Thursday, August 03, 2006

Human Spambots?

Getting something curious lately in the blog comments -- bland, innocuous comments left by people who at least have read the post, so they know what the subject is, and leave as their link a URL to a commercial or spam site, obviously with some sort of affiliate program attached.  This will probably end up being harder to fight than electronic spammers, they’re like the people who get involved in pyramid scams where you have to sign up new members continually.

It’s pretty well-known that Blogger inserts ‘nofollow’ attributes into links from blog comments, so they don’t affect Google’s pagerank of the linked-to site.  Which means the poor bastard cruising blogs and posting meaningless me-too comments is just doing it in hopes of the one or two clicks they might get from each post.  Almost makes me feel bad for the poor housewives clicking away trying to make an extra dollar or two.

But I’m still going to delete them when I see them.

By al - 11:39 a.m. |

Comments:
ugh. i was getting those for awhile. so annoying. i use word verification now. that takes care of them.
 
A guy from Texas claiming to be the Messiah (who also just so happened to have written a book about it) left a comment on my blog in the same manner.

He must have read the title of my post "Are Visa Cheque Cards the Mark of the Beast?" and proceeded to copy and paste a form comment which outlines his own interpretation of end-times prophecy in the Bible and encourages readers to buy his book. The comment was over a thousand words!

I'd be flattered if the comment was just for me, but I know the exact same self-promotional monologue has probably been left on every blog post that even hints at the Book of Revelation.

I went back to his blog to leave an insulting comment, but of course he didn't allow comments at all. So there I was, looking at his blog, rewarding him for his efforts.

GRRRRR!!!!
 
Post a Comment

    follow me on Twitter

    al's del.icio.us Links

    • www.flickr.com
      This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from dragonofsea. Make you own badge here.
    •  
    • (al)



    • Powered by Blogger