15 Types of Spam Comments

Everyday I always check any updates about my website despite my busy schedule. Aside from checking the present Alexa ranking and backlinks, I also check for any comments that I need to respond in the form of. I usually see either legitimate comments or spam. Fortunately, I only receive very few spam comments everyday with the help of my anti-plugin called GASP.

But before GASP, I am receiving around 20 to 30 comments every day and deleting them on a daily basis gives me stress and wastes my time. Even though we receive very few spam, it would be important to recognize whether a comment/trackback is spam or not and delete them. Otherwise, this would affect your PR ranking. Spam can be classified in several categories.

1. The Obvious Ads: These are comments and trackbacks that are usually in a form of advertising a website or a product usually not related to your content. One good example is a comment promoting their best SEO software.

Comments with affiliate links and any posts that offer unsolicited recommendations about services or products also belong in this category.

2. The Seemingly Informative Comment: provides information to the writer but which is not related to your blog but its main purpose is to get backlinks or promote their site. Even though the comment is related to your article, it does not mean it is not a spam. One very good example is a comment to my Adbrite post, and I discussed that Adbrite is closed and presented alternatives to my posts. The spammer just simply repeated what I posted and presented his links to Adbrite alternatives. In other words, the spammer informing me about information that I already know.

If a comment is simply repeating what you posted, then it is spam.

Other posts that fall under this category is a comment discussing a broad topic related to your article. For instance, if you are discussing Google Panda Update then the commentator will discuss something about general information regarding SEO such as its definition etc. then it can be considered as spam since instead of commenting Panda updates, the spammer simply discusses the definition of SEO.

3. The Sweet Talk: These are comments that use general forms of flattery towards bloggers such as “Nice Blog Article, I like your post” (with a link to a site or product) or “A Very Useful Post, I Will Surely Bookmark This One” “Wow this is exactly what I am Looking For”. Very short compliments such as “Nice article” also fall under this category.

I sometimes use the latter comment in commenting on other blogs, but I also explain why I said so. This makes the blogger realize that I am not a spammer. One good example when I have found an article on how to increase twitter followers without using tweet adder. I commented that “this is exactly what I am Looking For because I want to increase twitter followers without paying for monthly fees“. Comments should be specific and related to the post to avoid being recognized as spam.

4. The Fault Finding One: of course, not all spam involves flattery. Some of them criticize your blog or writing. But how did I recognize it as spam? Because spammer posted that I should avoid too many pop-ups and pop-unders. What is he talking about? I do not have any pop-unders or pop ups cause I disabled them a long time ago. I do not want my readers to be annoyed with those ads.

5. For Keywords’ Purposes: if you received a comment from someone named “Make Money Online” or “Free SEO Tips,” those are considered spam.These are also called as Anchor Texts.

6. Plagiarized types: these are comments that are copied and paste from other articles and with minimal paraphrasing made, for instance for the purposes of promoting specific services they simply copied and paste from the company website. Comments that are copied and pasted from forums and comments of other blog sites are also included in this category. This is hard to figure out especially if the post is relevant to the article and if you do not have an anti-plagiarism checker. Furthermore, no one even bothers to use anti-plagiarism software to check whether comments are plagiarized.

7. The Short Gratitude: comments that simply say, “Thanks for the post, it is a great article” or “thank you” are spammy.

8. Personal Beliefs: it mainly consists of promoting personal belief/principles which are not relevant to your posts. Examples are “(religion) is a way of life,” “save animals and live healthily, become vegan.” They are not spammy if they are relevant to your posts, for instance, if your post discusses something about religion which means the former comment is not spam and if you are discussing something vegetarianism or becoming vegan, then the latter comment cannot be considered as spammy.

9. Random letters: mainly consists of words with randomized letters that are hard to understand such as “jkfaljnf lasmdflkj” –what the heck does it mean?

10. What are Your Requests?: these are comments that first provides praises and compliments about your posts, but they will also ask you whether to exchange links with them as well as other related requests such as “please visit my site."

11. Hard-to-grasp Comments: these are simply hard to grasp or do not make sense at all, although they can be somewhat relevant or completely irrelevant to your posts. One good example is this one “I am not sure whether this post is written by my friend as no one else know such details about my trouble.” –What Trouble?

12. Word-of-Mouth: it says that your blog is recommended by his or her brother, sister, cousin or friend and afterward it would tell some complimentary phrases and other generic spam. But it does not mention anything about his/her specific views about the article.

13. Questions, Questions Questions: mainly consist of questions that are often somewhat relevant to your site or most of the times, irrelevant. Since readers naturally ask questions about the article but how do we distinguish from genuine questions from real commentators from spammy questions from bot or spammers? In addition to being irrelevant, these questions are often generic and do not provide more info why they asked such question for instance, “do you make money from this blog?” even if your post is simply about SEO.

Comments from real commentators (also called as commenters) often ask questions about other information relevant to your article. For instance, if your posts are about how podcasting can increase traffic, someone might ask about whether podcasting articles (or making the audio version of your articles and distribute it as the podcast) can also increase traffic. They should also ask about recommended audio equipment for creating a podcast.

Another way to recognize a comment as spam is the spammer did not mention your name. When I ask something about the articles, I always mention author’s names.

14. The Intellectually Long Comments: these are irrelevant and very long comments but offer some intelligent information and recommendations such technicalities that could be useful (or not useful at all) in the future (e.g. services that offers SEO audit etc.). Perhaps, spammers think that providing intellectual posts would not make them look as “spammers.” They are so wrong.

15. The StumbleUpon (or FB/Twitter) Members: they claim that they use StumbleUpon, (FB or Twitter) which is why they have stumbled upon (or found) your site. It is okay to say that but for them not to be considered as spammy, they should have commented something about the article and not simply short compliments.