October 06, 2003

Gureilla Tactics Against Blog Comment Spammers

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 09:08 PM