We’re seeing more blog spam because there are more automated programs for just that purpose coming on to the market.

One way to make a blog less attractive to these programs is to implement the “nofollow” tag if your blog software gives you that option.

The purpose of these comments is the creation of back links in order to improve one’s ranking in Google search results. By using the nofollow tag, you make such links useless for SEO purposes and many of the blog spam programs look for the nofollow tag and skip over those blogs.

Attack and defend is simply part of internet culture.

I have to say if that last one that Dave blitzed was an automated one it was a damned clever program. It posted a couple of paragraphs from a review of a documentary on dead languages to a thread on that subject, slipping its link in at the end. It also managed to get past the captcha registration system that Dave recently introduced.

I notice another spam posting has just appeared, this time as an uncamouflaged thread. Have the spam autobots beaten the captcha system or are these just rogue manual postings?

In either case, happydog, that’s a neat trick, removing the incentive for the spammers to target you.

It seems that this Singeroi in the ‘Expressions from card games’ thread managed to stay below Dave’s radar so far. Shows how sneaky this method is.

Dutchtoo - 25 May 2009 10:21 AM

It seems that this Singeroi in the ‘Expressions from card games’ thread managed to stay below Dave’s radar so far. Shows how sneaky this method is.

That was sneaky, I completely missed that one. Googling reveals how busy he’s been single-posting forums.

I’m not aware of any yet that can defeat captcha, but the finding of “appropriate” text and the finding of the blogs themselves and all the rest of it is automated. If all I have to do is read and enter captcha, I can knock out tons of posts in a day.

Automated Comment Posting

How is Singeroi spam? Given the “thanks for all the info” is commonly found in spam, but there’s no link

Even sneakier than I thought…

Well spotted, Dutchtoo!. It is indeed an invisible clickable link just underneath the sentence.

Damn, that’s sly!

And another one…

Did I say sneaky? Devious is the word.
Looks like Dave missed this one because he did remove two other ones.
Say Dave, where did the rest of the ‘Expressions from card games’ thread go?

I see a pattern developping. A newbie picks out an older thread and makes no real contribution, just a vague remark and leaves a link.

"Expressions from card games” went back to its proper place in the sorting order without the spurious spam-posting.  Currently it’s at the top of page 5 in the General Discussion index.

Thanks Doc. Was afraid Dave got so upset he deleted the whole thing.

Another one from the Invisible Man, Dave, this time in the Shitload thread. Member name is binclintonusa.