Ah, Black Friday is here. The time when my email blows up with all the companies and organizations I have ever interacted with by email send me notices of their “mad MAD deep discounts” for the “official” start of the holiday buying season.
Yes, it is a veritable windfall of attention from the furthest reaches of the interwebz. (more…)
Sorry for the language. However, I run a handful of small, fairly low traffic sites. This one, my product management site, one for my dog(s) and their exploits, and my Wife’s professional site.
All of these use WordPress, and I have Google analytics set up to track and monitor them. (more…)
More in the Spam files. This time, we have a jackass trying to tell me how to better do SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Of course, the best suggestion is to hire them to help me.
Oh boy. I get 2-3 of these a week across my wordpress sites. I really don’t do this for money, fame or notoriety. I do a little SEO, but in general, I don’t give a damn. I write to scratch an itch.
Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is is missing a few factors, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO?First your keyword must appear in the title.Then it must appear in the URL.You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1,H2,H3 tags in your article.Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword.There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keyword….wait there’s even more Now what if i told you there was a simple WordPress plugin that does all the On-Page SEO, and automatically for you? That’s right AUTOMATICALLY, just watch this 4minute video for more information at.
Yeah, I am gonna call you right up (roll eyes)
More in the series on comment spam. Some people keep at it, against all odds. Meet “Vivienne Westwood Dragon Lady Shoes”. She seems to think that aficionados of Greyhounds (and my “GreytBros blog) would want to buy some shitty knock off shoes (that are often made with PVC instead of leather).
Persistence pays off, so says everybody. Particularly if you are in the comment spam game. It is a business model that requires a lot of impressions, so the perpetrators cast their net far and wide.
Obviously, enough people will click on and buy this crap so it must work. But that doesn’t mean that I will perpetuate it. So, I will delete and report as spam all these comments. Vivienne needs to phish elsewhere.
Spam filters like Akismet do a phenomenal job of keeping the trash at bay (if you ever want to see how bad it can get, create a web forum, make it open access, without moderation, and watch the spam fill your hard disk). However, one type of message is very likely to fill the filter. It is – The Suck Up
Short, it is highly congratulatory. It praises the content (yet never anything specific, just generic), and how they will be sure to read more from you in the future.
It can also mention the awesome style, and quality of your writing. Hey, I know I am a talentless hack, so that is totally bullshit, but it does fool the filters. On to this edition of comment spam:
constantly i used to read smaller posts which as well
clear their motive, and that is also happening with
this article which I am reading now.
Note that this has hard line breaks into smaller lines. I suspect that indicates to the filter that this is written by a breathing human. Sigh, so easy to fool.
As with all spam, this user points their “web page” to an online store. Cleverly disguised as a spearphishing link to a faux Youtube channel. Sigh. Delete, and add to the Akismet learning set.
So begins a series of the comment spam I receive on my wordpress sites. Yes, I use the Akismet plugin (and have since 2009) to keep the spam comments at bay, and it does a phenomenal job, blocking literally thousands of spammy comments. But lately, there have been a steady stream of comment spam that sneaks by. This series of posts will highlight some of the insightful verbiage to get by the bayesian filters.
Today’s contestant is someone selling (presumably knock off) Mulbury goods. He crafted a message to circumvent the filters, and here it is in all it’s glory:
Or mulberry outlet do not need to understand, because they do not the same people of the world. Day policy camp has appeared in sight, mercenary embattled, without the slightest malaise is not following simple defense staggered during the District number baizhang the distance, I do not know the surprise trip, or a death march. Without wasting mulberry outlet to this was. The “Amherst Act finally spoke, the first sentence is to praise the enemy. Three hundred eligible thieves on horseback, see mercenary can only rear junction array to be only one person alone in front, and his heart laughed, single-handedly to resist the 300 horses in the open heaven’s I was just kidding!.
Of course, it might be a social media expert from the Mulberry company, but I highly doubt it.
Of course, the goal was to get the poster’s IP address and website in the comments, to lure unsuspecting rubes to click on his link to a knockoff shop. But instead, I put a link to the real Mulberry site. How is that?