3 Types of Blog Spam Comments, How to Spot Them and Why You Need to Protect Your Blog

While I don’t want to make this blog at all about spam, it seems that as an internet marketer, I get all the good ones!  While spam comments for most people might seem just like an annoyance, there’s a few reasons we should all moderate our comments before allowing them on our site, even if the links are no-follow.  I’ve tried to highlight their tactics and things to look for in this article.

From Kissmetrics article entitled, How to identify and control blog comment spam:

• Google is cracking down on bad links. This doesn’t just include the sites that buy links, but the sites that allow them. The last thing you would want is for Google to think you’re allowing bad links onto your website, even if they are just in the comments.
• Comment spam shows lack of moderation. Imagine you’re about to buy a home. You are driving through a neighborhood where the lawns are overgrown and some of the fences are covered in graffiti. This is the impression your visitors will have of your blog if the posts are littered with spam – that no one is actively taking care of it.
• Your readers might lose faith in you. What if a reader clicks on a link to another comment author’s website and is taken somewhere they don’t want to be. If you wouldn’t link to a website in your content, chances are you shouldn’t let someone link to it in your comments.

I recently received a comment on this blog from a comment bot or perhaps from a real person that was spamming my comments who accidentally gave me a complete list of their spam comments.  What a treasure trove of useful information!  Not.  You can see them all below.  I’ve highlighted 3 types of spam comments I have seen over the years.

• Blue = Complimentary
• Green = Negative
• Red = Technical

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That pretty much covers the gamut of what spam blog comments look like!  There are many ways that spam commenters will try to entice you to approve their remarks, and a big mistake that many people will make is to allow these comments to be posted on their site because they feel compelled by what’s been written.

Complimentary Spam Comments – “Somebody loves me!”

It’s always hard for a blogger, especially one that’s starting out with a new blog to resist the temptation to allow complimentary comments to appear on their posts.  Resist the temptation!  If you’re committed to blogging, eventually you’ll find a way to reach and compel your audience to comment.  Take steps to be sure that your content is syndicated and finds the audience you’re trying to reach and in time you’ll develop a following that will want to engage with you.  (Earlier, I quickly posted a great infographic on 30 Ways to Promote Your Blog from Oct. 11, 2012 – I learned a lot from it myself)

In the meantime, it the comment doesn’t contain any reference to your blog content at all, it’s likely spam.

Negative Spam Comments – “Somebody hates me!”

While it doesn’t seem that this particular spammer is using this one too often, I’ve seen several of these over the past few months and my first inclination is of course a brief moment of anger.  ”Jerk!”  But, soon after I activate my comment spam filter, the feeling goes away and I quietly add the post to spam.  I’m all for negative comments on my blog as without constructive criticism, there’s no way for us to learn, and we shouldn’t get upset when people have legitimate issue with what we’ve written.

Technical Spam Comments – “Oh, crap!  My blog isn’t working!”

Yet another way to get you to approve and respond to the post with a thank you or explanation about what seems to be going wrong.  Or you might even just say, “It’s working fine for me”.  Again, regardless of your inclination to defend your blog and technical skills, resist the urge!

I’d love to hear about some interesting spam comments people have received and more ways to protect your blog from spam comments.