal...
I removed the link to your "Run your car on water" as your comment is EXACTLY the kind of spam I am talking about.
To quote monty Python: Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam.
Whew, now I am tired.
Nowadays it is not so important how many people link to site, authority and trust rank of the site is more important. That's why it is better to get more quality links.
I removed your link to water4gas-review [dot] com as again this is the exact spam comments I am talking about. Your comment is especially interesting because you add some useful info to the thread BUT your name was linked to a link farm page.
I am not certain "link farm" is the correct web terminology but basically it's a USELESS internet page that has a bit of info on it for search engines, and whose sole purpose is to redirect incoming traffic to other (pay per click) links. It is an automated way to try and generate revenue.
This is a business equivalent of a parasite, sucking resources out of its host (internet culture). I have nothing against people generating revenue off the internet, but come on please ADD SOMETHING USEFUL to this world that is already full of shit. I am not sure how you people sleep at night.
Anyway, for the non-geeks, this is why they need link from "trust rank" sites (such as this one) so they can fool google into thinking its something other than a link farm.
To be very true, It is a difficult task to recognize or to make a difference between a stupid human user and an intelligent bot. Things even go worst when hackers around us are more sophisticated and intelligent. A few months ago, one of my forums(PHPBB) have the worst spam of my lief and it was full of porn links. Captcha is a good thing but I have been reading on another blog about ODD Captcha. You know, Captcha is not safe anymore. I am wondering that what CMS we should use next?
I removed your crappy link to vividracing [dot] com. Come on this is a CYCLING site, not a frickin' car site. If you are going to be a link farm bastard at least do a half way decent job.
BTW you are the first to claim the captcha system was bad. Oh yeah, there is no such thing as ODD Captcha and finally CMS = content management system. Captcha is usually and add on module or plugin to such systems, and usually there is more than one to choose from.
But if you want a good CMS go with Drupal.org
Spam is a huge problem on blogs, forums, and anything that allows a user to add a URL. You can thank software like xRumer for these automated dirty deeds. I get atleast 10 spam submissions per week at my directory. About 5 on my forum, and hundreds at my two blogs. In addition to that, I get E-mail spam as well. So I feel your pain.
Maybe you don't understand the reason that human SEOs stop by your blogs and leave relevant comments. As long as the comment is relevant to the topic at hand and is a decent comment (no short, one sentence garbage), it's not considered spam. This is how this works... an SEO gives you a decent comment and adds more relevant content to your site which makes YOUR site rank higher for the subject matter you're targeting. In exchange, we get a link back to our site. Everybody wins. We get our relevant link and you get your relevant content. When someone searches for your site, the blog comments left are also searchable content. The more relevant content you have, the higher YOU rank. We scratch your back, you scratch ours.
The fact is that there are a lot of people that run around leaving crappy, one sentence comments, but the fact also is that there are a lot of SEOs that don't allow their link builders to comment on a blog if they can't leave a decent size, intelligent, relevant post. Neither I nor any of the people working with me leave short comments like this not only because we're not allowed to, but because it's not a fair trade. Many SEOs expect something for nothing, but allowing SEOs to give you more relevant content in exchange for a simple link back to their site is a smart thing to do if you're interested in increasing your own visibility in the search engines. Ranking is increased by quality links, onpage, and content. The good SEOs give you content that's basically free, because giving us back a link costs you absolutely nothing... so what are you complaining about??? Think about it the next time you go to delete a relevant comment that's from an SEO.