This morning when I checked my blog to moderate comments I noted one blog spammer calling herself or himself “Beverley” had slipped into the comment queue hoping I’d approve them and they could grow their link farm. The spam filter, Akismet had caught 76 others. I glanced at them quickly, and then deleted them all. Over the course of the day there were dozens more to be dealt with.
I know why people do it. It’s the same reason that Nigerian officials send you email. It’s the same reason you get physical mail enticing you to buy collectable gold coins.
Blog spam is a special case. The person on the other end is hoping that they will be able to publish links on my site and enhance their search engine rankings. And that will, in theory, improve the traffic and sales to their sites. But it doesn’t work. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.
It’s just sad.
I know. People are telling you that you can earn thousands of dollars doing this. It’s just not true. They’re getting you to pay for tools like Trackback Submitter, promising you to grow your site traffic and search engine ratings. And I am sorry to tell you this, but it’s all just some enormous con. And while you might think that you are the one spreading the spam and pulling the con on us, it’s actually you that’s being conned.
You are wasting your time. You’re performing a useless task. You’re spending what little intellect and energy you have to do something that just doesn’t work. The only think you achieve is annoying people like me that have to clean up after you.
Think about it for a moment. I mean seriously think about it.
- I will not let your messages and links be posted on my site.
- I will never click on your links.
- I will not purchase from you.
There are so many more legitimate, productive, and profitable ways to spend your time.
I know that most of the links are submitted through robots, but for the few of you out there that may actually read this, take a moment and think about your lives. Is this really the way you want to spend your time and efforts?
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Tell you what, Randy, I guess you should use some word verification or something like that. I know Akismet is great, but still, word verification will reduce a lot of spam commentators around your blog
This is one of the reasons I started using Disqus. There is no perfect system to keep these leeches at bay. But every little bit helps. I feel your pain.
I’ll have to look into it. Still settling into Thesis.
Holy cow…learning more and more that once my blog is up there are more and more tasks to perform that will take more and more of my time. Will this process ever be as simple as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
It’s not that difficult or time consuming. It’s just annoying.