I think Marc is a great guy and am sure he had great intentions when he created the Isulong Seoph contest, but getting manually comment spammed 10 or 15 times a day gets old.
When blogs were newer and I had less brand value I am certain I was probably a bit of a blog spammer too, but you have to use effective techniques while they are effective. I don't think you are going to win an SEO contest today by manually blogspamming garbage comments on a blog that uses nofollow and is getting hit by 100 other people using the exact same spamming technique. Weather or not something is spam is entirely up to user perception, but you have to think that I am going to know when an SEO contest is going on. The tolerance for spam and the ability of spam to go undetected is probably roughly about inversely proportional to the frequency the person being spammed is exposed to that type of spam.
From this point forward I am going to just file anyone's comment signed with Isulong Seoph straight to the junk folder without even reading it (same goes for if they have made up contest words in their URL). Not trying to say I am better than anyone (and I am sure I did some manual blog spamming back in the day) but you have to use effective techniques while they are effective.
Today there is soooooooooo much spam opportunity out there:
Then of course you got all sort of the more traditional spamming opportunities still available.
The fake words are boring AND make an obvious footprint that makes it easy to detect many types of spam. Whoever holds the next contest should use a real word. See who could be the first person to rank number #1 in Google for spammer. That would be a bit more challenging though, since it would require them to beat one of the original blog spammers.
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Regarding that interview with the blog spammer:
Using unsecured proxy servers to send out your blog spam doesn't seem that much different than using them to send out e-mail spam.
That is, couldn't one potentialy face some legal problems?
Perhaps distinction should be made with open proxies made that way on purpose which would seem a fair game to bots and ones left open by mistake (neglect, etc.).
Regarding that interview with the blog spammer:
Using unsecured proxy servers to send out your blog spam doesn't seem that much different than using them to send out e-mail spam.
That is, couldn't one potentialy face some legal problems?
Perhaps distinction should be made with open proxies made that way on purpose which would seem a fair game to bots and ones left open by mistake (neglect, etc.).
One distinction is that there are laws against e-mail spamming.
No such laws exist for link spamming.
"I am certain I was probably a bit of a blog spammer too"
Probably?? Classic Aaron, I bet you were ;-)
Spammers, I've never gotten any on any of my blogs. But I use to get these comments 2 - 3 times a day that are from
44889 Blog Verification…
and then the comment will show some random number. Not sure if its a wordpress thing but it stopped.
Xenith:
I've gotten those and assumed it was spammers 'sounding out' to see if they can get a post through, and the number is an identifier to look for in search engine results - if they search for their spam successfully then you will get a big wave of linked spam... :(
My apologies for the duplicate post (somehow managed to press submit twice)
What I meant that if ones uses proxy which was not intended for open use (ie poorly configured machine meant for internal company use), it doesn't matter whether you spam links on blogs, or just use it to look at barnyard animals mating websites, you would still face possible legal problems if/when they track you down.
Hi Aaron, it does get old doesn't it? :) I think junking manual blog comment spam is the right thing to do and I'm with you 100%.
Marc
Suprised someone would try to spam this blog. I can't believe they thought they could get away with it here.
We are all learning SEO as we get along, and website owners can always delete a comment they think is a spam. Thanks.
Hi Aaron, I am one of the contestants. :D One thing I do is a quick check having Firefox with the Web Developer Toolbar, Ctrl-Shit-F will display all attributes of a tag you mouseover on. And once I see the nofollow, they are not on my secret link list. :)
Great book, a coworker of mine bought it recently, and I actually printed all pages! It is one thick book. But since he shared it and I am not the buyer, and I read that you send updates, do I need to buy it too to get updates?
Hi Aaron, how about a ranking contest for the keyword "miserable failure"? Im sure President George W. Bush will be very happy to be an sponsor. :)
[URL REMOVED AS PER THE POST ON THIS PAGE]
Thank you for informing me about Isulong Seoph Aaron. I've looked at their entries and found out that virtually all of the top entries use Wordpress - this definitely warrants some research. I never thought that Google was that biased in favour of blogs...
- Jacob
Thank you for informing me about Isulong Seoph Aaron. I've looked at their entries and found out that virtually all of the top entries use Wordpress - this definitely warrants some research. I never thought that Google was that biased in favour of blogs...
- Jacob
Hey Aaron, my first comment on your blog! Pretty neat, I must say! :)
Well regarding this SEO contest, I guess comment spam is just very common, they just pickup links from somewhere and begin comment spamming..lol ! It sometime's gets hillarious as you read the comments..lol!
I recently blogged about Yahoo cloning Youtube and I get this comment from 'Isulong SEOPH' stating 'Wow, you're cute... I know it from your words' .. lol!
Also, Aaron Pratt blogged, something very unusually dramatic about this SEO Contest! Apparently, the topper on this contest got his .htaccess file hacked and redirected to some other domain! The next day he lived to tell the tale! Hehe!
Adding you to my Blogroll!
Abhishek
Hi Aaron.. Thanks for the insight. My blog is one of the entries of the contest. I joined with zero-knowledge of what SEO is all about. It's a real challenge for us. In the one month the contest is running, i gained knowledge that makes me confident enough to put SEO in my resume. ;-)
As a newbie like me, our next orientation after putting up our site is to gather links. We will go as far as linkbaiting, link fishing, link farming and link mining. Comment spamming is the most common. Hey, I even keep on receiving comment spamming in my site. Thanks to WordPress' Akismet, it blocks most of them.
Hopefully, I will be getting lots of qualified comments in my blog. Well, to quote one of my fave films... "If you build it... they will come!".
Btw, can i add you in my links worth clicking? :-)
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