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The 10 Kinds of Comment Spam

By Elisa | November 23, 2010

Over at the WordStream blog, we pride ourselves on our vibrant community of commenters—spam commenters that is. Sure, we have a modest but smart, loyal, and helpful group of real people who leave feedback and commentary on our posts, but they cower in number next to the army of spammers.

Here are the ten classes of spam comments we receive on a regular basis, in order from least spammy to spammiest.

1. The Basically Coherent but Irrelevant Comment

Take this one, for example:

Internet Marketing Company (not verified) Said:

Internet marketing comprises many online marketing strategies that you can study. But sometimes people who are specialist in online marketing strategies face problem in making it online.

They lack the instruction that is essential for internet marketing as well as the right product. Direct marketing is also a great deal of internet marketing where you can contact the potential clients through email and inform them about your new product and advise them to take action.

OK, sure, I guess so—but this had nothing whatsoever to do with the post it was left on. Spammers, once you’ve crafted a choice comment, look for a relevant post to tack it on to, not just the first one you find. Better yet, read the post first, then write your comment.

2. The Segment of an Earlier Comment

This is a pretty advanced form of comment spam, in which a bot, human, or cyborg copies a portion of an earlier comment and reposts it as a new comment, which can look at first like a perfectly legitimate contribution to the discussion. You have to read all your comments to recognize this as spam—not too hard for us, but difficult for sites that routinely get hundreds of comments.

3. The “Great Post!” Comment

This one is pretty self-explanatory, and probably the most common type of comment we receive, helpfully informing us that we’ve written another great post, which we already knew. There’s always the chance this could be legitimate, but why comment at all if you don’t have anything more substantial to say?

4. The Full-On-Ass-Kissing Comment

This one goes a few steps beyond “Great post!” but the objective is the same—to spam you via flattery. Examples:

Liat (not verified) Said:

Great post! You wrote about exactly what I was looking for – plus a lot more information that I didn’t know!
Thanks very much.

Sam England (not verified) Said:

Thanks so much for sharing this killer post…very well put…Brings back the basic fundamentals of IM…

More sentences don’t make this kind of comment more worthwhile.

5. The Potentially Helpful but Still Spammy Comment

Danny da Rudo (not verified) Said:

I tried the modified broad match type, it works much better than the normal broad match: the CTR is higher and all the keywords I have been found on, do have a much higher relevance! I read a lot about the broad match modifier match type and foud a specific tool: [redacted]. It helps you to set up your Google Adwords campaign: it turns broad keywords to modified broad instantly! It’s free.

Sure, people reading a post about Google’s broad match modifier might be interested in this free tool, but the language surrounding the link is so spammy and sales-y (two exclamation points, ay-yi-yi!) I can’t bear to approve it. If it’s this guy’s tool, he would have been better off just recommending it by name, with a link back to his site from his name. The in-spiel link looks fishy/self-promotional.

6. The Almost-Grammatical Comment

SEO Hampshire (not verified) Said:

Awesome post!!! Thanks for providing guide for smart traffic to affecting our online reputation. I am very glad to be a part of you.

Starts as a basic ass-kissing comment, then veers into “Say what?” territory. As Ken said when he found this, “Who wrote this? A tapeworm?”

7. The Unintentionally Deep Comment

Online Marketing (not verified) Said:

You are really doing a great job and the article is nice.
Even I am also fear of death,so do everyone.
Smith.

So true, bro.

8. The Blatantly Commercial Comment

For example:

Lorie Deveaux (not verified) Said:

I have been searching for sites related to this. Glad I found you. Thanks cosmetic packaging, makeup brushes, hair rollers, make up brushes

The blatantly commercial comment doesn’t even try to disguise its totally unrelated links. Our buddy Lorie here wears her spam on her sleeve.

9. The Personals Ad Comment

cheap true religion jeans (not verified) Said:

Creative Aquarius who thinks outside the box

Comment spam isn’t just a great way to get links—it’s a great way to meet interesting people who like the same things as you!

10. The Celebrity Comment

lindsaylohan (not verified) Said:

Earning money online never been this easy and transparent. You would find great tips on how to make that dream amount every month. So go ahead and click here for more details and open floodgates to your online income. All the best.

I believe that Lindsay Lohan would leave a comment on our blog, just not that she knows anything about financial planning.

No Bullshit? Then just Share it!
  • The 10 Kinds of Comment Spam

Topics: Old School Spammers | 83 Comments »

Posted on 23 November 2010 by Elisa Gabbert

Elisa Gabbert has been a social media guru for several weeks now. She knows enough about SEO to write about it. See proof at the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog.

has written 1 articles for SEO Bullshit

← Older Comments
  • Anonymous

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  • Jokesmantra

    Self Commenting From Same Ip On Own Blog Is Good For Seo Or Not???
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    Truth is people just want links, and not many of them want to read the article. I’m sure we have all been guilty of it at some point.

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    Ok,you are right.But sometimes there are more blogs or websites where you want to post a comments(high PR,related content etc),but you can’t say almost nothing because there is a song,or a picture or something like that.What can you write in comment?

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    Well Elisa has left nothing to say about her article.
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  • Leading_edge

    Those Scrapebox spammers with their badly-spun comments can be quite funny at times, not that they would know it. They fire off the spam and move onto the next target. Spam, blam, thank you maam. And no, this is not spam just in case you asked.

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    Comment spam is a fact of life for blogs and sites with an open door policy for comments and interaction.

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    I normally found this type of comment spam when I Google.

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    you’ve pretty much touched on all the spammy comments, but there are more out there now. they’re long but very generic and “topic-less” and could be applied to almost anything, they’re just obviously prewritten and most likely used for Improved search engine placement

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