Use Caution When Approving Comments
Posted at 4:26pm EST on 12/27/2008
Comments are a great thing. It’s a great way to interact with a blog or site, to give feedback, or just to start a conversation.
But not all comments are created equally. Sometimes, there is a motive, a personal benefit that someone may get out of leaving a comment. Personally, if I leave a comment, it’s to enhance the article, maybe to give some insight that I may have, or to ask a question to clarify something.
Today’s commenters are not the same though. I have found that many times, there is an alternative motive to leaving a comment.
Let’s look at a specific example I received just a few minutes ago.
The first hint you should take that it’s a spam comment is when it’s not left by a real name. When you leave your name as “SEO Property Manager” or “Atlanta Web Design,” you should really think twice about approving the comment. I say this because if you’re leaving a legitment comment that should actually provide value to the post author, why not leave your real name? Using “Atlanta Web Design” does not help you gardner trust at all, for a couple reasons. First, you’re “hiding” your real name. Secondly, you’re just trying to game the SEO industry by leaving a ton of comments with the same anchor text you want to target for your keywords.
The next hint you should look for is the URL. TinyURL is a service that will let you shorten any URL and in the process, masking the original URL. I use a header tool that will let me see all the redirects a URL takes. This particular URL above went from TinyURL out to ClickBank, then another internal redirect within ClickBank, then our to the affiliate site.
How on earth would that be good for my viewers? It’s not. So I mark it as spam.
But the trick is to be able to catch these before they get through your system.
Here at Google Inside, I moderate every first-time commenter. So if you leave a comment and it’s the first time, I will need to moderate it. From there on out, comments will go through normally without moderation. I do that to prevent spam, like seen above. This person will not be approved and will not be allowed to comment on my site.
