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.
What this all reminds me of is the stories in the papers when you read about a firefighter starting their own fires. Or an alarm company burglarizing a block of homes or businesses, only to have everyone in the surrounding area buy alarm systems soon after.
I think it sucks!
All comments are solicited. Spam email is unsolicited. By allowing comments, you are soliciting comments. The thinking behind this is that ends justify means. That is the path to cheating, lying, and stealing. Better bloggers know that means justify ends. The point of this “service” is to make it look as though people like your blog and so they’ll leave comments, therefore it isn’t spam by any means. He’s not indiscriminately commenting any old blog, he’s commenting on yours. He’s basically a comment prostitute, a fake friend. Only a loser blogger would hire this guy.
This isn’t new. Months ago people started offering their comment services in forums.
The way I see it if the comments aren’t real, they don’t help anyone.
Michael
I don’t see what your problem is.
Thousands of people write comments just to get some publicity to their site (probably like 90% of the commenters here did) – otherwise you wouldn’t even be typing your URL in the comments’ form.
The site says the comments are relevant, so who cares whether you write it yourself or you outsource it to somebody else.
They are not talking of spam comments which would not get through the spam plugins and would cost crap anyway…
In early June, I wrote a post called “Is the DoFollow Movement Getting Exploited?”
I got a lot of comments on the post, with a lot of people agreeing that it was probable, but with an overall sentiment of “it can’t really be that bad”.
I knew this was happening – but I have to say I’m surprised that this is such an in-your-face approach. Certainly a way to both kill the “acceptability” of the practice (even with black hatters) with bad PR AND kill the NoFollow movement in one fell swoop.
Here’s what I can say. . . .
I wrote for a corporate blog. I did the research on topics behind the products they made and wrote posts. After a few months, I was asked if I might be willing to comment on blogs in the niche. I thought, “why not?” But when I went out, I realized I didn’t know enough about the product they made . . . it is a food that I buy and consume. Still I’m not a foodie and I didn’t feel qualified to comment on behalf of the company without thinking I would too often not know what I was saying.
Imagine someone who knows nothing about your niche commenting for you. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, have someone comment on behalf of my blog unless I knew that person. End of story.
Paid to comment? Andy Sernovitz says it best, “It’s not good to mix love and money.”
Thanks for the response, Darren (comment #34). What if the cost was paid hourly instead of on a per post basis? So you’re basically hiring someone to comment and interact on blogs on your behalf? You’re a busy guy, I’m sure. Say you hired me, a professional photographer, to interact on your behalf on 300 photography blogs and you paid me by the hour. Not to just post to get a back link or whatever, but to interact on your behalf. Would that (rather significant) business model change your perception of the product?
Just to clarify, I would never use this guy for his services as he has them set out now, but I do find the concept to be an interesting one. Thanks for letting us explore them via your comments. ;)
On the plus side, this guy doesn’t rank well in Google for the phase [buy blog comments]. I checked both Google.ca and Google.com, and he doesn’t rank above 20 other either one.
The fact that he’s not coming up in the first to pages of the SERPs is some consolation, as it may mean that fewer people find his site. And, once he starts using the black hat techniques that he is likely going to use to get to the top of the rankings, well, someone will notice and he’ll be blacklisted (I hope).
This loser isn’t worth commenting on (although I couldn’t resist doing so on his own blog).
I still say that Akismet and moderation are the key to keeping out the infidels. I have used this exclusively for the past several months and have no problems, despite the fact that I use and highly recommend the DoFollow model:
http://chuckbrown.com/no-nofollow-logo.html
Akismet does the heavy lifting, and I do the rest.
As to Jen’s comment…”moderation is not a huge job…but clearly not a solution for the A-listers who get thousands of comments a day.”…I can’t remember seeing anyone getting thousands of blog comments a day. Even Digg averages less than 50 comments per post. If someone is getting thousands of comments a day, they’re making plenty of money, and can hire out the blog moderation.
I believe in the blog as a legitimate publishing tool. I believe in rewarding the commenters who help build and vet the content of my blog with their comments. I think it’s silly not to acknowledge their contribution with a link back to their base of operations.
Yeah I really don’t like comment spam so this is not service I am happy to read about. Second – if I hypothetically paid money for comments, I would only pay for ones that got through a spam filter. What is the point in paying for comments that just end up getting deleted by the blog owner?
Chris Cree Says:
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.
From Google:
“Help us maintain the quality of Google search results.
We work hard to return the most relevant results for every search we conduct. To that end, we encourage site managers to make their content straightforward and easily understood by users and search engines alike. Unfortunately, not all websites have users’ best interests at heart. Some site owners attempt to “buy PageRank™” in the form of paid links to their sites. Buying links to improve PageRank violates our quality guidelines.
Google uses a number of methods to detect paid links, including algorithmic techniques. We also welcome information from our users. If you know of a site that buys or sells links, please tell us by filling out the fields below. We’ll investigate your submissions, and we’ll use your data to improve our algorithmic detection of paid links.”
Here is the URI to Google’s report buying and selling of links:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks
Between that and places like Digg, he’ll go down.
Instead of trying to figure out which are spam (sometimes it can be really hard to distinguish) and flag every comment that might be spam, I would prefer to keep them all and just use “nofollow.” I don’t use nofollow because I think it’s silly and doesn’t really work, plus I don’t have much issue with people leaving covert spam comments. On top of that, there is some debate as to whether nofollow really works all that well. Also as Chuck said above, I believe in rewarding visitors any way I can — and a small link is not a big deal to me.
Not that it really matters. At the end of the day, I think that both commenter and blogger get something out of that situation. The commenter gets money or publicity and the blogger is showing that they have a wide audience (which is social proof that their site is popular and can reduce the bounce rate somewhat). And if they add to the conversation, all the better! Lemons into lemonade, I say.
In the end, I would say not to mess with *automatic* comment moderation. I’ve done it in the past, and had my comments die off instantly (of course I state when I do it). When I moderate, I prune them after-the-fact now. I don’t lose a lot to spam, and generally I only spend about 1-4 minutes a day looking over the comments.
I hear people complain every day about people who have services like these available. When I was using Elance for freelance work, there were daily posts from bloggers looking for people to both blog on their blogs/forums and comment about their blog on other blogs/forums. Services like these would not exist if the demand didn’t exist.
Also, everyone should make sure to check their spam filters before deleting/reporting everything. I recently went through and had some comments that were two months old that had been flagged (for no apparent reason). So be on the lookout!!
It has probably been mentioned in the comments above but don’t most blogs use nofollow for any link in the comments? At least that’s how my blog is setup, so if somehow a comment got past my radar it won’t have any value with search engines. As for my radar though, I get emails with each new comment and I read every comment on my site, so it’d be pretty hard to get past me.
Whilst not the best idea I don’t think it will have the impact everyone thinks it could.
If people want to get mobilised against something evil why not sort out email spam which is now worse than ever.
Thanks for the great post – I believe that if the comments are relevant and the client site offers the reader value, there is no harm done.
Thanks for the tip! I just paid $20 for 100 comments so I can give it a try. Unlike most people I am going to ask them to look at the site and make 100% honest comments. I think PayPerPost sucks because they don’t seem to insist that the posts are 100% honest. I think if they are it’s ok and so are comments.
Bloggers may not like it because they don’t get paid. Oh well, it the comments are good it’s still content so put some adsense on that blog and shut up! :-)
thebassman – you write – “What if the cost was paid hourly instead of on a per post basis? So you’re basically hiring someone to comment and interact on blogs on your behalf?”
I still wouldn’t go for it. The closest I’d probably go to what you were talking about is to hire someone to be a co-author of my blog and encourage them to interact with other blogs and bloggers as part of that job – but as themselves. ie they use their real name but might use the URL of the blog that they are co-authoring.
I wanted to point out the quality of the comments (from the Buy Blogs front page):”We currently have 6 people working with me (Jon waraas) that speak english really well”
My point: This guy couldn’t spell his way out of a wet paper bag (on his blog he’s waiting for “hait (sic) mail”) I doubt that his 6 people are going to be any better with the grammar and syntax of the English language.
As a side note I use a plugin for wp called linklove that takes the nofollow off of comments of a new user after 10 comments. Since I’ve started using the plugin I’ve had no spam comments so I’m comfortable recommending it.
The thing that gets me about this is that we are turning into such a fakey fake society. Not just the US…it is a virus that seems to be spreading. Deception is the order of the day. It’s depressing. Bye, authenticity.
Thanks for the tip on LinkLove, Wendy. I hadn’t heard of that before. I don’t need it, as I manually approve everything…but if I was going a more automated route, that sounds like an interesting solution…although it seems to me that 3 would be a better number than 10.
By the way, i LOVE the name of your blog: YarnPorn….very cute! ;-)
Its sad to think that commenting is turning into the “new paid inclusion”.
It takes the “community” out of blogging. Hopefully, fellow bloggers will get wise and be able to tell the difference between a genuine comment and a fluff piece.
Let me add that there CAN be much harm to come from this kind of practice, contrary to what some commenters have suggested.
Some of the people here in this comment thread are saying that as long as the comment added value they would leave it. A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, found that a few comments left on his blog were redirecting a few weeks later to very ‘questionable’ sites.
Now, whether or not this would get you banned by Google is one thing (and I’m not sure if it would or not).
But we are talking black hat here – once you open the door to a black-hatter, you have NO IDEA how they will exploit you – whether it’s generosity or naivete is moot – you WILL be explioted.
Why risk it for a comment link (which Google devalues no matter what)? Like I said, find better ways to reward those who really add value – like with the Top Commentators plugin or a featured commenter post, or hey – how about a Commenter Appreciation Day? :)
I think in court, such a service is legal as it claims to post normal, useful comments. People post comments all the time to get attention, and thus, this service can get away with it. This service is completely legal as long as the commentor or those people posting such commercial advertising comments do it by posting something useful in their comment too, like actually commenting on the post in question with useful feedback. Like “Dave” said above, this service calls itself a commenting service, and not a spamming service, and even though Bes and Darren might think it is spam in disguise, legally, it is all right, which is very unfortunate. Maybe the model needs to be tinkered a bit to add more value to it?
I have a tip for you Darren below, but first:
Unfortunately, it is services like these which take away authenticity, like Bloggrrl said above, and actual value of posting something because one wants to, and instead moves people towards a feeling of “I want to post a comment because I want more visitors, and nothing else.”
I have lately been getting comments where people will add keywords to their names. Some comments are from people who are actually humans and wanting to promote their own site, while others seem a bit weird. I wonder if it is services like these going around posting supposedly-useful comments and adding a keyword to the comment name to get a link back? The guy on the site also says that nofollow doesn’t work. Surprisingly, he is right. Even with the nofollow tag added, links are seen and clicked by people. So simply adding a nofollow tag won’t help; what you did in your post was nice, though I wonder if more steps can be taken somehow to combat such practices that are going to be, unfortunately, a growing trend?
Of course, this raises an issue: how is this different than the normal commenting where everyone wants their link to be mentioned so people can visit their sites? The only difference here is that customers pay someone else to post a useful comment and a link to certain sites. The main problems is that it can be hard to figure out the actual intent of a commentor: did he/she post a comment to actually add value to a post, or to simply advertise their own url? A person may have a very useful comment, but now, because of services like these, we cannot know if some people are posting useful comments simply to advertise someone else’s url for which they are paid for.
I agree with you: bloggers need to unite more and be more active against obvious bad commercial habits. Even if bloggers do not unite, each individual can do something on their own to make a difference.
Summary & a tip: Completely legal, unless you have a commenting policy prohibiting such services from ever commenting on your site. If they do comment and do it repeatedly and you find out and have proof, you can take them to court to see what the judge can award as a punishment to those people for deliberately ignoring your commenting policy, which they must have read, or should be able to, from the page they comment on [and nothing else]. Be prepared, in such a case, to show to court why such a business should be singled out from commenting on your blog whereas the rest of the world is allowed to freely comment on your site.
Summary: We’re screwed legally, unless you have proof as I mentioned above.
Summary: We need to take action on the blog front, whether as a group, or individually.
I guess I’m in the minority here, but this really doesn’t seem like that big of deal. Most likely the comments will be rubbish and they will get deleted just like other rubbish comments. It isn’t going to be that difficult to see if someone is just posting a verbose “me to” comment.
Of course it is possible that the comments will be very high quality, well thought out and helpful to your readers. It is possible that they will be so well written that you will be more likely to mark one of your normal reader’s comments as spam before one of these paid comments. If that happens, what is the problem? Is it just the fact someone was paid to make the comment? Good comments can be hard to come by and if they are truly good, it probably won’t matter if they are paid or not.
P.S. If you don’t agree with me then consider this comment. If someone was paid to leave this comment on Darren’s blog, how would it be any different from a real comment? Would it somehow hurt Problogger? Would make for a less fulfilling experience for the readers?
However, it is extremely unlikely that you are going to be able to pay someone $20 to get 100 comments like this–at least in the US.
@Wendy (72) — Yes, but that is possible regardless of wether the comment was paid or not. It could even happen if someone were to sell their blog and the new owner put something different in its place.
I think this is a potential business model. Let’s say you have a person in China who can read basic English five cents for an on-topic blog comment (compare this to gold farming rates on World of Warcraft). I can write a one sentence comment, roughly on topic after glancing at a blog post, in about thirty seconds. That ends up being about $6 an hour – great money for an intro worker in China, actually. If you can sell these comments for twenty cents a pop, you make fifteen cents profit per comment.
Mark – points well taken, but this service is actually advertising to black-hat marketers, which means that the liklihood of a comment link turned into porn redirect is far more likely than with just a comment from someone else.
Has anyone really taken a close look at this websites opening page?
Look at paragraph 3 in the blue section. I see numerous grammatical errors including:
Switching from second person to first person in the first sentence. Does not capitalize english three different places. Uses dont instead of don’t and wont instead of won’t. Doesn’t even capitalize his own last name!!!
I certainly do not anyone posting comments in my name that does not know how to write correctly.
What do you think?
Eric
Some people might opt for it, but i doubt on the quality.
Pretty amazing that this king of stuff can also be in action, but can survive.
If the comment is a good comment then what’s the difference?. Do you ever know the true motivation of your commenters? Would you want to? Also… Is it any of your business?
I think you can only judge a comment on it’s own merit. As soon as you try to second guess motivations behind them as a method of spam control, then you’ve really lost the plot haven’t you.
sounds dodgy to me and reaks of black hat seo-ing..
Do it properly and write good content and you will get people visiting etc
” I just can’t wait to go out and buy 2k comments and use my competitors anchor text. then I will report them to The Google. ”
I swear that was the first thought that came into my head. Does that me eviler than this evil guy? Although since when did everyone get all ethical in blogging? And Darren arent’ you somewhat promoting a guy none of us would have heard of by poking at him like this?
Just my take….
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.
Darren, I could not believe this when I read it.
If comment spam was not already bad enough, we now have buyblogpomments.com. This is one more reason to use comment moderation and make sure that you have Akismet installed on your blog.
The comments on here are very hypercritical and ignorant to a certain extent as most of you state that you condemn a service like this. Why? as you post on this blog and others for your own value, am I right? just like visiting and posting in a forum to get a Free link back to your site…you’re not doing it for fun are you??
Yes, you’re adding value for the blog owner but you’re in turn obtaining a follow through for the SERPs.
Before I get hit hard…
I’m very ethical in business but if I can see an ethical way to alleviate some of my time (Marketing) for money I will usually take it (if I can afford too). This is exactly the same as asking a group of friends to DIGG a post at Digg.com. It’s not right, but people do it to be seen, get promotion, build traffic. If he can also prove the posts are unique, targeted and of good quality there will no reason not to use this service.
I own a blog and If I see what looks like a great comment posted (even detrimental) that is related and of some substance to my content, it stays and adds value. Period!
It will depend on the person I’m sure…shame he uses the word BlackHat in his sales text, as I think it could have been marketed as very ethical way to build good organic back links (just like Text Link Ads). Text Link Ads is marginally the same service (business model) marketed as a professional service.
I’m very ethical in business and if I can see way to alleviate some of my time for money I will usually take it (if I can afford too). This is exactly the same as asking a group of friends to DIGG a post at Digg.com. It’s not right but people do it…why? to be seen, get promotion, build traffic. As least it will also be targeted. If he can prove the posts are unique, targeted
Mr ProBlogger has given a very reader biased (l cannot write and even state that this service has any substance) article. It seems as though Darren is now in a position not to have a controversial opinion because it could harm his own brand the name he has built up.
Live by the Sword, die by the sword…
I’ve already reported them to Google. They should be out of the SERPs in no time!
Hey Darren,
You should not have posted about Jon’s service, doing so has only given him free promotion….I bet he has gotten some orders from people who read this post.
The way I see it, this is going to turn out one of two ways. Either he has found people in a third world country with a good grasp of English who can post on topic comments and we’ll never know the comments on our blogs are bought…or the quality won’t be there and the service will collapse in on itself.
It’s easy to complain about so-called spam comments when you own a blog that commands such a huge reach and every post garners tons of comments. When you’re running a small insignificant blog, getting people to discuss your posts is very very difficult. To be honest, if someone was posting relevant on-topic comments on my blog, I don’t know if I would care that they were paid for as long as the quality is there.
I honestly don’t see why people are getting their panties in such a bunch over this service, there are already large high profile companies that are well respected who basically more or less game social media and other sites for their clients. Why can they get away with this? Because they don’t spam, they provide interesting unique content. Either the quality will be there and we’ll never know or it won’t and the service won’t last.
I don’t really see a problem either way, but it looks like I am a minority in this. However, if you’re fundamentally against this service, don’t talk about it, don’t promote it to page one of digg and just try to forget about it. Otherwise, you’re only going to help Jon…and he’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
I wonder if there is a way to track these spam commentators on our blog. Since these comments are relevant to the topic discussed in the post, we’ll be having a hard time differentiating!
Somebody needs to put an end to this service!
61: Almost all of the links at youtube are nofollowed. Oddly enough, some are not:
youtube.com/t/studio_article_05
Is there a quid pro quo there? Should you report Youtube to Google?
That’s retarded. Someone should shut them down.
Oops, sorry Chuck, I should have said “thousands of visitors a day” – you can tell my comments are sincere and spontaneous by the number of errors I make!
Agreed that Askimet + moderation should do the job.
I’m curious about something, though – and maybe someone with more knowledge of such things can shed some light –
Say that Askimet “learns” the IPs of the paid commenters whose comments are reported to it by bloggers who’ve been targeted, who is it that will end up getting slapped?
If those commenters were mere contract workers of this JW guy, working from their own home computers – because I can’t really see him setting up some physicial sweatshop somewhere to do this – wouldn’t it be the employees’ IPs that get blacklisted, not JW’s business? Or whatever anonymizer service or proxy they use?
I’ve never understood the point of comment spam, at least as far as SEO goes. Google basically ignores links on pages that are below about PR4, so a comment on a typical blog post is worthless in terms of draining PR juice from a site.
In contrast, multiple comments on a site like Sciencebase.com that runs the Top Commentators Plugin will allow a dedicated commenter to get their link right on to the blog homepage (which is a PR7). Now, if you were unethical that plugin would be the way to go to game sites like that.
Of course, Akismet and a wary and sharp-eyed moderator will see right through the cr*p-flood, anyway.
db
It is totally unethical business model. I am not sure if this can be stopped though. It would be another long battle similar to email spam. Such services should be banned by internet governing body, but I don’t think there such an universal authority established yet to oversee internet frauds.
What a lot of the “what’s the big deal?” crowd are evidently missing is that at bottom, Waraas is essentially stealing disk space and bandwidth from third parties to advertise on behalf of his clients. It does not matter that the comments are “relevant” or “high-quality”, any more than it matters that email spam is “relevant” or “high-quality”: spam is spam is spam.
Yes, it’s hard for a new blogger to attract traffic. This doesn’t justify you wiping your ass on my blog.
I just wanted to chime in and add that while it doesn’t sound like a lot of money here in the States, $20 = about R120 (South African Rand). South Africa is considered a third world country, however residents are generally able to speak at least 2 of the 11 official languages — 1 of them being English. While R120 isn’t exactly a livable a weekly wage in South Africa, it equates to about 3 times the hourly wage that the average clerk/secretary will make there, (R30-R40/hour).
While I totally dislike the idea of fake comments and hope that this venture fails before it gets off the ground, I just wanted to say that it IS possible to find educated, English speaking people to work for the fees he is quoting and that there is a (slight) chance that these comments will be all he says they will be.
Anybody know this guy’s IP address? Let’s ban him before he even starts…
I personally take the nofollows off of comments on my blog after someone has left ten comments. If I haven’t banned them by then, they can have legit links…
I have heard of this Jon Waraas before but I can’t remember where. I’m thinking it was on one of the webmaster forums but for the life of me I just can’t place the name.
At any rate, I hope the people he hires have better spelling and grammar skills then he. His grammar is awful.
This is about the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a long while….
Warass says his spam comments will be well written.
Like this quote from his website?
“In fact, most blogger will like the free comments to help with their with there community..”
Moron.
life is just to easy for us creative people isn’t it