Comment Spam is, well, spammy comment some people try to use to increase their links, which increases their sales and/or Page Rank.

Let’s say you run a blog. You have a ‘comments’ box at the bottom of your post (as I do at the bottom of this post). Someone makes a comment like: “Fantastic post. Buy cheap Viagra” The spammer’s purpose is not to praise your post, it is to add a link to their sales page in hopes of getting some of your readers to click on the Viagra link and step into their parlor.

The Official Google Webmaster posted just on the theme of Comment Spam. They’re against it. They say it cheapens the whole internet process because one sneaky person is taking advantage of the honest work of another person. You, the innocent person, worked to make your website attractive and all this creep did was use your website as their free sales page. The Webmaster(s) assure us that Google is onto this trick and has mechanisms in house to penalize comment spammers.

They give some advice to mere mortal webmasters how to avoid and delete comment spam. There are things to do both before and after this nuisance happens to you. The most obvious safeguard is moderating all comments before they grow to the public. Or install a nofollow feature on your comments box. There is even a moderately elaborate way to cleanse your existing comments of spam, assuming you have the time and inclination to do this.

Judging by a first reading of the Google Webmasters’ post, it looks as if Google is on top of this issue. But somewhere in the middle of their post’s comments some people bring up an issue which the original post touched on lightly. This is the issue of third party sites, a form of commercial sabotage. Here is an example, using familiar names soley for illustrative purposes — this never really happened in the past and is extremely unlikely to happen in future:

Let’s say Coke puts some spammy comments on your website and many other websites that say “Nice post. Pepsi is better than Viagra. Go to my page and find out more”. The purpose of Coke making this post is to discredit Pepsi. Coke hopes that Google gets word of all the spammy Pepsi posts and penalizes Pepsi’s websites for wholesale comment spam. Clean trick, no? Anyone may possibly do this nasty trick on their competition and bring the competition down.

Challenged with this question, the Google Webmasters rise to the challenge and assure readers that “it’s useless to reckon of harming your competitor’s ranking by spamming comments with their name, since it usually won’t affect their ranking if their sites are complying with Google Webmaster Guidelines.”

So they say.

But I don’t believe them.

First, I don’t believe them because there are so many ways a website can get on the incorrect side of Google Webmaster Guidelines. It’s doubtless right that all but the well-managed websites of huge companies and agencies break some rules. Very few websites are squeeky clean. So if Google comes around and checks my website for violations while it is trying to find out if I am a comment spamster, indeed they will find a upset incorrect.

Second, Google is playing defense while the spamsters are playing offense. Offense can win if it keeps one step ahead.

Compare Google’s role to Microsoft’s role in keeping out viruses and sneaky intruders. If you are a Windows user, which about 90% of computer users are, you will notice that each once in a while Microsoft adds a fix to their system. You get these fixes when you log off. Fortunately, Microsoft does its guilty job diligently and relatively few computers get infected because of holes in Windows.

In the same way, if spam commenters are dedicated to breaking Google’s defenses, indeed the rewards for them make it worthwhile. Google would have to use a lot of programmers to stay on top of this issue. That’s a lot of money taken away from the main mission of Google and the moneymaking parts of the Google empire.  Assigning serious forces to conquer this problem does not make economic sense — until and unless it becomes a huge problem the public is aware of.

Third — and this is an issue I hope to expand on in future posts because I reckon it’s essential to understanding the internet — there is so much sludge and dross and low value stuff out there on the internet, and it’s growing at an algebraic pace, that I do not believe the excellent guys can keep up with the terrible guys.  Without doubt there are wonderful things to see and gather from on the internet. But there is also a soft underbelly to the internet. If my inbox is any indicator — more on this in future posts — there are many people who exploit the internet by finding each hole in the fort’s defense. They not only do it themselves but they lecture others to post mountains of garbage. The number of people who do this is expanding and the varieties of ways they have to keep internet veins and arteries full of junk is expanding all the time. Let’s place it this way: no matter what ways the internet ‘police’ and ‘excellent guys’ have used to keep the internet clean, the ‘terrible guys’ and their brethren have found ways around the fortress parapet.

Given the sketchy information the Google Webmasters have divulged, I am not convinced they are on top of the comment spam problem.

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Tags: comment spam, commercial sabotage, nofollow, spammy comment, third party sites