Thread

ok maybe I’m just having a blond moment but I just do not get what someone gets from comment spam.  Don’t get me wrong I do not really have much of a problem since I keep the blacklist up and running and have Akismet as well but there are obviously people with too much time on there hands.  Every couple of days or so (thankfully not 100’s per day like it used to be) I have to delete a couple of comments that have managed to get through.

Now they are not obnoxious, far from it.  Still they are not genuine either.  Still they do not leave a link, at least not that I can see so can someone smarter than me tell me what they get out of it?  I know there has to be a reason, like the referrer spam and trackbacks.

I just can not work out what it is. :ohh:

If they leave no link, I suppose the spamming software is malfunctioning.

Like every now and then I get spam/phishing mails where the text talks about an attachment (carrying the malware) which is not there.

I do not see any sense in comment spam except placing links.

Could be a dry run.

I figure it’s just pointless malice, like nonsense graffiti.

Not just a dry run but possible seeding of sites. If they are putting in odd phrases they may well be checking out what sites get the best rankings on the search engines. Then they might well invest time manually leaving meaningful posts and links on those sites. Comment spam 10,000 blogs and see which 100 get the best ranking for your phrase then manually input comments on those blog pages with links to seemingly harmless sites that they will later change once enough good in links are in place. Er, this is only a theory.

I guess I’ll just keep deleting them.  Thankfully even thought the comments themselves do not give it away either the Name, email address or supposed website address, sometimes all three generally does

If the point is seeding for the ‘best ranking’ blog, then they’ve certainly hit the wrong one with mine!

Does the name on the comment serve as the anchor text to the URL they provide? If so, they’re just link building.

Sometimes, a little hard to check though since I’ve deleted them all, although the only information displayed on the site is the comment itself.  The other info, URL, Email & Location is not, except the ‘posted by’...

oh so your saying that is somehow linking back to something?

I agree with soxhead. The link is usually in their website URL linked to their name by most blogging software. It’s to build their own SEO.

Most of the comment spam I tended to get had no valid link of any kind, not even associated with the name. They satisfied the e-mail address requirement with gibberish punctuated by an “@” and a dot, but the domain was nonexistent.

Most of mine is the same McGehee.  That’s what got me curious and what prompted the question.

I get several of these a day as comments and trackbacks both. If anyone has any clue as to what might be going on, I’d definitely appreciate it.

I get several of these a day as comments and trackbacks both.

Script Kiddies who didn’t do well in school?

You could execute a php script to check for a valid domain before the comment is processed…