Most bloggers want comments on their blog.

Comments are a good sign that the blog is reaching it’s readers. Comments lets the blogger know if his posts are working the way he wants and if readers are finding the post useful. Comments help create a blog’s community and are part of what makes a blog a blog.

Commenting on other blogs is a great way to get links to your own blog.

Commenting can bring traffic to your blog and help your blog gain notoriety. This is a two edged sword. Spammers also know this and many comment made on blogs are simple and attempt to get links or traffic to a spam sites. The increase in spam comments has made many blogs (including this one) reject even honest comments that simply resemble the type of comments used by spammers. You have make sure your comment stands out from the spam.

Here are 7 tips to help make your comment stick out:

1. Read the post.

It seems obvious, but I know that there is a good chance that there will be a comment on this post that is going to the spam pile because the commenter clearly had no clue what the post was about. Read the post so your comment shows that you have an IQ higher than a spam bot. I find some posts seem to get this all the time. It must be the misleading titles.

2. Don’t add extra links to your site in the comment.

You’re getting at least one link already in your name, don’t be greedy and spammy. A link in a comment here automatically sends it to the spam queue.

3. Avoid really short comments like “Great post.”

I’ve left my share of these in the past myself (on really great posts) because I meant it. Nowadays, comment spammers use these types of comments all the time. Why, because they almost look legitimate on any post. I love getting “I searched Google and finally found the info I needed here” on posts that don’t have any real info (like my contact page). If you like the post, say why. Tell the blogger why the information helped you.

4. Don’t link to a spammy page.

The blog owner needs to watch where he links to or it could affect his blog’s ranking. Don’t make him (or her) sorry he let your comment pass. Don’t link to your affiliate pop-up page. Don’t link to a page that might be offensive (even if you don’t “think” it’s offensive).

5. Don’t be abusive in any way.

If you disagree with a post go ahead and say why. Don’t insult others that don’t hold your opinion. You can do that on your own blog. Also note that obscenities are often used in comment spam, it’ll go right into the spam queue here. If it’s really good, I have to save it from the spam queue and edit it to my standards before it goes on the site (and I just love all that extra work-I’m being sarcastic). Disagree, but be polite and professional.

6. Don’t post several comments at once.

You find a great blog, read several posts and want to leave comments on all of them. Don’t. Limit it to two comments and come back. Having several comments from one commenter looks suspicious. Several comments from one IP is spam. I recently had someone use three different identities to finish off one big long comment. Don’t bother looking for them, they were marked spam and deleted. I don’t like seeing the same IP address for a bunch of comment at once, even if they are fairly good. I know of some other blogs that won’t even look at them.

7. Add value to the post with your comment.

That’s what it really is about. Interact with the blogger in a way that adds to the conversation. Yaro Starak lists comments as part of what makes a blog a blog. If you are adding value to the post, your comment is going to stick. It’s even likely to be answered by the blogger. I like how Liz Strauss uses blogs and comments to build relationships with readers. That’s something I’d like to strive for and I think most bloggers would. A good comment adds value and helps both bloggers.

I’d like to see your comments too!

I have added two new plugins to my comment section!

• Comment Luv
• Keyword Luv

I really appreciate those that take the time to comment on my posts.

It lets me know if I am writing in a way that make sense. It also lets me know a bit more about my readers. These plugins are a way to thank you.

What do they do?

Comment Luv

Comment Luv checks your blog to see what the last post you made was. It then adds a link to that post using the title as anchor text. This provides an exceptional way for you to get deep links to posts on your blog. I hope you use keywords in your blog post titles.

I really like this plugin when I comment on other blogs. I think it may be one of the best ways to reward commentators.

Keyword Luv

I came across this plugin and thought it sounded very interesting. After reading the author’s thoughts about it, I like it even more.

Keyword Luv is designed to help make conversations in comments more natural. One reason for commenting is to get backlinks to your blog. Let’s face it, even if it’s not your main purpose for commenting, it is sitting there in the back of your mind. However, to make these backlinks work best the link should have keywords in it. This is why you see so many commentator’s names that look like makemoneyonline.

I don’t mind on my blog, but others consider this spam. I look at the quality of the comment and the blog being linked to. The only problem is that it is not much fun to reply to a commentator whose name is makemoneyonline or webmasterinternet.

Enter Keyword Luv.

Keyword Luv allows you to specify your name and make the anchor text in the link from keywords. This way, we can use names when we want to address someone in the comments and they can still use keywords in the link back to the home page of their website or blog. Use a name for yourself and use a few decent keywords for your link. I think this will allow more readable anchor text too.

How to use Keyword Luv when you comment.

Use the following format:

yourname@yourkeywords

The part after the @symbol will become the anchor text. If you want your name as the anchor text simple don’t use the @ symbol. Unless your John Chow, you probably already rank very well for your own name so take advantage and use it for the subject or subjects of your blog or site.

What makes this all useful to you is the Do Follow plugin.

I use the one that comes with Semiologic Pro created by Denis de Bernardy This removes the no follow tag from the links.

I am also considering two more options.

I may remove the Top Commentator widget and plugin. I like it, but I feel Comment Luv and Keyword Luv more than compensate for it. Everytime you make a comment, you will get a link to your latest post, so I hope you can comment for every post you make. I will keep a widget showing the latest comments made on the page and probably nearer the top.

I am also looking into using Brian’s Threaded posts. This is more of a WordPress modification and I kind of want to check if other using this theme have had luck with it. If it looks like it will work I will try to add it also after the next them update.

Once again, a big thanks to all of you who take the time to comment.

Honest, this is not a bad .info scam site!

AP has a story on the most dangerous domian name suffixes to visit.

.info’s along with .hk and .cn are amoung the domain suffixes that are most likely to be "dangerous" according to McAfee. I personally was surprised by the .hk’s (Hong Kong) being known for being bad. I could have guessed about the .cn or China suffix.

One of the primary problems is with Websites selling pharmecutical products.

The report recommends avoiding buying pharmecuticals altogether from .cn domains. Many sites with these domains have multiple pop-ups. Another problem is fake forms used for harvesting information and email addresses.

The Associated Press: New report identifies dangerous Web domains McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information). Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way. A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the ".com" domain — the world’s most popular — were identified as dangerous.

The best domains?

According to the report, .gov, .jp, and .au are some of the safest. .gov sites are government domains and therefore a bit harder for scammers to use. .jp are Japanese domains. I think I have seen a few spammy .au (Austrailian) sites although the report lists them as amoung the safest. Spam does not nessarily mean dangerous though.

Choosing a domain is an important part of building your site.

Much like building your business in a bad neighborhood, a domain suffix could be a problem. You don’t want your domain property in a bad neighborhood. I still recommend a .com domain if at all possible. While .com domain suffixes were not amoung the safest domains, they still have advantages. They were not the worst domains in the report either.

I think if I had gone with a .com domain suffix this site would be doing a bit better.

There is always the stigma of being a .info and being labelled spam.

I recently had to contact Akismet to get off the spam list.

This is the second time I have had this problem. Yet, I always try to leave comments that are relavant to the post. I think .info domains and email addresses have a default suspicion on them. I know my spam filters sometimes don’t like good comments from .info’s. I have even not been able to use a .info email in registering occasionally.

Do you ever suspect comments from a .info are spam on your blog before you read them?

Google wrongly labels Alphatrends.net and blocks author’s access.

Is your blog safe?

Alphatrends is the BlogSpot home for Brain Shannon’s financial videos.

His analysis of stock trading videos are some of the most subscribed financial videos on YouTube. He has over 600 videos and over 5000 YouTube subscribers. He posts a video on stock analysis daily at his blog. Here is an example:

Friday, I got a message through MyBlogLog that he was unable to update his blog because Google was blocking him as a spam blog.

My first reaction was "You’ve got to be kidding." One look at Brian’s videos will show you they are not spam. The is quality content. In fact, most of it is a bit over my head, but I want to learn about stocks and subscribe to his blog because, eventually, I’ll understand. His blog consists of his daily videos and an occasional post about something related.

Alphatrends is not a site you would think could be labeled as spam.

Brian has a PR from Google of 5. He has an Alexa rating of 159,700. This is a financial blog, not a blog that is going to attract lots of readers with an Alexa toolbar. In other words, Alphatrends has good links and decent traffic. I think it is from the content and not from Brian working hard promoting his blog.

Brian is back up on Alphatrends.

Usually, Google is quick to fix these situations. It still takes time. If your label as spam by Google, you get no warning. You are guilty until proven innocent. That can take a couple days. I noticed that while Brian was not able to update his blog, AdSense was still advertising. What happens if your AdSense account gets labeled as spam also? You would not be able to remove it from the blog as Google blocks your updates and still keeps the blog showing. You better hope they let you back in.

I think this is a good example of why any blogger should look into their own hosting.

Brian has a domain name already Alphatrends.net. All he would need is hosting and he would not have been cut off from his blog. With your own hosting, even with a bad host, you should at least have a warning before something like this would happen. In Brian’s case, I doubt if any host would have considered a complaint against him valid.

If you are using WordPress.com or Blogger/Blogspot you are adding an unnecessary risk with your business.

If you are looking into stock trading, Alphatrends is a blog you should look at.

Brian Shannon does not give investment advice. He teaches how to understand stocks and evaluate them technically.

For Alpahtrends.net maybe hosting might be a good investment at $10/month.

Are you emotionally attached to junk mail?

I recently decided I need to get control of my incoming email.

I have not been reading most of it anyway. In most cases the majority is from lists that I subscribed to. Not really spam email, stuff I originally ok’d for some reason. With 12 plus email accounts, it was overwhelming.

Over the past couple weeks, I have been unsubscribing from nearly all the email lists I am on.

The fear of unsubscribing is that you may simply get put on another list or even more.

That may still be true of real spam. Like I said, most of the email monster I am seeking to destroy was my own creation. Internet marketing lists, affiliate lists, guru of the month lists, that sort of thing. Most of them are fairly well known. I am on a couple of lists from purchasing software. The trick is not to unsubscribe from those that you may need to keep for updated software.

I find it bit funny that some Internet marketers have found themselves into the spam or junk mail lists automatically.

In these cases, the Outlook junk list or my anti-virus has labeled it spam automatically. I make it a point not to mark something as spam unless it truly is. If you subscribe to a list, you have not right to mark it as spam (unless you unsubscribe and they still send to you, that is spam). That is just lazy and irresponsible. You are damaging some one’s business when you originally asked for the information.

The hassle is you have to unjunk or unspam mail in Outlook before you can use the unsubscribe link.

I have been a bit lazy to go through the process till now, but I felt it was time.

It was doing me no good to fear my inbox.

I did not read anything anyway because there was too much. It was overwhelming.

Even though I thought I had it under control, I still got two "mass control" emails.

I unsubscribed to those two lists right away. One was John Carpenter’s list. His list was fairly good at first. Once in a while he would send an email with useful hints and mention his GoogleCash. That changed when the his new system came out. I’m not entirely sure all the email about his new system came from him, but it seemed like it was overdone like most of the guru ebooks.

Right now, Perry Marshal is the only internet marketer list I am keeping.

I like the fact that he believes the email is something that should be paid send. Not that I want to pay for email, just that I know I will not get useless junk from him.

I have read that people actually have an emotional attachment to email lists they are subscribed to.

While this is very powerful if you are selling to a list, I wonder why. Why would someone continue to subscribe to a list that only tells them they need to buy stuff? Even if they have no plan to buy? I have had to ask myself the same question.

It is not like you cannot sign up again. I have no plan to buy anything anyway. Why stay on the list?

Now, if only I could figure out how to get all the real email spam hitting my Gmail accounts stopped.

At least Google’s spam filter usually works. I would say that many of them are near pornographic and would be bad to send to an account a child used. I would guess that the same spam is being sent to Gmail account used by anybody. It seems to hit all my Gmail accounts fairly evenly.

Are you emotionally attached to some email list you really have no reason to be on?

Is it because you think you will miss out on an offer? Or, are you like me and were just too lazy to unsubscribe.

As for me, I’m off the list.

I can read my email now.

It seems that some of the Nigerian email scammers have finally gotten caught.

It is not easy to catch criminals when they commit the crime from another country. Now it is easy to scam people who are on the other side of the world or be scammed by someone on the other side of the world.

*I seem to have lost the link to a video I had here. Sorry.*

Imagine, over $2 billion in fake checks.

And that is just the group that got caught. I am sure there are many more that are out there.

I even got one of these checks in the mail once.

I’ve been meaning to give it to a Postal Inspector that I know. I am still not sure it will really make a difference. The odds are still small that the criminal will get caught.

77 arrests.

I’ve gotten more that 77 Nigerian type scam emails this year alone.

You may want to read the original Reuters story.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An international crackdown on Internet financial scams this year has yielded more than $2.1 billion in seized fake checks and 77 arrests in the Netherlands, Nigeria and Canada, U.S. and other authorities said on Wednesday.

The scammers, often West African organized crime groups, use ploys such as "spam" e-mail offering to pay recipients "processing fees" for depositing checks, which later turn out to be phony, and sending the ostensible proceeds to the scammer, authorities said.

The ruses are aided by U.S. financial practices that quickly credit a bank customer for deposits even though it can take far longer to discover a fake check and reclaim the money from the customer. The victims find themselves out the money they forward when the checks prove to be fake.

Spam-scam crackdown nets $2 billion in fake checks | Technology | Reuters

Now, if they could do something about the male enhancement spam that has been hitting my Gmail accounts lately.

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for comment spammers. Almost, but not quite, and then I regain my sanity.

I get comment spam like the following once in a while.

xxxxx | xxxxx@gmail.com | google.com | IP: xx.162.135.x

If you want to delete your site from our spam bases – just email us with domain of your site:

abuse-here@someodddomainnamewithanoddersuffix

thank you!

I have removed any unique text that would make this a searchable text.

I put x’s for the name, Gmail username, and part of the ip address. I also changed the domain in the abuse email, which was inbox at some odd country domain suffix. I did this because the spammers may be doing a search for unique text strings to see if the spam is getting though on sites. Once it makes it on a site, you can bet more will soon be on the way. A lot more.

Do they really think I am dumb enough to fall for this?

Is there anyone that dumb that can post to a blog that would fall for this? Besides the fact the domains are so odd, why would you do their work? Not like they are being honest in the first place. Errr-yeah, maybe his site is really google.com.

Now if I were a spammer – and I most definitely am not…

I would not refer to a spam base. Kinda like admitting your guilt.

It is a bit like O.J. Simpson.

At the best, your O.J. trying to tell how you would have done it different if you really had wanted to do it. Only not with as much credibility. And nobody is going to buy the story that it was Michael Jackson’s missing glove.

Comment spammers are just lucky they aren’t treated like email spammers.

It would be nice to see some real penalties for spamming. Unfortunately, even email spam is still not under control and we even have laws against it.

Personally, I find comment spam a worse offense than most email spam.

With a broadband connection, email spam is just a minor irritation and no real harm done to me. Not much worse than taking the junk mail out of the post box. Email spam is offensive though when it contains porn. Much of the male enhancement emails lately are not a whole lot better.

Comment spam has the potential to harm a site.

If you are linking to sites that are labeled spam, your site could become guilty by association. This will damage your ranking. That mean less traffic from search engines.

Comment spammers are willing to risk your site’s health for a few days of traffic for their site.

All they want is the traffic for a few days. Your site and the links on it give them a temporary boost in ranking and traffic. Once the search engines label their site as spam, they just build a new site and do it over again. Your site is now ruined as far as search engine ranking is concerned. They don’t care about the site you spent a year developing.

Just like O.J. Simpson, spammers will eventually get caught.

Sooner or later, they will get what’s coming to them.

The Root Of All Evil

Lorelle had another of her posts about comment spam.

As always, I suggest anyone interested in blogs or blogging read it as well as the rest of her WordPress site. It was when I got to the following part of the post that I started to have some real conspiracy theories start up in my head: 

I’ve put out a call repeatedly to bloggers to use the power of their blogging voices to put an end to the rewards of being a comment spammer. We need to put comment spammers out of business. Anyone listening?

As a united voice, I believe that the same creativity and sense of community spirit that built MyBlogLogs, MySpace, FaceBook, and Digg can put their energy into stopping the virus that infects all of us. Comment spam crosses country borders and language borders. Every blogger is assaulted by comment spam. Let’s find a way to work together with some great ideas to stop comment spamming at its root.

Source: Lorelle on WordPress

A few months ago, I  got so tired of comment spam I stopped all comments here.

It still was coming in. The spam filters caught it, but I was finding some sites that were not spam in it. Rather that leave those sites named as spam I decided to turn off comments for a while altogether to see if I could get this blog off the target list.

Oddly, the porn spam stopped. At least for the most part. That was a nice relief. The medical pill spam still went through to the spam filters. At least is was not graphic.

When I turned the comments back on, I continued to get hit very hard by comment spam.

It peaked for a few hours with what seemed like 200 spam comments an hour. For a few days, I getting somewhere between 1500 and 2000 spam comments a day. After a full year, Akismet has caught over 34,000 spam comment here. About 14,000 were just this year.

Suddenly the comment spam has dropped to a realistic level.

I have been getting 20-50 spam comments a day over the past couple weeks. Again, at least most of it is not of the porn variety.

Yesterday, I noticed a pattern.

Nearly all the comment spam was automotive related. It is normal to see comment spam along the same subject. I have wondered about this from time to time.

Typical comment spam is an attempt to get a backlink with a certain keyword phrase in the anchor text.

The idea is to get lots of backlinks for a particular phrase to a website. Usually, a "long tail" keyword phrase of several words that may only really get a few searches. This will boost the site in Google’s rating for that phrase and together, the phrases give the site the ability to get more traffic from Google.

I recognized a business name in one of the keyword phrases.

It is a car dealer that, while well known in a certain part of my state, no one would be searching for it anywhere outside the city the dealership is located in. For a second, though about calling the dealership and asking them why they are supporting the spam to my site. Then I realized, they had nothing to do with it. It was not an attempt to get traffic to the dealerships site.

It was a MFA or made-for-Adsense site that was doing the spamming. This type of site usually has no legible content on it. Just keyword rich nonsense and Adsense ads. All they want you to do is click on the ads. Yes, this is what nearly all that comment spam is promoting. Adsense.

Who profits the most from comment spam?

Google. You will find Adsense ads on nearly every page a comment spam points to. Now, Google will claim they are trying to get rid of it. I have had several commenters say that their Adsense account was canceled, like some small blog was a major source of fraud. Yet, nearly anyone with a Website or blog can find some sort of MFA or other non-content site ranking well for a keyword they are targeting.

Now for my conspiracy theory (I really do not believe conspiracies but…)

I told you comment spam had reached new heights a while back. I told you it nearly stopped overnight. Why?

Well, you see, Google needed cash to buy DoubleClick.

You could say it was just coincidence. You could say that I am just making this up (I am). You could say that Google would never do that. Of course, now that Google’s deal for DoubleClick is done the glut of comment spam is over. Google can safely clean up the Internet again and ban those nasty spam sites. The owners of the sites will just create new corporations and start new sites with new ISP’s. All ready for the next acquisition Google wants.

I really want to like Google.

They have done a fantastic job creating an awesome search engine. I do not think it is the same Google of, say, seven years ago. It just seems to becoming more and more fascist in its methods. My next current pet peeve with Google? Paid links are evil?

I give up!

For a while anyways.

I am turning off comments and trackbacks for a while. I have been getting trackbacks that Akismet is labeling spam which belong to good sites. I have been going through and marking them as not spam by hand. This blog has been getting too much spam to handle doing this now. Unless I check the spam list 2-3 times a day, it will have 300-500 spam comments in a day. I am tired of wading through the smut to save the 1-3 comments or trackbacks that should not be there. So I am just gong to turn it off for a bit. I am hoping the level of spam may go down after a few days and when I turn comments back on it will be manageable.

Overall, I have been very happy with the way Akismet blocks spam.

It has caught nearly 23,000 spam comments. I have only had a few that have managed to sneak past it, maybe 50 or so total. Not bad at all.

My current problem come from Akismet identifying some good trackbacks and comments as spam.

This is due to other blogs not paying attention to their spam filters and letting these sites get marked as spam. I know these sites are not spam. I do not want to further the labeling of these sites as spam so I either need to unspam them or stop comments and trackbacks.

It is sad to see the internet is such a state.

Where some in order to gain an advantage presenting such filth would damage other sites by misusing comment and trackback features. Those that do this should realize that they are one of the lowest forms of life on the internet. It is bad enough if you want to sell porn. It is total unethical, selfish, deviant behavior to force it on others that have no wish to see it on their sites. You, yourselves the spammers are far worse that the people that perform such acts as you have tried to force on my site without my permission. AND YOU KNOW IT! Oh, and by the way, I think even the average web surfer would be shocked at what these people are trying to place on sites now. Sites that have nothing to do with what they are selling.

I could put up with the watch sellers. I can even live with the various male medicines (I find it hard to believe it is that much of a problem). I can live with the loan spammers and insurance deals. If it were just things like sites that want to show the Britany Spears photos that I had to filter through, I would probably put up with it. I don’t want any of these things on my site, but I can live with reading though the spam filter. What I have to read now, I do not wish to endure any more. Currently, checking the Akismet folder is really a low part of the day. Several low parts of the day.

I am hoping a few days with no comments at all will get this blog off of whatever list thinks it is good to spam.

I am not sure if it will be days or weeks before I turn them back on. Again, I apologize that I feel I have to make this step. I just can’t stand it any longer and I do not want good sites or commenters to be labeled as spam. It is sad that the dredges of the internet stoop so low. Things will get better.

Akismet-100 Spam-1

Sunday, this blog hit the century mark in spam.

Amazingly, all 100 were stopped by Akismet. It did not miss a single one.
Then it got caught, the 101st spam, a trackback spam got through. Sneaky huh?
It was easy enough for me to spot. The message said the commenter found information he had been looking for.

The comment was on the Linkie Winkie Post!

If you will take a look at the Linkie Winkie post you will find that there is absolutely no information in it. None. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.
Since I do not know what Linkie Winkie is, I cannot provide information about it.

I do not understand why comment spammer still try to spam WordPress blogs.

Nearly all WordPress blogs have a no follow on the links by default. Spammers get no PR from the link.
The blog the trackback was to was just a repeat of the same spam link. Over and over and over and over.
Not hard to miss.

Anyway, Akismet had been awesome.

It had spotted spam that I would have missed. By now I assume Akismet already knows about the spam that got through this time and will be blocking it for everyone else.

Lorelle On WordPress has an article on comment spam:

Sneaky Comment Spammers

The sneaky comment spammers are the ones you really have to look for. They require more work to determine if they are legitimate. These are the nice comment spammers. They say things like:

• “I really like your site, keep up the good work.”
• “This is a beautiful site.”
• “It looks like you worked hard to create this site. Good work.”
• “I like what you have to say. I’m going to tell my friends.”
• “This is really good information. I’m going to mark it as a favorite.”

When these first started showing up, I preened. I even pointed them out to my husband with pride. Then I learned that these were NOT legitimate but creepy comment spam robots that were lying and creating links to their sites. Some investigation found that some of these links were indeed hooking up with pharmacy and gambling sites. DAMN! These are the sneaky comment spammers! More and more comment spam prevention tools help to eliminate these, but if you get a lot of “nice comments” within a day or two across many posts – you’ve been hit by a sneaky comment spammer.

You can read the rest here on her site.