What can you say about buying and selling blog comments? Here’s a new online service to ponder upon.
BuyBlogComments.com is a startup that offers unautomated, human-made blog comments aimed for, as said on their site, “blackhatters who are looking for good quality backlinks”. (IMO, something’s seriously wrong about having the word “blackhat” and “good quality backlinks” in one sentence.)
This one-of-a-kind startup offers three packages, starting at $20 which gives you 100 blog comments, $100 for 500 comments, and $200 for 1000 comments. The company claims to have a group of trained professionals who do the commenting themselves, making sure that the comments are related to the blog post they comment on so that they “look completely like legit comments.”
While BuyBlogComments claims they’re NOT spam, Darren Rowse, the Problogger himself, thinks that the service is “sick” and “disturbing”. I think so, too. I’m very much aware that there are underground companies doing spam, but to go out in the open, offer your spamming service, and make it “look legit” is something else. I think it’s just odd to be selling a service aimed at blackhatters so that their sites would “rank better in the SERPs” when we all know well that black hat is the bane of every search engine’s existence.
Originally posted on July 10, 2007 @ 10:32 pm
What I don’t understand is when did ‘bloggers’ become such spoon feading servants of Search Engines. Spam is spam. Why have all these higher ethical callings about it?
I don’t like their service. I won’t use it. But I think its wrong to right off a business because Google and other search engines have declared one business model that I dont like evil.
Google should not be moral police. Nor should bloggers.
I’m not sure it’s a case of being the moral police, David. It’s more about bloggers wanting to protect their sites from this type of comment spam.
Askimet and SK are both excellent at stopping the auto generated spam. The problem here is that this style of comment spam is more likely to slip through the net so will take up time individually moderating.
It’s disappointing to see Wendy Piersall turning off the DoFollow plugin as a result of this “service” and Chris Garrett is considering doing the same.
this is a horrible concept – creating such a service will definitely kill the writers brand online
I’ve never understood the point of comment spam, at least as far as SEO goes. Google basically ignores links on pages that are below about PR4, so a comment on a typical blog post is worthless in terms of draining PR juice from a site.
In contrast, multiple comments on a site like Sciencebase that runs the Top Commentators Plugin will allow a dedicated commenter to get their link right on to the blog homepage (which is a PR7). Now, if you were unethical that plugin would be the way to go to game sites like that.
Of course, Akismet and a wary and sharp-eyed moderator will see right through the cr*p-flood, anyway.
Personally I think way and I mean way to much is being made over this. Some bloggers in the dofollow community are actually talking about going back to adding nofollow over this. That is just plain stupid. The way I feel is simple is a person comments in my blogs, the comment is relevant and on topic and the link does not go to some “bad thing†and otherwise complies with my comment policy I am fine with it. Who actually wrote the comment and what the “intent†was means absolutely nothing to me only that it meets the rules of my personal comment policy.
Everyone needs to realize that this is nothing but the latest topic du jour and just have a beer and rock on with life. Basically those saying nofollow is the solution to this are saying,
Comment spam gave birth to rel=”nofollow”, people realized it did nothing to solve the problem and screwed over posters. So the do-follow movement occurred which has led to people comment spamming, which means we might as well use nofollow again, which did not work in the first place.
Sound like a circle of insanity? There’s a reason, it is!
The simple facts are if the comments are relevant to your blog, who cares if the poster or the guy who hired him gets some link juice? Anyone who does can’t see the forest for the trees! The reality is comments make your blog better; they improve your search traffic as well.
I believe all they hype around this is being swelled underground by Google because they hate the dofollow movement! They are trying to kill any paid links or any links a user can easily create or hire someone else to create. Why? Because they can’t fix their own algorithms, that’s why.
This has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with money, don’t be fooled and stop worrying. The Internet has done fine for a long time now and it keeps getting better, like us or not SEOs are a big part of why
I have visited your site 610-times
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! ddailervcc
I totally agree with Jack Spirko…I dont see why I blog owners shouldl be upset if someone leaves a relevant comment on their blog for the sole intention of building some link juice. Of course stupid spam comments that advertises an online pharmacy and or porn is an unacceptable comment to leave on anyones blog but if a comment is not outright foolishness…Why should bloggers care? I thought that the more comments a blogger gets the better. I mean..For Christs sake, that is why the function is made readily available in the first place. Now what it…I was being paid for leaving this comment..Did I just commit a crime? You bloggers need to chill. Its seems like the only people that allowed to make money online is Google, Yahoo and Ebay because I notice that anytime anyone else tries to make money the online community comes down on them like a ton of bricks.
Good and really useful post for all readers and specially for me, thanks!
;)
pre teen pageant gown
Just discovered a complete list of all marked down products at Amazon, sorted by category
and % off, ranging from 50% off to 90% off (thanks Sonja for the effort).
Actually I never thought Amazon would have articles with 90% off, but only in the category
Electronics there are more than 3000 of them – look for yourself, the list is on
Bargain Hunter (which is a blog of a woman who specializes in finding good deals at
Amazon, like Britain’s “Jeanie”).
I just read both problogger’s and 901am.com’s articles on comment spam and somewhat admire the courage of a company to bravely walk into the light and shout I’m here to make a dollar on spam. Of course too like a deer in head lights, it is not the safest or brightest of choices and hopefully short lived.
Pretty good article. I like it, keep it up.
I think that was a pretty good post. I couldn’t do it :D . Keep up the good work.
hmmm… I like a blog post that makes me think.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.–Albert Einstein (1879-1955), U.S. scientist