I've been
thinking more about the problem of
blog comment spam recently. In fact, I've implemented some very
basic techniques in an effort to stop the spam and they've been quite
effective so far. But I'm not happy yet.
I got to thinking about the techniques I've seen spammers use (often Google searches that help them find their targets) and their real motivation: PageRank. It may be broken but the spammers see that we have it and they want a piece of the action.
What does this tell us?
We have the power.
We do. Bloggers, collectively, have so much more Google Juice than these scum spammers that we ought to consider using it as a weapon in this battle. No, it's not necessary, but it might just be fun to try. And we all deserve a bit of fun.
For example... What if I said that this Thursday I'd post an entry titled "Cheap Viagra, Vicodin, Prescription Drugs, and Penis Enlargement Pills" and that'd I'd challenge other bloggers to post similar entries (making sure to TrackBack as appropriate) and to link to me. I would, of course link back. I'd be sure to disable comments on that entry. (Duh!)
What would happen? We'd stand a good chance of elbowing ourselves into the Google results for the very things the comment spammers are trying to sell. Our entries of course would have nothing to do with the products and services that spammers are pushing. Instead, we could write about how stupid people are that actually respond to spam and order those damned pills.
Who knows? Some of us should give it a try. Or a lot of us!
I mean, shit... we're not really doing anything else with all this PageRank anyway. Well... other than proving that PageRank needs help. :-)
What say you? Should we try? I think so.
Update: Silly me. I forgot all about Phentermine!
Posted by jzawodn at October 06, 2003 09:08 PM
It won't work.. for one thing .. it would have to be done continuously to have any sort of effect and that would make blogs, well.. boring and full of crap. I doubt spammers will even notice.. they'll just keep trying.. you can't possibly cover all keywords.
Right now I'd settle for "comment needs to be approved" option for MT.. in fact I've been hacking it together.
Ironically enough.. another spam comment arrived as I was typing this.
i wonder how much of the comment spam problem has to do with the ubiquity of movable type. i've only gotten a handful of comment spams. i've gotten more random comments on old entries that the less clueless stumble upon via searches.
Hmm. Good question.
Perhaps if we all named our comments CGI script something different... We'd at least thwart the really dumb spammers.
but think... if we all ran google adsense ads on those pages that we were trying to get high page ranks for, we'd even make a little cash off the spammers... teehee... that's a turn of events, if I ever heard one...
oh, the renaming of the CGI script doesn't help a lot:
http://kalsey.com/2003/09/ounce_of_prevention/
http://kalsey.com/2003/09/spam_begets_spam/
http://kalsey.com/2003/10/spam_and_vandals_part_2/
good reads (though I'm sure you've already read them...)
It's ironic - I remember news about search engines wanting to filter out blogs (like spam?).
Lol, that sounds a good idea. My *solution* is very simple (and stupid), but I thought it'd be fun... Take a look (below comments form):
It may be controversial but how about killing your page rank somehow. Maybe using redirects for inbound links. This way noone would want to spam your comments. After all you don't need that page rank, your not after commercial success after all. If you have an entry you really think may benefit the community for a long long time then you could tick a box that said, "don't use a redirect". Then the sol called death of google may be slowed down because blogs won't get artifically high page rank? Just a thought, I'm sure I wouldn't want to lose all that rank though, it is a nice compliment after all.
Raise the bar a bit with a simple captcha scheme - quarantine the comment until the poster copies in some semi-obsfucated text, like "what is five plus five?" If that becomes too easy for the spammers to code around, move to a full-fledged image based captcha scheme. It'll buy you time, and like a car alarm, might make the next target more attractive.
Why doesn't google (and other copycat search engines) just segregate blog results in a new section all their own? You can often find useful information, mostly anecdotal, in blogs by searching google, but why not just make that a separate search resource? It'd certainly unclutter the web search results Search the web, news, newsgroups, images & blogs.
Jeremy,
Its probably not a long term solution, but if you want to try it, I'm in!
Jim.
How about adding /mt or whatever your MT cgi directory is to robots.txt to stop anything in there being indexed.
I've done this, as it stops loads of "comment on" links being indexed, as in some cases the comments links were being indexed higher than the actual posts. It also stops the comments .cgi and the other scripts from being indexed at all no matter what they are called!
jeremy, i am quite sure that if you start such a campaign you will be under not so friendly fire. in the past i have written some enries about guestbook spam and comment spam. you may guess what has happened. i got more spam - and just in comments of my anti-spam articles. and one idiot tried to annoy me by cross site scripting of my blog search. so be prepared and close all spam gateways (and more) to your blog.
but if you or even a greater community will play this game, take part in some viagra/phentermine affiliate programs and spend the money for a good purpose.
It works. We did it in Finland: all able bloggers linked to Visa Kopu's blog, and now he has a full monopoly on "porno kuvia" (pr0n images in Finnish) on Google...
You probably can't understand the link, but I have to link to it so that Jeremy doesn't suddenly get a huge number of hopeful Finns to his web site =).
If it makes you feel any better Google recently started to discount the links from Guestbooks, based on the way Blogs are going it should only be a matter of time before they are treated the same way.
In the meantime the idea will work for whatever phrases are in the anchor text of the trackback links pointing to the blog entry. If you put "Solution to Comment Spam" that's what the page can potentially do well for in google, if you put "Buy cheap Viagra" like a couple of posts above, then with enough similar links those blogs they should do well for that and very similar phrases.
Possible ways to fight the probelm.
Dissalow Google from indexing your blog via the robots.txt file or robots meta tag.
Have all outgoing links as javascript. Currently Google can not read javascript, so the links won't benefit anyone.
A way to reduce the effect on yours and others blogs is to put a lot of links to yours and others sites. If the spammers understand pagerank they'll know a page filled with say 100 other links is next to worthless and not worth the hassle of posting. Take this page there's at least 50 links off it now, so any links added will only get 1/50th of the potential PR benefit.
If it makes you feel any better Google recently started to discount the links from Guestbooks, based on the way Blogs are going it should only be a matter of time before they are treated the same way.
In the meantime the idea will work for whatever phrases are in the anchor text of the trackback links pointing to the blog entry. If you put "Solution to Comment Spam" that's what the page can potentially do well for in google, if you put "Buy cheap Viagra" like a couple of posts above, then with enough similar links those blogs they should do well for that and very similar phrases.
Possible ways to fight the probelm.
Dissalow Google from indexing your blog via the robots.txt file or robots meta tag.
Have all outgoing links as javascript. Currently Google can not read javascript, so the links won't benefit anyone.
A way to reduce the effect on yours and others blogs is to put a lot of links to yours and others sites. If the spammers understand pagerank they'll know a page filled with say 100 other links is next to worthless and not worth the hassle of posting. Take this page there's at least 50 links off it now, so any links added will only get 1/50th of the potential PR benefit.
I keep a blacklist of matches against possible URLs which redirects them to goatse.cx when they try to post another comment. :)
Why not use image confirmation used in many signups like vBulletin or even when getting a domain name from godaddy? Have to type in the string found in the image. Not a very hard setup to come up with.
Or are these spammers actual people and not bots? I was assuming they were bots but I guess it is possible they are actual people with no lives going from page to page.
Sadly, no. Some are real live breathing low-lifes, not bots.
I now have a working captcha thanks to James Seng.
Info : http://blog.iloaf.com/archives/000191.html
I will pay you money to get the butyl nitrate [or whatever its called] people off my back.
They send more spam than the Nigerian scam and penis enlarging people together.
I would even buy some if they stopped the bulk spam.
when fighting spammers, you don't want to become a spammer, grasshopper. ;)
Your site is a refreshing change from the majority of sites I have visited.I admire you on the willingness to share this info with others - good luck!I was just surfing the web to see what others have done. I thought yours site was cool.Thanks for the resources on the web.
Would sticking the comments on a separate page that is barred from Google and other spiders by a suitable robots.txt file do any good? This would ensure a spammer got no PageRank gratification from their nefarious little activities?
hi friend,
we do not say that archive pages are not developing day by day but these blogs pages are being developed by another individuals. But bUddy, did u try to know ever that who are increasing the archive pages with comments, I think u did not try. Consistency with good comments increase the value of your webblog page but here we say it differently as the comments are not concerned with the topic matter. U wud realize this friend. By the way, its really good contents site. thanx!!!
I don't think they are really persons.Its got to be all being generated by machines. I think that the image confirmation method can be a great alternative to prevent this sort of annoying comment spam.
Andyx
admire you on the willingness to share this info with others - good luck!I was just surfing the web to see what others have done. I thought yours site was cool.Thanks for the resources on the web.
The POV indicated the camera men were also running for cover - as they followed the women running into ditches for cover. The camera men were close enough to touch the one of the women - dunno if she was the one who died on spot or the one who later died in hospital - being carried away
Maybe you should try to use captcha to reject robot programs.
Hej
Szkoda, ze tylko nazwisko w naszym jezyku, ale cos tam wydukalem.. :)
Your site is a refreshing change from the majority of sites I have visited ... i9've triyed captcha and is very good program u shud try
I had comment spam on my blog once, I could say as there were no comment but just a link. I hope it would be possible to report blog spammers somewhere.
image confirmation method can be a great alternative to prevent this sort of annoying comment spam.
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