Pointless Comment Spam

Posted At : June 8, 2009 11:47 PM | Posted By : Jason Olmsted
Related Categories: Spam

Going through a dry spell of blogging while I adjust to changing job requirements, odd side projects, and annoying distractions, but something I observed last week is bugging me because I haven't been able to reconcile it.

For a corporate blog I co-administer I have noticed multiple instances of comment spam that serve no apparent point. I will post some screen shots soon (tomorrow if I think of it), but the gist is that there is a useless comment, an email address (russian, I think), and a web site url that is ... well, they listed "http://www.google.com".

In my continuing investigations into SEO, I have heard of strategies of improving the quality of comment spam links by surrounding them with comments containing legitimate links - well, links to sites with pageRank. And maybe this is some sort of weak attempt at that.

However, maybe somebody can help solve this mystery; is Google comment spamming, is this particular spammer just an idiot, or is there some virtue to spamming an email address?

Update 6/9/2009:

Apparently, it was a chinese domain, not russian, but still, what is the point of this?
pointless comment spam specimen

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Jake Munson's Gravatar I get comments like that too, and I think some of them are just tests. There is a lot of software out there that lets users spam thousands of sites. I think some of the software is sophisticated enough to have site definitions built in for specific sites. So the developers of these sites probably want to test their software, and thus these seemingly useless comments. I am speculating, of course. :)
# Posted By Jake Munson | 6/9/09 4:08 PM
jason olmsted's Gravatar That's as good an answer as any. I would think live testing would potentially be more fruitful. Of course, a legit comment by them would actually be welcome and I wouldn't begrudge them the link back at all.
# Posted By jason olmsted | 6/9/09 6:03 PM
Aaron Greenlee's Gravatar What I find amusing is that as I browse the comments I see a banner that says "Only $1.40 a Link!" on your site. I clicked it to help your revenue and it was advertising how they can get your link on highly ranked "forum" pages.

My guess is your google.com post was the idiot they hired in Russia who your advertiser hires to spam client links on forms.

:)
# Posted By Aaron Greenlee | 6/10/09 9:02 PM
jason olmsted's Gravatar There is almost symmetry in that ... I get the feeling, however, that someone is going to be irate about paying $1.40 for links to google. Of course, maybe Google is following Google Japan's lead: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/02/18/googl...
# Posted By jason olmsted | 6/10/09 11:05 PM
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