One of the great things about blogging is that it allows you to share your knowledge and easily develop a network of contacts, often relating to the subject you most blog about. Tools such as comments, which let people know what you think about what they've written; trackback, that let other bloggers know that you have written about them and blogroll, which is simply a list of links to your favourite blogs, make blogging a great social and business tool. Jennifer Rice on her blog, What's Your Brand Mantra?, says that people on her Blogroll had one of 3 charactersitics:
[Number 1] "They participated on my blog through comments and trackbacks. They
already established themselves as part of my community, and I thought
they had some smart things to say. I've met many of them in person, and
have probably had email exchanges with almost all of them. (or even
hired them, as was the case with Johnnie)."
Unfortunately, blogs have also become havens for those looking to improve their search engine rankings the unethical way. Following the principle that Google likes links from websites with high PR's (5 or 6 and above), they are now leaving comments across the blogosphere. Initially, I had all manner of comment spam from porn, poker and peddlars of Japanese cars. It was obvious to spot them as their comments usually consisted of strings of keywords or incoherent nonsense.
Recently though, I have been receiving comments which actually comment on the article in question. Here are two examples:
Marketing Tom Article: How People Read Google Search Results
Author - Online Degree
Comment: Finally some real scientific results! While many of us who have multiple websites at various positions on Google's pages 1 and 2 felt some of this to be true, seeing it confirms the theory. Great Stuff!Marketing Tom Article: Developing Links - part 2
Author - Dolphin Gifts
Comment: We should also mention that there are tools that facilitate this process of determining who is linking to your competitors. I won't mention any by name but they can be very useful.
Aside from the URL, the clear indicator that it was spam came from the fact that both the above had the same IP address and both were posted within a few minutes of each other. The worrying part of this is that these people are now taking their time to read articles and leave messages which seem to be legitimate. Which begs the question of whether their comments should be deleted. I took the view that they should.
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