Actual June number. Click to enlarge.
Spammers are not new to M3. In fact, the spam filters keep more than 3,000 comments per month from my sight, while Akismet blocks as many as 10-20,000 per month. Clyde is a vegetarian, so what do you think he has to say about spam?
Old School
There are tomes dedicated to spam of the old nature. You have seen them. Chances are good in your early days you may have even approved some of them.
Great post! Keep them coming!”
It has been awhile since you posted anything like this. I will add you back to my reader.”
This is great informations! I will share this with my brother since he is looking for this exact thing.”
The grammar tip offs were plenty, or at least we noticed there was no way to truly attach the comment to the post on which it was attached.
These were interspersed with the bootleggers selling knock-off or stolen Nike or Jordan shoes and Louis Vuitton or Coach bags who commented on Wordless Wednesday posts.
Second Gen
Next came the Google Translate spammers. Theirs were always obvious. You could not massacre your own language that badly without a cabin in the Appalachian mountains, eight missing front teeth and a nickname of Bubba on embossed on the back of your belt.
These trolls were automated just the way the Old Schoolers were.
New Wave
Enter the spammers of the future: The Scrapers. Scrapers take text from your own website and post it as comments. Worse still, they take text from websites about your posts and copy their content into your comment box.
When they have a blog which is not suspended for TOS violations of the platform, they are normally in a language different from your blog. Their content is about what is considered “SEO gold”: exchange rates, stock market futures, dating sites.
Enter Ape
Right turn, Clyde.
Considering anyone with reading skills can learn the SEO tactics of the late ’90s are useless now, why would anyone attempt them, solicit content which adheres to them and/or think property owners would allow their tactics to stand on legitimate sites?
1. The old schoolers were just looking for a profile link to their sites to lure your readers to check them out. Relatively harmless.
2. The second generation were doing the same thing and looking to get you to help them guarantee their clients X,XXX links back to their websites, thus creating link juice for client sites from American-registered, PR1 or higher domains.
3. The new wave is doing all of the above while harming the comment site more than just by allowing spam. The plagiarized content costs the host site in terms of page rank, SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and original content. Plagiarism is forbidden the world over.
Why?
Why do people insist on harming the competition when they are incapable of standing their own ground and producing a website surfers will actually visit? More importantly, why is it so difficult to play by the rules?
It is enough to make an ape wonder.
Do you know what the rules are (or were)? Have you ever been asked to write “SEO” copy? What makes people cheat? Are ethics really so difficult to have?
Hashtags: #SEO #spam #ethics
Thank you for sharing The M3 Blog with hashtags.
John Phillips
/ July 25, 2013I used to love reading the spam, so much so that I would attack them with posts, but they got so repetitive that I went back to allowing the filter to do it’s job. Yes. I had the filter let me determine what was and wasn’t spam. Strangely enough, I found that several real comments were mixed in, even more strangely, most of them were Hotspur’s comments. But I digress from your question’s. I have been continually asked to write SEO, but ignore them and add the requester to my blocks. I have no idea what the rules are, and hope I have accidentally done things right. I seldom reblog and only with permission as I feel that is ethical. Great questions.
John Phillips recently posted..Quiz Time – Are You Part Canuck
Red of M3
/ July 26, 2013I did a year’s worth of making fun of the spammers who actually took the time to comment on what I really did post. The canned spam, not so much.
I continually take “SEO copywriting” out of my endorsements on professional networks. Although I can write for a crowd, I do not do it in the way which is described as SEO copywriting. It is a vile and nasty moniker to my ears.
MJ Logan
/ July 25, 2013One of the big blogs I write for gets tons of spam comments daily. The exact number I don’t know because I don’t run the site.
I don’t write SEO copy for them, just informative posts on things that matter to the company and to the people who visit the site. They all went and endorsed me for seo copywriting on linked in however. I was like…really? He tells me the blog attracts about 10,000 viewers a month to the site and they get quite a few conversions from it.
So I guess I’m an seo copywriter without even trying.
MJ Logan recently posted..Basic Campfire Building is an Adventure Skill
Red of M3
/ July 26, 2013I would never once tag you with that nasty name. You develop and manage content extremely well. You do not attempt to game the system.
Binky
/ July 25, 2013Money trumps ethics and everything else. I think it’s much like all those inane emails and scams. They send out literally millions, if not billions of them, and rely on that .0001% to respond, which apparently makes it worthwhile for them.
Binky recently posted..Backyard Launch Pad
Red of M3
/ July 26, 2013The follow up to this post will reveal one such taker. I just lament the time spent denigrating other sites, which, in my mind, would have been more productively spent enhancing the attacker site.
John McDevitt
/ July 25, 2013Ethics? Too many people would rather game the system. I have never written SEO copy and don’t intend to. People who cheat have zero integrity. They all think they can get rich quickly on other people’s dimes. Up their nose(s) with a rubber hose(s).
John McDevitt recently posted..Flash Fiction 104 – Naked Fear
Red of M3
/ July 26, 2013Truly. I have defied the standard “SEO rules” for as long as I have been writing web copy. I shall continue to do so. Content is still king for readers, which is the real reason anyone should be writing in the first place.
Derek Mansker
/ July 25, 2013A lot of the spam seems to be the same. It is not hard to spot, of course. I do often wonder why they bother, but then again, someone must actually click on their link somewhere along the way. People can be so foolish to fall for things. I don’t think ethics should be difficult to have. However, the human heart is inherently evil, so I guess we should expect nothing less.
Derek Mansker recently posted..Accepting Responsibility
Red of M3
/ July 26, 2013Many people are that foolish. There are millions of web pages devoted to the lamenting of those who were taken in by scams, phishing and malware. I suppose the last segment in this chain will be the real reason they continue. Based on comments, few people know the true motivation. Glad to see you today, Derek.
Prenin
/ July 26, 2013I’m lucky as I only get 2 or 3 junk messages a day and I block most of them when I’m not reporting them as pfishing scams.
They get pretty clever with their approaches, but I ain’t so stupid! 🙂
I’m amazed you get so much spam though – such numbers are kind of scary!!! 🙁
Love and hugs!
Prenin.
Prenin recently posted..Thursday – Humid shopping day!
Red of M3
/ July 26, 2013My filters are better than in the past. I rarely get more than a handful of email spam, as in less than a dozen per 1,000 emails… Unlike M3, where I get 10 spam for every real comment. Not really so scary. Those numbers are not more dense than yours because of the amount of traffic I get. About 60% of all web traffic is spam bots. 🙂
Bearman
/ July 26, 2013On wordpress I am trying to figure out how to stop people from commenting on my images. That is where 89% of my spam comes from.
Bearman recently posted..Chromecast Giveaway
Red of M3
/ July 29, 2013The only real way to stop it is not link the image to the media file. If they can click through to a separate page and comments are enabled, spammers will comment. I have ten spam magnets like that. When I posted them a second time, I did not link them and the comments stopped.
benzeknees
/ July 26, 2013I have been inundated with offers to write SEO copy & I really don’t understand the whole concept very well. From reading your post & comments it sounds like it’s nasty, so I’m glad I have never taken it up.
Red of M3
/ July 29, 2013Most everyone who has bought into the entire “SEO copy” insanity has no idea what drives SEO or traffic and are looking for a quick fix. xxx
Valentine Logar
/ July 27, 2013Ethics? I think this word is lost in the pea soup of yesteryear. These azzhats are nothing, they suck tail pipes.
I cannot find enough bad things to say about them. I do like the ones who write in Kangi though, it is pretty.
Valentine Logar recently posted..Summer Flash July 1
Red of M3
/ July 29, 2013ROFL! All I get are the ones who use Cantonese. And the one which confused Google translate. I am still trying to figure that one out.
RLB Hartmann
/ July 27, 2013I don’t really have a clue what SEO copy would entail, but this discussion makes me happy that my dinosaur website software doesn’t allow me to put a Comment feature on mine. It does everything else–much more than I need, even–except offer a shopping cart. Maybe my website host does that, if I ever care to rebuilt my site online instead of on my computer. Recently I Googled myself in Chrome and saw a LOT of links heretofore either not there or not visible with that other browser; one of them was a place that claimed my site was 100% safe to view, and wanted me to get a seal of their approval to put on the site. After Googling THEM, I found too many negative comments, so told them Ta-Ta. They were quite cordial about the whole thing.
Red of M3
/ July 29, 2013There are a whole host of those. Seeing some of their seals on sites which I know are not in good neighborhoods tip me off. Have you ever checked your Alexa?
Yes, your host should offer a shopping cart. If not, you can get a subscription one starting around $40/mo. xxx
RLB Hartmann
/ July 29, 2013$40 per month would eat up all my profit, which is another reason I don’t bother to move the site and put one on. I think Chris checked me out on Alexa, but I’m sure it’s WAAAAAY down toward the bottom, even now. Not that I’m likely to do anything about it any time soon. Chris has got me hooked on collecting postcards….at least they take up less room than books, and are not as heavy as vinyl.
Red of M3
/ August 1, 2013Postcards are so cool. In the last few years, I have gotten to picking up one or two. My mother got me hooked on it. She and others have sent me some amazing ones from their travels. I have the envelopes from many of the countries where others have sent me mail. For all of my refusal to check the mailbox, I do love letters and cards.