Flatter Spam … A New Type of Comment Spam
Comment spam is the worst.
Not only is it annoying for bloggers, but it also falls short of providing spammers (or those that hire spammers #ShameShame) the sort of benefit it used to provide in the past. With the exception of an occasional curiosity / accidental / stupidity-click, spammers can pretty much count on never receiving traffic from their comment spam. In addition, the no-follow tag, which is usually included in the foundation of the comments code, put a stopper to any chance of any SEO benefit there might have been for comment spammers.
Comment spam used to consist of blatant promotional copy and links … sometimes just the latter, which would often derail a good conversation and distract people with the promotional content if the comment somehow slipped by in the moderation process. Amazing spam filters have been introduced to help bloggers fight the war on spam, however, the enemy is … I don’t want to say “getting smarter” because that’s obviously not the case … the enemy is trying something new.
So why are spammers still spamming blogs?
Because spammers suck at marketing … they really do. Someone should start a club about it or something.
A lot of spam is automated and thus still kicking from years ago, however, there is a new type of comment spam on the rise … hence this post.
It’s Called Flatter Spam
Flatter spam is an attempt to get by spam filters by submitting vague content, clean of any promotion, that applies to just about every blog. The spam often includes complimentary text designed to lure the blogger into approving the content, but again, the content is vague and shallow.
If you’re not sure whether or not you’re dealing with flatter spam when moderating comments, check out the url of the commenter for a better idea.
Samples of Flatter Spam In Action
The following are a few samples of real occurrences of flatter spam I’ve found here at FUEL. These comments are likely to appear on your blog as well if the spammer has your way, so be sure to keep an eye out for any suspicious, over-complimentary spam. On the other hand, some comments are borderline insulting.
What you’re about to see may disturb you due to the spam-sauceness.
Thank you for your website post. Jones and I happen to be saving for a new guide on this theme and your short article has made people like us to save our own money. Your notions really clarified all our concerns. In fact, greater than what we had acknowledged in advance of the time we found your excellent blog. We no longer have doubts and also a troubled mind because you really attended to all of our needs here. Thanks.
Who’s Jones? Guide for what? I’m sorry, but I beg to differ that you no longer have a troubled mind. And I don’t recall attending to your needs — unless that’s some sort of new Facebook feature (will you be attending this spammers needs?)
You really make it seem so easy along with your presentation but I to find this topic to be actually one thing which I feel I’d never understand. It kind of feels too complex and extremely broad for me. I am looking forward to your subsequent publish, I’ll attempt to get the grasp of it!
If you were to spend five minutes actually reading the post, you could probably understand the content here … depending on your IQ of course. It’s not that the content here is complex — it’s not — you just have to read it. What I don’t understand … is how anything can seem broad to you. Good luck.
Hey clever points.. now why did not i consider those? Off topic slightly, is that this web page sample merely from an bizarre installation or else do you use a custom-made template. I use a webpage i’m seeking to improve and effectively the visuals is likely one of many key issues to complete on my list.
The design here is something you will never be able to create … because it takes something only a human can develop — talent. Is the last thing on your list “take over the world?” Are you related to SkyNet or Hal9000 by any chance?
I can see you have high standards when it comes to your writing. It shows in your excellent writing. Thank you for your high standards.
Those standards are in place for the comments section as well. So. Your welcome. And I’m sorry.
Exceptional post but I was wanting to know if you could write a litte more on this subject? I’d be very thankful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Kudos!
What a nice comment … a little too nice maybe. Yep. The URL revealed the spammer was probably popping too many of the happy pills he or she was promoting.
To follow up on the update of this issue on your web site and would want to let you know just how much I prized the time you took to put together this valuable post. Within the post, you spoke regarding how to truly handle this matter with all convenience. It would be my personal pleasure to accumulate some more ideas from your website and come as much as offer other folks what I have benefited from you. I appreciate your usual wonderful effort.
I half-wish these spammers knew that using big words actually makes you sound dumb to the reader (according to a recent Princeton study), but it just makes it so easy to spot.
Have you ever thought about adding a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is fundamental and all. But just imagine if you added some great images or video clips to give your posts more, “pop”! Your content is excellent but with images and videos, this site could undeniably be one of the very best in its field. Terrific blog!
First of all, we do. Second, do you really think pictures or videos make up the fabric of a popular blog? Does Seth Godin post videos or pictures?
Check the URL
If you can’t tell whether or not you have a legitimate comment from someone interested in complimenting the blog or your post, be sure to check the URL — it’s one of the easiest ways to see what the spammer is promoting (rather poorly, I might add … man, someone needs to start a club about this).
If you still can’t tell, it comes down to your discretion. Make a decision as the editor of your blog. If you’re not sure, but don’t want to risk deleting the comment, delete the URL they’ve included and just keep the comment.
Be Sure to Mark This As Spam When You See It
It’s crucial to mark spam as spam … merely deleting doesn’t help us in the long run because our filters don’t learn that way. You have to teach your filter what to expect so that they can collect data regarding the spam. This helps make the filtering process better and the chances of spam getting past the moderation process more difficult.
Seen Any Flatter Spam Getting Through?
Have you been experiencing this type of spam on your own blog? feel free to re-post their comment here — strange I know — but posting a spammy comment in the comments section of this post will give us an idea of what’s out there and what to expect.
Oh yeah, and I started that club for people that think spammers suck at marketing … join up. No spammers allowed!
Christopher Rice is a publisher, entrepreneur, and abstract artist in Santa Monica. He’s a founder of Wearabl, editor of CreativeBlogger, and creator of Gumball. Friend him up at Twitter | Google+ | Facebook | Pinterest |
Hi, Have just clicked on your twitter post and read your blog. I do not seem to have problems with spam on blog so far but I am getting it on Twitter. Very annoying, your mentions will be up to 30 or more in a matter of hours, many do not even tweet in English. I have even had folk saying exclusive shout out you must follow this person i.e. me. Any tips would be greatly valued as you do not want to deter genuine folk but it is very time comsuming. Great post on highlighting this post.
I’ve heard of mention spam, but unless you’re following those mentioning us or watching our mention stream, you shouldn’t be seeing all of that. Are you using TweetDeck or something?
Haha I love it, Flatter Spam. Makes complete sense, and just as hard as I laughed when I got to the examples of Flatter Spam that you posted I laugh when I see these spam messages come through my blog.
It truly does seem like a lot of effort for nothing in return, they must get through somewhere or you would think they would give up.
Thanks John!
I don’t know … I really think they just suck at marketing.
My Flatter Spam of the day is “WOW these are amazing and must have taken you ages to put together, well done and thanks” to a post I’d written that was a train-of-thought blog. “These” — “these” what?!?
Hahaa, nice!
I’ve been getting that for about a year. I have enough pages that rank well on Google that one of my blogs is a spam magnet. I finally managed to stem the flow of Cyrillic spam, though.
I love reading flatter spam, even though I never let my readers see it. I find it amusing to look at spammers’ so-called “marketing” techniques, and make fun of their terrible English.
One of the more amusing ones I’ve found in my spam queue is this one (link removed, of course):
“Hello everyone my name is Alegro and i’m glad i’m here. I’m interested in the subject of this forum for years so if you have any questions just PM me.”
First of all, my site’s a blog, not a forum (it does have a forum on a separate domain, but I’ve never had a spammer make it past registration on there – thank you, IPS Spam Service!).
Second, my site is about the Wii U, the successor to the Wii that was just announced on Tuesday (though it has been in operation since last September). The subject isn’t even one year old yet!
Though it’s not a spam comment, I also feel like bringing up a spam email I received once, which was advertising a certain brand of pills to me. Whoever wrote it typed “100%” with a dollar sign, which made the message hilariously nonsensical in context. :P
Excellent … hey there should be a way to chat live via PM
Timely post- I’ve just spent the last half hour getting rid of more flatter spam, and I still can’t imagine what spammers hope to gain. Don’t they know their comment will be checked first by the moderator? And what’s with the terrible English?
I actually had one spammer suggest in his comment that if I had a captcha plug-in I would stop getting so much spam….
Hahaa, that’s awesome!
lol I have a blog (if you click my name) that’s not even launched yet, and I get over 70 spammers a day (somehow it’s due to organic traffic — wtf?). It’s weird, because I’ve only made “one” post and it’s only a “launch” post, which clearly suggests (to my apparent readers) to ask a question. These spammers are complementing my post and telling me thank you. Why? I don’t know; but my point is, it’s quite a relief that I’m not the only one seeing this now lol. I actually feel better about this spam stuff now =].
Do you know a plugin to stop these spammers by the way?
Akismet should help you there if you’re on WordPress.
Great post I really appreciated how I appreciate your writing about this topic! Thanks for writing it.
- Ethan ( Not a Robot :P ) Ugh I get lots of flatter spam on my wordpress sites.
hahaa, thanks Ethan! :)
I get a lot of flatter spam – love the term – and it’s a terrible waste of time wading through it. I mark it as Spam but even so, the same spammers return over and over, so I guess my Spam filter is not working. I’m glad you wrote about this topic as I thought I was in the minority or was doing something wrong or it was my blog setup. One giveaway is the phrasing, as you pointed out in your post. Another is when there’s no reference to anything in my post.
Strange — I wonder if your filter’s working properly.
Nice post; I get a lot of this flatter spam but Akismet typically does an excellent job keeping it out.
I think another interesting point to note is that most of these spammers are using automated spinning software to replace some words with synonyms, so their comment doesn’t show up as duplicate content. That leads to the odd phrasing (ex. “subsequent publish” probably used to be “next post”). I noticed this when I started to get the same spam comments all the time with slightly different wording.
Here’s a good one from today:
“I’ve been exploring for a bit for any high-quality articles or weblog posts in this kind of space . Exploring in Yahoo I ultimately stumbled upon this site. Studying this information So i am happy to show that I have a very good uncanny feeling I came upon just what I needed. I so much unquestionably will make sure to do not fail to remember this site and give it a glance on a constant.”
Right on, Andrew. You happen to use any other plugins for comment moderation?
I agree check the URL and the commenter name, that’s the first thing I do when the comment is questionable. Sometimes these guys do themselves a disservice by posting long comment, a few words would have a better result. It’s tempting to use FB comments which I think gets around a lot of this but I have my reasons for not liking that option.
I haven’t looked into it extensively, but when you implement a third party to host your comments, don’t you lose that content? Doesn’t it become the third party’s content?
I do receive ‘flatter spam’ a lot, and it’s not all flattering! :D One time I thought this comment
“I truly like the site skin, can you tell me what template is this? Is it custom design or is it paid one? Anyway I can’t afford to get paid template nor have the skill to custom template myself. I’m sorry for the noobie question, thanks”
was real because the commenter did not use keywords as name like what most spammers do, and also it’s not promoting something and there’s no link. I googled the entire comment first and saw a lot of similar copy-paste comment in the result. Marked as spam.
Strange there wasn’t a link … sounds like either an error on the spammers part, or, and probably more likely, a systematic test to get the first comment approved so the following 3,049 comments bypass the moderation process and post automatically, links intact.
Grrrr
On my blog I get alot of “flatter” comment spam. Sometimes, like today, I get posts to every page on my blog and find the emails numbered:
Grunst67@
Deutscher68@
Firestine69@
Prior70@
All one after the other on each page. The older the post the higher the number in the emails.
I’ve seen this too — automation I imagine. It be great to hear from an actual spammer … anyone spam by day, and blog by night?
I seriously had the desire to re-post those spammy comments as some funny meme somewhere or start the club you were talking about. They are so ridiculous. Nevertheless (and I hope my big words don’t make me sound dumb because I actually talk this way), I do appreciate that you wrote this blog post. I use Blogger and haven’t had much by the way of spam ever but this was a nice interlude into humor for me today. Thanks for the chuckle. :)
PS: It’s my first time visiting Fuel after discovering it on Evernote and I’m hooked.
Thanks, Jenny!
You should join the club … there’s only 3 members so far, but I have a feeling it’ll keep growing! It’s called Spammer Suck at Marketing and it’s on Facebook.
Thanks for reading, and glad you’re diggin FUEL. :D
OMG I hate spam, I have had loads of these kind of comments left on my own site but these really reduced when I started using facebook comments :-)
Hahaha, I didn’t realise this had an actual name!
I see this all the time, it’s so annoying when they leave a comment, and it’s so obviously generic.
I am at a loss here. I have just published my first four websites and am starting on the road to trying to create traffic. Now I learn that a suggested “back link” building model is actually “Spam?”
Having very little money for “marketing,” I am unsure how to develop traffic to my websites. This website building business is a very nasty little business. There are so very many natsy people, do some very nasty things to othere people. With so many nasty sharks swimming these waters, indications are that there is money to be made.
When you say that the “flattery spammers’ suck at marketing. What suggestions are there for real marketing. Real marketing that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
What legitimate suggestions for marketing a website do you have short of your nasty, nasty , nasty….
Sincerely,
Robert McLean
Hey Chistopher,
How does one create legitimate backlinks?
I don’t mind doing the work.
Robert McLean
I’ve just begun seeing spam creeping through my filters which copies real blog post comments from similar topic sites (prob through comment RSS) and then drops the comment on one of our sites (with just the user’s URL). I’ve even located a normal blog which the spammers have been pulling their comments from. The first comment puzzled me, because it looked completely “human,” but out of context. I’m hoping this doesn’t become a widely used trend …