I just had a rather disturbing email from a company advertising a new service called Buy Blog Comments (no follow tags used) promoting a new service offering to leave comment spam on blogs for those wanting to increase their SEO ranking.
The service offers to leave spam comments at a rate of 100 comments for $19.99, 500 comments for $99.99 and 1000 comments for $199.99.
They explain their service like this:
“Blog comments help your site rank better in the SERPs. We hired a few people who go through a list of blogs in a database we set up and pick out blogs that are in your niche. They then read through blog posts and leave a comment that has to do with the blog post they read, that way it wont get deleted. Your backlink will then be on a targeted blog, giving you more weight in the search engines. ”
The person behind the service is a guy called Jon Waraas (Jonwaraas.com) – a guy who owns a company called Developer Hut and a blog network called BuzzBums.
I think it’s one of the worst business ideas I’ve heard for a long time and something that bloggers should stand up against. I know that there are other services and tools that do this type of comment spam but this type of thing only weakens blogging.
I know that some comment spammers have done OK out of the practice but in most cases that I’ve heard about they don’t just leave a few hundred comment spams, they leave tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of them. I’ve also heard from a couple of people who know comment spammers that it’s becoming less and less effective as more bloggers use tools like Akismet and as so many bloggers use no follow tags in their comments sections.
Those buying such a service would also risk some potential downsides if they are caught out. I know I add anyone spamming my blogs to Akismets blacklist and have been known to expose companies who do it. Perhaps it’s time that bloggers stood up a little more aggressive to such blatant attacks?
I’d like to hear from those with a legal background comment on the legality of such a business. I know that of late spammers have been getting taken to court for sending unsolicited emails – I’d be interested to know what the legal standing would be of a company who so openly offers to leave spam comments on someone else’s web property.
Update: Comments have been closed on this post.
Here here, Darren.
I think there are valid ways to outsource some aspects of our “social media marketing” but this is definitely not one of them.
And with this guy, you have to imagine that at $20 for 100 comments… it’s either automated (yuk city) or it’s outsourced to a “mechanical turk”-like human-monkey system in some third-world country… either way no good at all.
I notice that on my blog some people manage to “manually” get through my “captcha”-style spam blocker, and yet the content is still so completely spammy, you wonder why they bothered!
I just don’t get it.
-Alister
I guess there will always be some people will think it is money worth spending. But I doubt the comments left will be of any decent quality. The problem is it might be difficult to distinguish between legitimate comments and “paid for comments”
That’s pretty sorry if you ask me.
No follow, huh… I’m going to have to research that.
I use to work as a shop-asistent in an art-galerry and i was surprised to se that everything with a price eventualy fit for a buyer. it is just a matter of time to find each-other. it may probably work, i’m shure the guy will find some clients. sad !
( pls excuse my english, i’m not very good at it )
Daren,
By reading your first 2-3 paras I thought that you are doing some kind of marketing of such a spam comment idea.
But when i read the line “I think it’s one of the worst business ideas I’ve heard” then this discussion took a quick turn!
I am always against such a spammers whichever the way you get spammed.
Lets help Daren to burry monkey spammers before they spread and poise whole blogosphere!
Hate spam and spammers!
Looks like my Spam Karma 2 plugin is going to face more spams! For those of you trying to fight spam on your blog, I find Spam Karma 2 to be much more effective than Akismet.
FT
The comment quality would have to be really good for it not to be recognized as spam. For the prices quoted, it may actually rise above the normal level of comment spam, especially if they’re hiring third-world spammers with some education.
I looked at the guy’s blog. He is definitely not a nice guy.
The quality will be great. You wont even know its a paid comment. Hell this could even be one…
Mike – Im a nice guy.. Im just not very ethical..
I don’t have any input on the legalities, but that’s bad news – definitely bad karma. Thanks for the warning.
I wonder how the folks at Google would feel about a business that’s primary function is spamming. I bet they might just come up with an effective “solution”, especially since the primary intention of the business is to game their search results.
Yup.. I’ve already gotten some of these blog spam comments from this company advertising for other companies. And so it starts…
And the guy says right on his blog that it’s
Beyond dumb! I suspect folks will be reporting him to Google before too long.
Wonderful! Another reason to consider turning comments off. I suppose this was inevitable but I will stick with legitimate comments on The Rock and Roll Report thank you very much. There might not be many of them but at least those who comment are actually reading the site.
This has to be the worst black-search-marketing trick I’ve ever come across. Spam Promoter services like this must be banned ASAP.
Comments going on sale, Dude whats next, Only ppl using it will be totally out of sync of blogging.
Vijay
I don’t know whats worse, the fact he is making a living from spamming blogs or the fact he is taking money for a service that has no chance in hell of actually working.
Its the same as people paying to submit to 500,000 search engines, total rubbish that gives legitimate internet marketers cold shivers.
I dugg this story to make people aware of it.
I wouldn’t hire such services, because I don’t want my name to be linked with spam comments. I don’t imagine any serious blogger who would do that. This is rather a service for splogs, and at those prices, I can’t imagine there will be any good quality comments in the package. Too bad we will have some more spam to delete each morning (as if it was not enough already).
here’s a suggestion – lets all go over to Jon’s personal blog Jonwaraas.com and start leaving random comments on it promoting our sites.
ProBlogger has 25,000 or so readers…. if we all left 5 a day – that’s 125,000 per day…. or 45,625,000 per year.
Of course he has no-follow tags in his comments, but the section addressing that on ‘Buy Blog Comments’ says that that doesn’t really matter – so lets all go spam the sucker and see how he enjoys that process…..
Then lets start using a few other Black hat strategies (he seems to like those) to google bomb him with ‘spammer’ and perhaps even start reporting him and his blog network to Google.
On a serious note – and I’m almost serious about the above, Jon’s just made a real mistake. He’s not only put himself in a legal predicament according to my lawyer husband, but he’s just destroyed his own personal brand and that of his other companies.
When anyone searches for Jon Waraas on Google in the future this post is going to come up – exposing him for the spammer that he is. His about page says he is only 20 years old – that leaves a long time to have a post like this coming up for a search for your name! Lets all link to this post with the words Jon Waraas. Perhaps that’s the better strategy.
Barby – that’s gold! Lets all link to this post with Jon Waraas as the anchor text!
Good idea on the Digging too. The link for it is here for anyone else wanting to join in.
I agree completely, Darren.
But this (and much worse) is inevitable. I’ve been working online exclusively since 1982. Every income-generating idea, service, or product has eventually been gamed into either non-existence or total crap. Whether it was the simple functionality of “Chat” on the Source, or CB on CompuServe, or SIGs (later spun into “Forums,” and then into oblivion), or Usenet, or online auctions, the vultures descended and ultimately wrecked it for everyone but other vultures.
Blogging will soon become unprofitable for all but the spammers, the SEO-gamers, and perhaps a few media professionals (e.g., Arianna). The rest of us will move on to something else, and then something else, and then….
Because you’re a new guy — and one of the good ones, at that — I figured I’d hip you to The Way Things Work Online. :-)
The really unfortunate thing in my mind is that services like Akismet will have a harder and harder time automatically removing spam comments if there are spammers who are actually human.
If spam and actual human comments get any similar looking, we’re all going to have some trouble.
Good luck to all spam-fighters,
– Mason
Of course he has no-follow tags in his comments, but the section addressing that on ‘Buy Blog Comments’ says that that doesn’t really matter – so lets all go spam the sucker and see how he enjoys that process…..
Of course, vigilantism is far better than offering a service that people can choose whether or not to use.. not :)
It says on his site that “We try to not post comments on blogs with the nofollow tag on the sites” .. and you should be doing that already. If you have nofollow on your links, and if this guy’s comments are as high a quality as he claims, then even if it /does/ post on your blog, for a start it won’t matter, and secondly it might even resolve the “empty page” syndrome and provoke your other readers to comment.
What this guy’s suggesting is definitely shady, but it’s not the Web-destroying atom bomb most people here seem to think it is. Similar complaints were made about PayPerPost, TextLinkAds (which a lot of Problogger readers use!), and even Adwords back in the day. Just be prepared and then ignore these shady schemes and they’ll seem far less evil in a few months.
Definitely one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.
If they ever try this sick spamming service on my blog, I’ll definitely mark it as spam since I just moderated comments based mainly on the links they supply as their website.
How is this different from all of you that go and promote your blog on forums, in forum sigs etc?
How many of you went and looked at the actual website, not just his blog? If the comments contribute to the original post and at the same time bring a link back to your site, how is it different from you going and doing it yourself? Are you not spamming?
The point is, they are not called “blog spammers” they are a blog “commenting” service. They are leaving valid comments related to the post and joining them up with the blog post that they are “promoting”. My guess is that this is why the nofollow does not matter, as people reading the original blog post would be interested in the site linked from the “comment”.
We are not talking viagra and sex links here, we are talking about someone doing your commenting for you.
If the quality is high, and the comments are relevant, I think this will be an ace service as it helps you interact with bloggers. If it turns out to be a way to just blits a million blogs with a million crap sex links then he should be pushed to hell… but honestly, lets see some of the quality before we flame this guy?
I am REALLY suprised at this post from you today, totally out of character. You are normally fair and go with the “proof is in the pudding” method, but in this case you just went all out on this guy. Not nice considering the “weight” you have in the community.
I hate spam and spammers as much as the next person, but this guy could actually be providing a quality valuable time saving service. Perhaps you could engage in some direct discussion and pull up some examples before you spout off? :)
Dave
Peter Cooper – I think the difference between TLA and PPP is that they were something that blogger ran on their own blog and the blogger was compensated for it. This SEO strategy is something that bloggers have no real choice in – someone else decides to pay money to have their links appear on a site in an underhanded way. The middle man takes the cash that systems like TLA and PPP at least share with the bloggers.
While both are controversial – they are different in my mind.
Darren: You are right, but quite a few of the complaints here are about the black-hat SEO side of it, rather than the inconvenience of dealing with spam comments. TLA has just as much an SEO factor as this (probably more, since TLA goes on high PR pages, whereas blog comments are nearly always on low PR pages).
All that said, I get the impression the level of comments this guy’s company will generate will be a drop in the ocean compared to the many blog posts I find in search results nowadays with hundreds or thousands of unmoderated junk comments attached.. so I don’t think he’s anything to be too scared of, no matter how nefarious his scheme (this is starting to sound like a comic-book story, I know!)
I fear it could be a success. I run dofollow on my comments, but moderate every comment that comes in. If – like what Dave says – they do provide relevant comments, what’s to say I won’t get caught out?
I like the googlebombing his name. Only time will tell how successful he will be.
Dave – good comments, however I think there is a difference.
Promoting links in forums signatures. As a forum owner I expect people to promote their link their signature. That’s why I enable the option. I’m willing for people to do that as a thank you for them participating in the forum. If I didn’t want them to do it I’d turn that feature off. I guess the difference is that the owner of the website allows it.
You write – “The point is, they are not called “blog spammers” they are a blog “commenting” service. They are leaving valid comments related to the post and joining them up with the blog post that they are “promoting”.”
Sure they call themselves a commenting service – but they also point out that they are offering the service to black hat seo types. The whole purpose of it is to do something that they think is untrackable to manipulate search results – not to add value to anyone’s blog.
In terms of quality – lets do some sums.
At $19.99 for 100 posts you’re paying them 19 cents per comment. For someone living in the US or Canada to make a decent living at 19 cents per comment (he says they are US/Canadian citizens that make the comments) how many comments would they need to leave in a day? To make $100 they’d have to leave 526 comments….
An 8 hour day has 480 minutes in it. They’d need to be leaving comments at over 1 per minute. Now to make a comment genuine and add to the conversation they’d need to read the post before making the comment….. The site says they also hand pick blogs from relevant niches (more time)…. I guess then that Jon needs to take his cut before sharing it with the people who work for him…. I can’t see how it adds up. Those working on this scheme need some fast way of posting comments – I’d suspect that they’d need to do at least two comments per minute.
How many comments do you think you could leave a day that would add value to a conversation? I don’t think it adds up as these comments being genuine. I suspect at the very least that they’d be copy and pasted and at the worst automated.
I’m sorry – but I can’t see how this benefits bloggers. I can’t see how they could promise high quality comments. This is being marketed at black hatters – that should be warning enough.
@Dave from two comments up…
I think you’ve missed the point. What good (real) bloggers are trying to protect here is the truly relational nature of blogging and commenting. See, the point of a comment is to participate in a conversation. And what exactly is that “part” of the conversation you’re having if you’ve delegating it to someone you don’t know, saying who-knows-what on your behalf.
He says his service is for SEP/SERPS purposes. I assume you know, then, that his customer is someone who wants no REAL part in that conversation; no real part in the relational dynamic at play in blog comment “threads”. No, it’s all about a link, and the text only needs to be good enough to avoid the spam trap.
I think the onus here is on you to explain to the rest of us how you turn this guy into a quality service when he says himself – in comment #8 – that he’s not very ethical…
I (and other “good” bloggers”) use comments to engage in meaningful conversation with other people. That’s not something that anyone one of us would want to delegate.
But are you saying you would?!
Hi,
I hate spam and wish it did not happen. However, I wonder if this guy is really doing something awful or are there possibly companies out there quietly employing people to blog on their behalf and that may include visiting other sites and leaving comments?
Niamh
How are the honest bloggers meant to compete with this? Others will copy this method of comment spam, now that the ball is rolling and the idea is out there.
I am hopeless at networking, but chug along doing my best to get my pages in Google and around the web, getting nowhere fast, each day giving me a couple more hits. This is very disheartening to know that people can play the system, and the world revolves around money etc.
What if the price was 10x as much, and he didn’t mention any blackhat stuff? Would that change your perception, Darren?
Completely agree, Darren.
This is nothing more than comment spam, and makes it all the more difficult for those of us who work hard trying to make a living from blogging.
thebassman – two comments.
firstly – the price isn’t 10xs as much and it does mention the blackhat stuff and that it’s all about SEO – so all i can really comment on is what it’s being promoted as.
Having said that – I think I’d still have a problem with it – even if it was pitched more as an ‘outsourcing of comments’ type deal.
I guess I’m with Alister (comment #29) when he talks about the comments section of a blog being a relational space where real conversations happen. While these conversations can open up opportunity for people to discover where each other blogs and does business I think that it’s the personal nature of it all that I’d want to protect.
Blogging is built on transparency and relationships – I guess I don’t see anything in this sort of service that builds on these things.
Yuk.
I tried a few paid posters when our forum was young.
What a waste of time and money, I’d have been better just letting the forum grow naturally (it has and now has a core group of quality posters) but i was keen to have lots of people around
I think like paid forum posters, advertisers are going to get what they pay for, poor quality, irrelevant comments.
Question, we can manually report comment spammers through Askimet? it is great software that gets most of the bots, and my understanding is that those bots are then automatically reported
How do you manually report? please point me to some instructions someone, i would gladly manually report comment spammers.
Thanks
Bren
Some might compare this to ghostwriting, provided that there are truly people behind those comments, and that these people actually do take time and attention to write relevant comment. And they actually might be beneficial re SERP’s, like any blackhatting… until the anti-spam mechanisms get the grip. (Note that the service provider targeted this service to blackhatters in the first place.)
For those willing to take an additional thought or two into consideration:
While this and any other blackhatting might reap benefits, compared to others, at the beginning, on the other hand, however these comments might be produced, the ones who do hire commenters in order to increase their blog ranking, are actually loosers (and they even paid for it) in the long run, because they have missed the whole point of commenting, and thus the effects.
* They know they cannot rely on numbers (because they’ve paid for, not drawn the visitors), in order to measure (natural) atractiveness of their pages.
* The issue of quality, or at least reliability of the content, althought promised, remains.
* And what about link building and new contacts? They seem to be the part of the package as well, but they are paid – will they remain once you stop cashing out, and would they be linking to you anyway?
The comments, along with many other elements, should not only provide popularity, but also a valuable feedback (favorable or not) from real people – an insight, new ideas, etc., and serve as an element towards building a better idea on real popularity and value of the content that enticed the people to comment (blog, article, software, etc.)… and thus help building a better, more targeted content.
While such a reminder might be enough for some, there will probably be many of those willing to pay, disinterested to look further. I am not sure whether something can be done about that in the terms of regulations. Stronger anti-spam weapons are on call, as well as (perhaps) genuine bloggers’ brainstorming on bolder actions (e.g. direct mailing to the search engine- and ISP- anti-spam services, etc., stronger support for fellow bloggers, etc.).
The SEO/SEM history teaches us: like in the turtle and rabbit tale – black hat, paid testimonies services, paid this-and-that – all elements that should be genuine (but sometimes are ordered or artificially produced), in order to be fair towards customers and/or providers, should – and will – ultimately loose its face and pace over original and truly genuine (produced by interested reader or blog writer).
That is one of the main problems with the inclusiveness of the Internet – it gives license to people with the “path of least resistance” or “cast a wide net” strategies. If the cost per effort is low enough, which it always seems to be – it encourages people to fish with dynamite.
I am sure it won’t last long, but sad to say the least.
– Scott
I agree with what you say.
I agree with protecting the relational space.
But, still, no one has shown some examples of the comments.
Forget the mention of blackhat for a moment.
Show me some examples of the comments they provide, then pass judgement. At the moment there are no facts about these comments or what they provide… :)
Cheers
Dave
I sense that there will be a plugin created whereby you can block all IPs associated with that network. It can even be done manually once the IPs are known – these should be easy to figure out and here’s why.
People are lazy. The commenter will go from one niche site to the next to the next posting the exact same comment to similar posts.
Once we have a list of IPs blocking will make sure it doesn’t happen for long.
“I think the onus here is on you to explain to the rest of us how you turn this guy into a quality service when he says himself – in comment #8 – that he’s not very ethical…”
Why is it on me? :) I don’t care about his service, I am not going to be using it. I was just trying to do us all a favour and try to look at it with an open mind from both angles rather than jumping in on the “mob mentality” that I could see. :)
The quality may be rubbish, but where is the proof? I have seen none so far.
Also, regarding the comment about being “ethical” it could mean about anything. Drink, paid links, forum spamming, building link farms, who knows. Just because someone is not ethical doesnt mean the new product is not valuable in some way :)
I am not having a go, and I don’t normally comment on here as I love Darrens posts (hell he is on my msn) but I suddenly saw red when Darren decided to scream “murderer” at this guy without even speaking to him or digging out some proof of the comment style etc that they use and the potential value it may (or may not) provide. :)
Cheers
Dave
Also
“the ones who do hire commenters in order to increase their blog ranking, are actually loosers (and they even paid for it) in the long run, because they have missed the whole point of commenting, and thus the effects.”
Why would it matter if I go and make the comment, or another author from my site goes and makes the comment, or someone else goes and makes the comment? The community is still in tact as everything relates, you would be none the wiser as to if it was me or not. I may not personally have the time to get into the community, but you would not know that it wasn’t me making those posts etc. Surely this has been happening for years? :)
Say I came here to problogger and on an article about using gmail and the chance they may have ads, I link to another site that is not mine, talking about ads within gmail? It is relevant and on topic…. :)
This is a fun discussion :)
Darren,
OMFG WWTTON? I hope this will be a flash in the pan, but once someone tries it others will follow. And after Mikkel’s performence at SMX I can only see this becoming more and more sophisticated. I imagine the people who will truly benefit are those behind services like TypeKey.
Isn’t this whole scheme fraudulent anyway?
This guy promises to add x number of comments to various blogs of which many will be quickly deleted by the blog owner. How are the advertisers going to track this?
Does he give them a report with links on who he has spammed?
And what will they do when they go to those sites and aren’t able to find the comments?
It seems to me that there is no way he can promise lasting links that will affect the serps.
OR perhaps this is just a nefarious scheme by this guy to stir the pot and get noticed by some big names. I had a friend in the Navy once that said getting chewed out by the skipper wasn’t all bad. “Negative face time is still face time.” was his philosophy.
Doesn’t make it any less dumb. But who can say what’s in the mind of someone that would rather game the system than do legitimate work?
When I put a ‘dofollow’ plugin on my blog, the amount of spam comments exploded. Askimet caught most of them. What few get by, I’m using a combination of that ‘dofollow’ plugin that allows you to set a time delay, plus the wordpress comment moderation set so that even one url in the comment will hold the comment in queue and send me an email notice to approve/deny.
So far it’s effective.
And the moderation is not a huge job, not for the moderate amount of traffic that my blog gets, but clearly not a solution for the A-listers who get thousands of comments a day. I can see that a ‘human’ spam-comment service could make the blogger’s moderation job all the more time-consuming and challenging. Frankly, I’d rather be writing…
If this kind of sleasy spam service is a sign of the future, it may also be signalling the end of the ‘dofollow’ trend.
Thanks for the informative post. I don’t have a legal background so I can’t address the legal specifics you wanted. I can, however, comment from a basic understanding perspective.
If the comment spam is slightly relevant or slightly on-topic, then I think it will be very difficult to “prove” the comment is absolutely spam. For example, how many times have we seen comments that simply say, “Great post. Thanks for the information.” The comment is very generic and may or may not be actual spam. If this new company leaves such comments, then proving that the comments are absolutely spam will be difficult. Of course, if this new company leaves the easy to spot annoying comment-spam (replica stuff, dirty pictures, ring tones, etc), then proving that they are leaving unsolicited spam is much easier. And proving the act is half the battle. The other half, I think, is proving that your site clearly states such comment participation is in violation of your site’s comment code of conduct — then, you might have a legal leg to stand on.
The legal question is a good one, but it’s a difficult topic; however, I’m sure there are an army of lawyers more than happy to take on the topic in order to build/extend their own business (sorry, I’m just not a fan of lawyers).
I am a lawyer, and I’ll tell you the legalities will take a while to catch up with the technologies- in part, because people only sue over money (predominantly) and tracking this guy down and putting a stop to it may cost more than anyone is willing to invest, outside of governmental agencies. And I wouldn’t trust his service regardless based on the fact he can’t spell or construct a useful sentence to begin with…
That said, isn’t there someone clever amoung us who can beat this guy at his own game? Spam him to death as a courtesy call? Seems only fair….
You can truly tell a lot from the website by just reading a paragraph or two. There are misspellings and grammatical errors everywhere. By the way, Jon has already been banned from Google Adwords. However, what Google should do is ban any website that Jon owns. That would be the right thing to do.
As far as his latest scheme, I’m sure he’ll make some money but karma can be fierce. I’m sure it will knock him to the ground when he least expects it.
In order to bury this service, one only needs to require email authentication before each comment is posted. This will add one more tedious process to the mix. Also, captcha could be added too. The problem is that you’ll receive less comments overall because users won’t want to go through that many steps to voice their opinions.
Correction, Google Adsense.
Darren,
You said: “I add anyone spamming my blogs to Akismets blacklist and have been known to expose companies who do it.” As with anything industry there are opportunities that develop between the cracks. This fellow is trying to capitalize on the worst parts, maybe there is an opportunity to start a service that does out people who are caught using the spamming service. The pressure to color within the social lines might be enough of a reason to keep people from subscribing to a comment spamming service.
Charles