I’m promising something different after this blog post, although it’s only going to occur on this blog post. I’m allowing every comment that shows up on this article to stay here so others can see how much spam I often get. I hope most of the people who comment (if they comment) are legitimate, but I’m not holding my breath. This means I’ll be pulling a lot of articles out of the pending area; I hate wasting my time, but I’m using it as a teaching moment.
way better than spam!
I’ll be removing links to any websites or blogs being shared, but I’ll leave the email addresses so you’ll know what’s going on. Then again, if you’re a spammer you’re never going to read any of it; you’re problem, not mine.
The problem, as I see it, is that sometimes a potential legitimate comment might not seem like one. It happens for a variety of reasons, which I’m going to outline in this article.
As it regards me, after all the years I’ve been blogging I tend to rate comments harshly. It’s because so many rules are broken, and I’m a stickler for rules. I’m also a stickler for comments that offer more than “I like what you wrote”, or other stupid things of the sort.
Thus, I’m going to highlight 9 reasons why people think your comment is spam… and they’re probably right. If you notice you’re doing something that’s on this list but you think you’re being legitimate… stick around and learn what NOT to do if you’re commenting on other people’s blogs.
1. Is there a comment policy?
People who comment all the time on blogs are usually proficient at doing it correctly, so if they skip the policy then it’s fine; they’re not going to make any mistakes. However, if you’re new to it then it’s probably a good thing to see if there’s a policy for commenting; if so, read it, then follow the rules.
Not only does this blog have a written comment policy, but I’ve taken the extra step of putting a few of the rules right about the box for comments… and I put it in bold lettering. No one’s trying to make it hard for people to comment on their blogs, but if you miss the rules when they’re right in front of you then you look like a spammer.
2. One line comments
In the mid 2000’s, almost every blogger accepted one line comments because we were all happy that people actually came by our blogs and took the time to say anything. Back then we didn’t have the issue with automated spam messaging for everyone, so it was seen as legitimate.
These days we know better, but new commenters might not know about this rule. On my blog, if your comment isn’t at least 15 words you’re going into the spam filter. For others, you might get your comment through, but let’s be serious. If you’re too lame to write more than one sentence, what kind of blogger could you be? You look like a spammer; sorry about that.
3. The name you use
Unless you’ve built up cache in a name, using stupid names, business names, names of your product in the name box definitely makes you look like a spammer. How can the blog owner legitimately respond to your comment if they have to call you by any of those names?
There’s a lady who comments on this blog regularly who calls herself Mother, which in general terms most people might question. Yet, she’s been a loyal commenter for a lot of years, and I’ve visited her blog; it’s touching. 🙂 She’s proven she’s a real person with real feelings and real thoughts. If you’re new, you haven’t earned the right to do the same.
4. Stuck in a subdomain link
In the late 2000’s, it was recommended that people not only put in a link back to their websites but put one in that goes to a specific page. People are still following that advice all these years later, but the majority of people doing it are spammers.
I run two anti-spam plugins along with using CommentLuv. Anytime someone adds a subdomain that doesn’t go directly to the main page of a blog or website, it gets flagged and sent to spam. This means I have to decide whether the comment is spam or if I have to go in and remove the subdomain link. Luckily for me 99.5% of these comments are spam, so I don’t have to do anything other than get rid of the comment. If you’re that .5% that’s legitimate, please stop doing this.
5. Getting the name of the blog author incorrect
My name is Mitch
While it’s true that not every person who owns a blog tells you what their name is, so sometimes you’ll get a pass. Most bloggers do tell you their name somewhere on the page, which makes things easy. If they don’t, you’re probably off the hook.
I say “probably” because these days if you call any blog writer “admin” you look like a spammer. If you call the blog owner the name of someone else who’s commented before you, you look like a spammer.
6. Not commenting on anything that has to do with the article
Let’s be clear on this; if a person’s writing a blog and they’re not writing total nonsense, they know when you’re puffing (old term which means using fake flattery on someone to put something over on them) and basing your comment on the title and nothing else. There’s nothing more irritating than knowing you’ve put time into writing an article of some substance, only to see someone say something stupid like “nice post” or “I agree, too many people write comments that look like spam” and leave without adding perspective. Why did you bother leaving anything unless you had more to say about it?
A small piece of a spam comment I received on another post was “I think it’s worth maintaining my presence until it becomes valuable to me for all the reasons you mention.” This is literally garbage. It didn’t say anything; this person was definitely puffing. No doubt this person was a spammer; it deserved going into moderation.
7. Copying someone else’s comment and using it as yours
I get it; sometimes commenting is hard, especially when you want to look original but someone else has already said what you wanted to say. On an article I wrote talking about LinkedIn, I received a comment with this line: “Thanks for your tips Mitch. I’ve got to do more videos on that network, I did one with very little views, All the information you shared is above is truly awesome.”
That looks pretty legitimate, doesn’t it? It was… except it was a short, copied excerpt from my friend Lisa Sicard, which means it wasn’t original but copied. Maybe the person was legitimately trying to look like he/she had something to say, but since I caught it (it seemed familiar) I treated this person like a spammer… nah; I knew this was a spammer! lol
8. Using a Gmail address when promoting a business website
Let’s face this reality; if you’re using gmail instead of the domain name of your website to leave comments on someone else’s blog, you’re either bad at marketing, don’t understand SEO or some kind of idiot. Yeah, that’s harsh, but let’s put it into context.
On one of my blogs, I use a Verizon.com email address. I also write articles for my accountant, and I use that same email address. Verizon doesn’t allow spammers to create a bunch of throwaway email addresses to use as spam, and since it’s the same email address that responds to other people commenting, and it has one more thing I’m mentioning next, there’s no way to associate it with spam.
Google allows people to create many fake, throwaway email addresses. More than 90% of the comments that show up here by first time visitors are gmail accounts. Unless I know you, and unless other bloggers know who you are, you look like a spammer.
9. No avatar or a stupid avatar
Whenever I leave a comment somewhere, my face is in the avatar which, on many blogs, is called a Gravatar; I didn’t come up with that. It gives a bit more legitimacy to my being a real person leaving a real comment, which I probably don’t need because I actually leave real comments on other people’s blogs.
What I see most of the time is no avatar at all. That makes sense if the person’s using a stupid name like openstudyoff or hp printers; idiotic! What I sometimes see is an avatar of a pretty woman with a man’s name; please! lol
If you’re Indian and you’re using an avatar that looks like an Indian but you’re calling yourself “Bob”, you’re immediately suspect, even if your name’s really Bob. If you’re lucky enough to get someone like me who’ll search through the site you’ve linked to, looking for your name to see if it’s there and I find it, then you’re good. If not, and if any name I find doesn’t look like an American name… you’re a spammer, even if you’re not… but you are.
I think I’ll stop at 9, otherwise I’ll be here all week. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I hope I’ve gotten my point across. There’s way too much email spam as it is without having to deal with is on a regular basis on my blogs. It’s the way of the world, but that doesn’t mean I, or anyone else, has to like it. Please, be a better… and legitimate… commenter… please!
I like to know about spamming. As, i don’t know much about it before. Thanks for sharing this informative and educational post.
First one; this didn’t take long.
haha I am reading this article and was about to write a flattery spam comment but then I read your article fully and got my mistakes thanks
You did pretty well Shivam, except you added the subdomain to your website link. That means you lost the opportunity to allow CommentLuv to give you the choice of a specific page to highlight. At least you read the article though; thanks for that. 🙂
Saw this post via your twitter and just had to read it! So many true points. I will say though, my avatar (Gravatar) took a lot of setting up, and even now doesn’t always show up at the side of my comments. Great thoughtful post as always Mitch. Hope you keep safe and well.
Thanks Jo; you saw that first comment, didn’t you? lol Basically, every blog gets to decide if they want gravatars or not, especially if they’re using WordPress software. So it might not be your fault if it doesn’t show up. Mine never shows up on Typepad blogs; no idea why.
Hey Mitch, you may not remember, but I did the same thing years ago. I was going to link to it above, but you told me not to
Anyway, that post had heaps of comments from spammers as well as a lot of legitimate ones. It’s such a shame that although I was able to resurrect that post, all the comments were lost.
I do remember; it was a very long time ago. However, I also believe you left their links on, whereas I’m removing them because they don’t deserve to have any links. What was interesting about this post is that first spam comment I got came 10 minutes after the article went live. lol
Hi Mitch, wow, was I surprised to see someone copied a comment on mine. It is mind boggling to see what people will do for a backlink today or rather, try to do!
I get a lot of comments that end up in spam file, some are calling me sir, others leave links in the comments. Many others do not have a gravatar. And some of those have been in blogging a long time!
Thanks for letting me know on this one. I hope you are well and that the snow has stopped there! Have a good day Mitch!
Always looking out for my friends, Lisa! 🙂 I think there’s some kind of software that scrapes either part of articles or comments because that kind of thing happens pretty often. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve rarely missed it, but I have on occasion.
The gmail thing is irksome because so many people are using gmail accounts, but so are the spammers. It’s like back in the day when most people had AOL and Yahoo accounts and were doing the same type of thing. There’s nothing to be done about it except to try to be vigilant.
Nope, you know me better than that, of course, I removed the links. I dislike spammers as much as you do and leaving the links would only reward them for doing the wrong thing.
I wasn’t totally sure since it’s an article you lost; otherwise I’d have linked to it.
U nailed it . It’s really awesome, personally I really like your blogs.i appreciate it.really you have righs to tell.some people comment spamming,but not all.
This is bad in so many ways I don’t even have to tell people why lol
How amusing that the first comment on your post about spammers was from a spammer! 😀 I think business bloggers need a strict commenting policy, but a lot of us hobbyists aren’t as concerned with avatars or number of words. That said, I do get irked when a legitimate blogger leaves a short, generic comment. They should know better!
Back in the day I didn’t worry about word count, but spam wasn’t as pervasive as it is now. I think the number of spam comments on this article will jump within a couple of weeks once the spammers know it exists. If I can’t think of at least two lines for a comment then I’m shutting up!
The first comment had me cracking up and then your reply to it is hilarious. I love the photo with the caption”My name is Mitch.” You hit the nail on the head with the reasons a person’s comment looks like spam. I’ll also add, weird languages that are 100 paragraphs long. I’ll come back to this article to see what spam comments pop up.
Oh yeah, if it’s not Holly then it’s pretty easy getting rid of very long comments, none of which way anything unless they’re sales pitches. I’m wondering if there’s ever been a blogger who went by Admin in the history of blogging; something to think about. lol
I’m really annoyed by short, thoughtless comments, which is why I don’t leave them. If I can’t add to the conversation, I usually just share the post on my social sites if social share buttons are available.
If it’s people I know & they’re following up on a previous comment, I don’t have a problem with it. I think people who’ve been great participants on a blog have earned the right to defer from time to time. If it’s from someone I don’t know, it goes into spam.
#1 – Comment policy? How quaint. That’s like “Terms of Service,” “Privacy Policy,” manuals, instructions, and other forms of documentation. RTFM? I don’t THINK so…
#2 – Well, got me there. I can’t even FAKE being a bot. Although, come to think of it, some of them are wordier than I am. I’m pretty sure one posted the entire text of Leviticus and wrapped their Rolex ad in Revelations.
#3 – OMG, Karen Pence comments on your blog? Holy cats.
#4 – Yeah, I make you fish me out of the moat regularly with this one. Or used to. Come to think of it, I’ve been cutting you too much slack, lately.
#5 – Mitch, Mitchell, Ray Jay, Jay Ray, Schoozlefloozle, Agent Smith, how ever can I keep this straight? Mitchell it is. 😉
#6 – Fine, you. I’ll just make it a post on my OWN blog, then. See how you like THEM apples.
#7 – Why would I wa–I mean, most of your commenters are smart people, and they write well enough, but no. Just, no. Especially not Mr. Lotto Winner Chicken Dinner, over there. That’s liable to get us all in trouble one of these days.
#8 – Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I mean, I COULD use my own domain, but it’s not as easy to remember the password to that one because I never use that email because checking email is hard. (And yeah, but it’s debatable – as an author, some people INSIST that it’s a business. I should go with that, then I could claim the hosting fees as a business. IRS might want me to publish another book, though. It’s been six years.)
#9 – Hey! Are you calling mah face “stupid”? It’s mah face! Go over on FACEbook and Ask Tiffany Smith, she took the picture.
Bonus points for the racism, there, Mitch. 😛 I’m teasing you and you know it. And I’m pretty sure most of your Indian readers know it (although a few newcomers may not, so let’s make that clear). I need to introduce you to my friend Corinne. Corinne Rodrigues (not related to Cairn, believe it or not, and not American, Mexican, or Spanish – she’s Indian!). And seriously, you should meet her if you haven’t – she’s a lovely woman, who (I just discovered yesterday) has the voice of an absolute angel. I could just listen to her talk all day.
Did you mention the “little box”? There’s the real Turing Test, right there.
Now seriously, fix your CommentLuv. It’s 2020. All the cool kids are using secure sites these days!
First… what’s RTFM?
Is that her name? I’ve never asked; I hope you didn’t just out her here. lol
You like adding links, but so do a lot of the spammers. If my spam program actually caught all spammers 100% I might give that bit up… but it doesn’t.
You don’t know this routine: “A zoot-suited character named Raymond J. Johnson Jr. would appear. If you called him “Johnson,” he launched into a tirade: “Ahh, ya doesn’t has to call me Johnson! You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, or you can call me Johnny or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me RayJay, or you can call me RJ… but ya doesn’t hafta call me Johnson.” In any case, I sometimes get spam comments where they’re responding to me but addressing the name of another commenter, or use a throwaway name that, if it wasn’t spam, I’d be wondering where they got it from.
You’re not using a business website, and you didn’t start off writing junk comments either. Most of the spammers, including the 2 I’ve shown so far, were linked to businesses but using gmail addresses which is moronic; shows they know nothing about branding.
I’m connected to Corrine and I know what she is. But she also acknowledges that she’s a rarity in the game, just like Ernie Martin does. Remember the title of the article; I did say “Looks Like Spam” after all. If the comment is legitimate then it’s all good.
Didn’t we have this CommentLuv conversation before? You got the link; don’t gripe! lol
I’m curious if I can survive the spam examination. I came over from Holly J’s group from Medium.
I have a female picture and male name (non binary).
I’m giving this a workout.
Lots of love!
Actually, Chris is a generic “Pat” name, if you remember that reference. If you had an avatar where you looked like Kathy Ireland and used the name “Bob”, we’d probably have to talk about it. lol Still, no one gets bounced by the spam filter for having an image; not having an image will send people immediately into the pending area. Welcome Chris; you’re also in the Slack group.
Yeah, but I wasn’t even leaving a freakin’ link! That was the point. ANYWHO… 😉
Outed who? Karen Pence? The VP calls his wife “Mother.” He gets mocked a lot for that, but I’ve known plenty of parents who ended up calling each other some variant of “Mother” and “Dad,” just because they were also using that to refer to each other around the kids. So I won’t mock him for it and I don’t see it as being “creepy.”
What’s creepy is his resemblance to Voldemort.
You can call me whatever you like; my dad used to say that, but add, “Just don’t call me late to dinner!” Just don’t expect me to answer, and I might make up weird nicknames for you, too! 😀
No, I don’t write “junk comments.” I write NOVELS. In comments. And then sometimes think, “Damn, that would’ve made a great post!” and sometimes then I steal them back and write a post and leave the excerpts as comments. But given how much more faithful you are in leaving comments on MY blog, the least I can do is give you exclusive rights to the silly novels I sometimes write on yours, and just leave excerpts and links back HERE if I want to ad them to my own blog.
Hi, Chris! 😀
Duh; Karen Pence! lol I never thought about her… I try to never think about any of them; you know what I mean.
I don’t think I’ve ever written a comment that would have made a great post. I have written posts based on someone else’s article and our talking about it in comments, but that’s about it. I think the longest comments I’ve ever had were on this blog or yours when there were points listed to be addressed; you should feel honored! 🙂
Oh… RTFM? I should make you look in the Urban Dictionary.
“Read the FANTASTIC Manual.”
Well, that’s what I told everyone it meant when I was writing the manual, anyway. Customer support and Engineering just laughed their tushes off when Marketing asked “What’s RTFM?” during a core team meeting. I have a mug with those letters on it, and had brought my coffee with me… it was a scramble to clean that one up!
“I never thought about her… I try to never think about any of them; you know what I mean.”
Do I EVER! 🙂 That’s why I’m so busily and happily playing and writing and writing about anything BUT the “P words” – pandemic and politicians.
I did write about another “P word” using a “P word” genre (no, NOT that one – “PARODY” – but yeah, the first one was exactly what you probably thought it was). Anyway, that’s all on Medium, not my blog, so I guess your innocent eyes will never read it, anyway. So sad, more’s the pity…
Well, Peter might like it.
Can I leave a link? 🙂 Just kidding.
LOL! You’re killing me!
Don’t mind me, I’m just experimenting, now…
Well, my experiment works. Sort of. (Don’t click the link, Mitch, you’ve read it and we don’t want it counting against your three monthly freebies. The parody is way back in the queue, so CommentLuv won’t ever see it.)
Looks like CommentLuv did see it… or at least it saw something…
Thanks for the valuable information. I really admire the Well-researched content of the blog, I must say the facts in the blog is pretty much convincing.
Another totally generic and bad comment. Violated the name rule, another gmail account for a supposed business, and the pandering flattery that says nothing. Easy to tell, right?
thank you for that post, you have a great blog full of good informations
But if u want to commenty just with thank you because ufound the post informative. why it’s look like a spam
Says nothing, fake flattery, last line is nonsensical… easily spam…
Hi,
Very nice article.
I really enjoyed going through all the great information you’ve provided in this great article.
Keep up the great work.
Thank you
Let’s see… comment says nothing, “Jeffrey” is actually “Rohit” (Holly called me out on this type of thing but I stand by it), was linked to a business site but using gmail… way too easy to see it’s spam.
Started my blog long ago but then I stopped in between because I got spam comments due to which I lacked my interest. Again I started my blog and got an opportunity to see this article which has helped me in effective commenting, I got to know the ways of commenting, proper guidance is required these days but the way things are explained here seems that real experience has been shared regarding spam and spammers. Reading before commenting is important. Lots of people do it just for backlink. They don’t even realise how much effort it takes for a blogger to research about particular topic.
Never give up your blog because of spam comments. It’s better to find ways to minimize all the spam than letting others win by beating you down. I hate spam and spammers passionately, and you can see the type of junk I sometimes get around here, which I’m showing this one time only. The way I see it, I have things to say that I’m not allowing something automated to keep me from saying it. Good luck with your blogging goals; I wish you the best of success. 😉
i ever have seen this good article on a comment. this article change my mind.before comment anyone i follow u r guidelines thank u, sir.
Generic, gmail, nonsensical… easy to spot spam
learning management systems can help with that as well. LMSs allow an unprecedented insight into the learning habits and outcomes of your employees. The data they provide can show you who learned what and how easily. LMSs can even remind you that your employees need refresher courses
This is a big part of what I was talking about. Even if it wasn’t pure spam, you know it’s supposed to be a comment for a business. Only it’s done stupidly, and it’s using gmail again. I’d never have an employee whose writing skills were this poor… another way you can tell it’s spam.
I am searching this knowledge since many days. I wrote short post and long post, each got good readership. But many comments are held under spamy section.
First, violated the “real name” rule. Second, was linked to a business but is using gmail. Third, there’s no way anyone in the world would believe this person actually ever tried to learn knowledge about anything because spam’s been around for decades.
BTW, anyone notice not a single one of these people has dared to come back and try to justify their horrific comments? lol
Hi Mitch,
Thank you for sharing very useful article. well to know about how to avoid spam comment. Personally i hate comment spamming.
For once I’m not sure Suleman; this is as close to spam without actually being spam. No avatar, the name you used is different than the name in your email, it’s a gmail account… and you really didn’t mention anything in the article. Yet you did get the gist of it in your comment so it passes. I hope you use the knowledge well.
Really when I comment on someone’s website sometimes it’s warning as spam. This article is taught me a lot.
Some might ask why this is spam. You can’t see the email address, but it begins with a male name and the name Jewel is female. Also, the two sentences don’t really say anything about the article. It’s one of those times when I wonder if I wrote a 1,600 word article for a 19 word response that didn’t address a single thing I wrote about… nope! Thus, it’s spam… better spam than the rest but it’s still spam.
Mitch, I managed to resurrect that post using the Wayback machine, unfortunately I lost all the comments. At least I got the post back lol
I went looking for it but I didn’t see it. Have you scheduled it to come out at a later date?
thank you for this blog
i really like this this is a become helpful for me
Really when I comment on someone’s website sometimes it’s warning as spam. This article is taught me a lot.
Why is this comment spam? First, no avatar. Second, supposedly acknowledges learning something about writing comments that don’t look like spam, only the comment definitely looks like spam. Didn’t address a single point in the article, only commented on the post title. Waste of time normally; I’m enjoying doing this on this particular article but I’m not doing it on any other articles after this one.
Hey Mitch,
Holly wants us to ask you if she is the queen of comments or what?
And we both want to know why aren’t you on Medium, playing with us? Huh?
Holly is not only the queen of comments but she’s the absolute best in the world on comments.
As to the other one, Holly knows better than to ask that question because we’ve already talked about it like you and I have. 🙂
Great information! I thankful to the author of this blog who sharing such useful information, I also subscribe to your blog for all future posts. I have also shared some useful links here.
This person was creative. I got 3 messages from this guy, but this was the only one with an avatar. Used the same name on all of them, but a different email address at the same time, all with a different first and last name than the name above. Also tried throwing different security product links into the comment, which I of course removed. Spam that didn’t say anything about the article, and any time a comment compliments “the author”, you definitely know it’s spam.
Hi Mitch,
I’m new to this world of online blog posting so a lot of this information was new to me. Even as I’m writing this post I’ve gotten some error about force_feed with respect to my website url (not sure what that business is about).
In any case, are there steps indicating how to do things like adding an avatar picture on commentluv posts? I didn’t see an option for adding my own picture. I’m an executive coach, so the relational part of doing this I understand, but I am still getting used to some of the online things.
I also see that using a Gmail (which I did) isn’t optimal. I’m working with some younger SEO folks and they mentioned something about G-suite to create a proper email address. They’ve also been advising me to build relationships with communities like this one where I can offer some insight and also gather some insight and a place to also share about my business. They’ve also been mentioning that “spam commenting” which you mentioned above isn’t effective.
I can see this is a bit of an endeavor, but I’m glad that there’s a place where I can learn and hopefully share as well. (Now If I can only get this picture thing figured out).
Greetings John, and welcome to the blog. I’ve done some leadership coaching in my past, but it’s been a long time since I’ve worked in that area.
I’m going to assume you’ve been to this page, en.gravatar.com, where you can set your image to an email address… if you have multiple email addresses you can use multiple images to create those avatars (which of course we call gravatars in our world because of the website lol). Once you create an account (with an email and password), you’ll get to a page where you can both add email addresses and images.
As for those gmail addresses, they’re killer in getting people to trust you. My friend Holly (who left the monster comment above lol) gets away with it because she used a different email address years ago so we all know who she is. Of course, leaving a great comment like you did also helps your case, but it’s terrible for branding.
Good luck in setting up that avatar; welcome, and I hope we see you again in these parts!
Mitch,
Thanks for the advice. I’ll definitely hop onto en.gravatar.com. I hadn’t heard of it (like I said, new to all of this stuff). But it makes a lot of sense. I took a quick glance at it—I definitely don’t want to drive people away from my brand. I see that Holly is quite the contributor (and funny to boot).
You’ll definitely see me around, and by then I’ll have all everything all set up so I don’t look so suspicious, lol. Cheers and many thanks. I look forward to contributing!
Nice info you shared. When I started blog, got these type of comments that first looked great. But soon I realized them being fake. Still trying to figure out who is the genuine one.
Thanks for this post.
Overall there’s really only one great way of determining if a comment is fake. If it doesn’t reference what you wrote about in any way, it’s fake. Just repeating the name in the title doesn’t count. Look at the bad comments on this particular post that I’ve highlighted; that’ll help you figure it out sooner. Thanks for commenting.
This article is very interesting and useful.really helpful and contains lots of details .
Thank you for sharing with us
First, used a business name rather than a real name; usually a good indicator that you’re going to be seeing spam. If that wasn’t enough, the comment didn’t say anything specific about the article. You could put that comment on every blog, news article or bubble gum card in the world and it would mean the same thing everything… nothing!
It’s been ages since I allowed comments! But it seems like most of my long time blogging friends are still being bombarded with spam and it’s a simply a waste of energy.
I am thankful for the great comments and engagement I got over the years, but it reached a breaking point for me. Now, I’m getting most of my conversations on Twitter, in Facebook groups and during my live streams on YouTube and Twitch. Don’t get me wrong, I still run up against a spammer every now and then but it is minimal in comparison.
Hope all is well Mitch! Chat soon.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you here Ileane; welcome back! Truthfully, most of the articles on your blog are in essence guest posts; if I did that I wouldn’t accept comments either. Yet, if I didn’t I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing yours now. 🙂
I shut down my Facebook page, though I’m still running my diabetes and local bloggers group. I talk to people here and there on Twitter but I don’t get a lot of engagement; same goes for YouTube and we both know I ain’t going on Twitch, Tik Tok or stories on either FB or Instagram. lol
As for spam, I’m running a new plugin that seems to be doing an interesting job at catching it, especially since I finally had to shut down CommentLuv premium; sniff! If it continues working this well, I might have to write about it. In any case, thanks for stopping by & for sharing this article on Twitter! 😉
Great information. But plz guide me as I am not a spammer but still most of the websites are nkt accepting my comments.
I gave you 9 reasons in the article. To whit, gmail address, different first name from what you’re using in your email, one actual line as a comment and you said nothing whatsoever about the article. I know you didn’t read it, otherwise you’d have figured it all out on your own, which means you probably don’t actually read any other articles either.
Sir I am replying you again by giving full information of name and email. So plz tell me that is this correct?
Good first step. However, the article gives 9 tips and I mentioned 5 previously. You addressed one; want to try at least one of the others?
Mitch,
So I have violated one of these rules for sure in this comment. I do have questions for you though. I have read your policy as well as the linked blog post in your policy. I am really new to building websites and the need for building links. Unfortunatly I have been guilty of being a spammer on blogs. This post caught my eye as one I should really read though. I am glad that I did. I am not out to be a spammer, and I really do read most of the blogs that I post on and try to leave comments that are meaningful. So my
first question: I use Gmail as my email provider just because it is simple and I don’t get a lot of emails with my business. Should I set up something different because of it felling and looking spammy, or is it okay so long as comments are really honestly value added?
Second Question: I have a local business that I am building links for (my own business, Is it always considered spamming when trying to build links for a site that is not a blog?
Lastly, Thank you for this post. I learned more from this than i have from a lot of other blogs that discuss link building and how to get your business listed higher on google. I wan tot do this the right way that is respectful to other website owners and bloggers. This has been very helpful in learning how to do things correctly. I look forward to your answers.
Greetings Josh; thanks for stopping by.
Answering your first question, the problem is twofold. One, you have a business, but you’re promoting Google and gmail instead of your business. Overwhelmingly, spammers use gmail, and it’s better for your business if your domain name is there instead of gmail. Take your comment here; it went to my pending folder because it was via gmail; luckily I pulled it out. It’s rare that I have the opportunity to pull them out because the spam is overwhelming.
Answering your second question, what you’re doing isn’t spamming because you’re doing it internally. With that said, your internal linking won’t help you much because the links don’t have a lot of content depth to them. You’re also not taking advantage of titling your pages; your internal link is the same as your front page link, which means search engines will think it’s the same thing even with your different links. It’s better to lead with what you’re doing rather than your business name.
I’m glad to help you out and I’m glad you stopped by. I’ve seen people locally do what you do; it’s fascinating to watch. 🙂