How to spam my Wordpress blog PROPERLY
Here’s a message to you wordpress spammers - if you’re going to spam my blog, at least show a little ingenuity.
If you want to drop your shit here, try to be a little more creative than just searching technorati for tags, then auto-posting some mindless drivel such as
PHP is a good programming language. Most people like dynamic websites which they can interact with, which PHP allows you to do.
I mean really, people, show some bloody creativity.
How about something like
I found your post while searching for simple tutorials on how to create a do while statement in PHP. Although your post didn’t answer my question, you’ve got some interesting posts here, I’ve subscribed to your feed.
See, now you’ve actually gone a little further than some generic bullshit that’s going to hit the trash as soon as I open up my comment moderation control panel
You’ve addressed a specific issue, and you’ve complimented me. I like you (or more to the point, your bot) already.
Another thing you might do is to ask me a question - you’d be surprised how well bloggers such as myself respond to being asked questions. We’ll probably even answer them, although you’ll never see the answer.
You could phrase your question like this:
I quite like your theme, did you do the header graphic yourself, or did you pay someone to do it? If it was professionally done, do you mind me asking who did it and how much it cost?
See, you’re interacting with me without even knowing it!
So come on spammers, get off your lazy asses and put some thought into your automated comments, I think you’ll find that your “stick rate” will be much, much higher.
DaPimp is a Web Developer / SEO by day, and a dabbler in the darker arts by night.
Always learning, and happy to pass on the scoop, hang around, we all might learn something!
November 29th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I quite like your theme, did you do the header graphic yourself, or did you pay someone to do it? If it was professionally done, do you mind me asking who did it and how much (did) it cost?
Just kidding, I agree though. If only the comments even made sense I might leave them just for the sake of having a comment haha. Too bad.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Thanks Scot,
Hey I really found your post on referrer spamming interesting.
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve been meaning to knock up a PHP/cURL script to automate this. I’ll sit down and write it tonight and post it here when it’s done.
Cheers
Stu
November 30th, 2008 at 2:07 am
I’ll keep an eye when it’s posted, I’m interested in trying it out.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:26 am
I got a header type spam comment like that once, while still on the “hello world!” Kubrick theme before working on it. LOL
November 30th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Love the rant Stu! I get tons of wordpress spam and wade through it daily!
December 1st, 2008 at 6:04 am
Hi Scot,
I had a look at this last night, and came to the conclusion that it’s just not worth the effort.
Of the two most popular referrers scripts, one uses redirects, and the other javascript to put the links on the pages, so there’s no real value to be had from the links anyway
Cheers
Stu
December 1st, 2008 at 6:43 am
I’ve recently found that about 50% of comments and all human spam comments are pointing to sites that all seem to have purchased the same get rich quick video and page. Just to add to your comment about leaving a decent comment, also link to a unique site and not one that every other spammer has!
December 1st, 2008 at 6:49 am
Hi Sarah,
I saw you twittered about the same landing page issue. I haven’t noticed that, but I don’t get too much comment spam anyway.
I guess someone has set up an affiliate program which has appealed to all the script kiddies, and they got a free landing page when they signed up.
(Remember the slamming all our blogs got when Affiliate Project X (or whatever it was called) was launched?
December 1st, 2008 at 9:27 pm
I have to say this post provided me with a good laugh this morning. I had a bad case of the spammers on one of my old blogs because I followed comment links and had some PR. Askimi helped, but I still had to go through and delete a bunch of useless comments each day.
Any ideas on how to combat this? I used the nodofollow plugin to only allow people that have posted 2 or 3 comments to get the “nofollow” removed and that seemed to help. Have you found other good methods for dealing with the spam a$$holes?
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 am
Yesterday i said i have a hell lot of spammers.Today i got about a 100 spam messages.Can u help me get rid of this stuff.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
@ Dennis - I just rescued your comment from the spam bin, sorry I didn’t respond sooner.
Interesting what you say about getting spam on the “Hello World” post - this is a massive footprint.
Try searching “hello world” “powered by wordpress” in google, I see around 600,000 results.
Imagine the number of wordpress installs that have been done, then forgotten about. (Although Wordpress by default has nofollow on comments, so there’s not a whole lot of value in spamming those pages)
December 5th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Thanks for providing the information about Php.Generally all prefer dynamic websites that allows visitors to interact with the site,which is possible with Php.
December 6th, 2008 at 12:12 am
I am really fed up with spamming activities , its takes away the enjoyment of working . Do you have any suggestion to get rid of spam or at least minimize their act ivies?