A new type of spam?
If you’ve ever been a first time poster here, you will know that your comments don’t show up right away. I moderate pretty much everything unless I mark you as approved. I also turn off comments after a post falls off the front page. I just get way too much spam in the form of comments.
Lately, though, I’ve gotten some comments that fall somewhere in between “helpful” and “spam” and I sort of don’t know what to do with them! I think they really are spam, and I never approve them, but they always give me pause.
This is because they don’t look like spam. They look like they’re from real people and legitimate businesses. The websites look real, their emails look real, they seem to use their real names, and of course they link to their businesses, which is the only part that really looks like spam. They offer advice and suggestions and point me to their businesses in a way that appears to be more “helpful” than anything else.
For example, lately I’ve been posting about baby stuff and I’ve gotten several of these comments with suggestions for baby stuff. To paraphrase, “If you want to take cloth diapers to the hospital, try this diaper bag in a colorful print so it won’t be mistaken for trash. You can buy them at my store.” And so on and so forth.
I even got one for the yarn post suggesting I look for a certain brand of sock yarn at their store… but what bugged me was the suggestion to look for a brand I didn’t mention and do already happen to have. THAT is spam. I was saying how I wasn’t going to buy yarn yet this person was plying me with something I not only expressed no interest in but expressly said I wasn’t going to buy even the ones I was interested in. Blah to that! Delete.
So.. surely I’m not the only one. Do people approve these? Are they truly spam? And how do these people find my site anyway? Surely they’re not regular readers, they’ve never commented before, so do they regularly google for new posts about certain subjects? To top things off I feel sort of bad deleting them, until one annoys me, then I delete them all. Blah! I am much confuzzled.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:29 am
They have search engines that just scan for keywords, like BUY and YARN. Then it automatically leaves a vague, pre-written comment like, “I loved your post, here’s a great site to buy yarn!” No human actually has to even read the blog.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Sweet! I’m pre-approved!
April 4th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Heh. No, I know about those spam, I get those too. These don’t read the same.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I don’t know if you could call those spam or not. If they make helpful on topic comments, I would give them the benefit of the doubt. But brand suggestions might make you jump to the spam conclusion.
For instance, I have a baby website where I give decorating and baby gear recommendations. When I catch a little spare time, I will search the blogs for topics that my visitors might be interested in. If I happen to land on a blog where there’s a picture of a baby’s room, I might leave a comment.
Sometimes, I feel there is a picture or something on my site that would help a mom decorate her baby’s room or answer a question that she had about car seats or whatever. No, I don’t say….you should head over to my site and buy a blah blah brand diaper bag, but is it website promotion? I suppose so, but I do recommend stuff I’ve seen on other people’s sites, too.
I suppose I went around the world to say how people may have found your blog.
April 6th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I see that sort of stuff too, and have found myself also wondering if it is legit. The post I wrote on nunofelted curtains sent me to some sort of dummy aggregator that had a bunch of unrelated posts on curtains. I’ve decided to delete them, and if I’m truly in doubt, I send an email to the address supplied and only approve it if I get a legitimate answer.