Moderating Spam Comments from Link Seekers
Posted on 06. Feb, 2010 by admin in Website Stuff
So your absolutely brilliant post on boll weevils has garnered all this attention! Who knew you were that good? Or that you had such penetration on the internet?
Alas, you are probably up against the dreaded link spammer. Not that your piece wasn’t great, it’s just that they prey on sites with comment moderators who are asleep at the wheel. The commentary will go something like this: “Wow, I am awed by your masterful post on the weavil (sic)! Did you know that you can make ten billion dollars in the forex market? Thanks for your genius post!” There’s either a link embedded in the post or the name is hyperlinked or you’ve got a field where they can drop their URL. There are different ways they play it. An appeal to your vanity: “Saw your post on Reddit. Great link.” Or perhaps something is wrong with your site and their guise is one of helpfulness. “Your site isn’t displaying properly in my (insert name) browser. You may want to look into that.”
While tempting to jack up your comments on a lonesome post, don’t fall for it. Why? Because it can hurt you. Approving spam comments willy nilly will mean your site can have an overload of outbound links to bad neighborhoods: known spam or phishing sites, banned servers, farms, etc. Don’t think Google doesn’t know because Big Daddy knows all. This will tarnish your own sterling reputation within the Google algorithm. You may see rankings impacted if you cross a certain threshold.
Moral of the story: Link out to quality sites and don’t let the spammers overrun the kingdom.