June 20th, 2011

What Spammers Think Bloggers Do

I get tonnes of blog spam–comments that serve no purpose except to lure those who read them to some spammy link selling knockoff shoes or Viagra or the like. Also, I think the more links to your site you have the web, the higher your Google ranking is, or something like that. WordPress’s spamnet catches most of them, and I’m pretty vigilant about deleting the rest–I really hate spam, plus it’s not that hard.

Recently I’ve started reading the spam WP catches for me, just to make sure they haven’t confiscated any legit comments. They haven’t, so far, but the stuff they get is pretty funny. Apparently, the spammers are trying to pass undetected by formulating comments generic enough to make logical sense on all the many blogs they spam. It is interesting what someone who shills for bottom-of-the-barrel internet markets thinks the rest of us are probably up to. Here are some hilarious examples

Comments on New York Was Great, a post about my trip to New York to speak at the Jewish Book Network’s conference, including comments on how nice the people were, and pictures of things I saw and the terrible rash I had throughout:

“I had been looking for this product. Finally I found it in your blog. Thank you so much for the information”

Comments on The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award, which includes 7 things about me like how I used to grow squash, am really fond of cats, and sometimes get accosted on the street by randos:

“Thank you for another informative blog. Where else could I get that kind of info written in such an ideal way? I’ve a project that I am just now working on, and I have been on the look out for such information.”

“Hello there, I found your site via Google while looking for a related topic, your web site came up, it looks good. I have bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.”

(I think I have outsmarted the spammers by having so little information of any kind on the blog–most of it just nattering. I guess they think all blogs serve some kind of purpose. Hahaha, I say!)

Comments on my interview with Aaron on space management:

“While this topic can be very touchy for most individuals, my opinion is the fact that there has to become a middle or widespread ground that we all can locate. I do appreciate that youve added relevant and intelligent commentary in this article although. Thank you!”

(This comment almost makes sense–if it didn’t come from a coupon sales site, I’d nearly be flattered. Though I might have been tripped up by “widespread ground.”)

Comments on More from Me, a post listing a few things I’d written for other folks’ blogs:

“I am on a diet that directs me to eat bananas for the potassium, etc. what can I substitute in place of the banana?….”

(That one is my favourite!)