Blog comments as advertising (i.e. spam)

10 April 2007  

On one of today’s posts, I received a comment from someone that I’ve never heard of before. While this wouldn’t normally be a problem, the tone of the comment, and the fact that it failed to address any point of the post itself, led me to investigate the poster a little more.

When I visited the poster’s site, I saw that the comment on my blog was identical to one of the posts on the commentator’s blog. Isn’t laziness a sin?

Anyway, it appears that the primary purpose of the commentator’s blog (and of their life, according to their ‘about me’ blurb) is to write a book, which this person seems to have accomplished and now appears to be advertising (albeit in a surreptitious manner).

As a word of warning to other bloggers, if you see a comment on your blogs from someone calling themselves “jane b drake” (obfuscated so as not to tip off search engines) you’re probably the victim of covert spam, and probably best just deleting it. I’m keeping mine as a record of the above, but any future comments like this here are likely to go straight to Askimet’s binary dumpster.

Feel free to duplicate my investigation from the comment linked above if you are so inclined—I have no desire to give this person any additional exposure.

No other posts are likely to be like this.

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