Honestly if you offer a service promoting professional SEO and SEM services, you don’t spam the comments of another blog in the SEO community trying to promote some Wordpress themes of dubious quality.
Yes it is possible that Sam has a major reputation management problem on his hands, and someone is going to extreme measures to tarnish his reputation, but everything I checked did point to this being a manual comment though maybe automated on a “slow burn”.
This wasn’t the first comment I received.
Now if Sam really is innocent, he will thank me for pointing out someone tarnishing his reputation, and turn this into some great linkbait for his year old SEO site that is PR3 with only 1000 or so links reported by Yahoo.
The commenter was using Sam’s email address on Yahoo, and the IP address used was logical 122.2.57.10 though might be a randomly allocated address by an ISP.
However this won’t change my opinion of the themes being promoted. They are not the worst available, but certainly should be better if promoted from an SEO site.
Reputation Management?
I am not sure what the best way is to defend yourself against this kind of commenting, if someone was to start commenting all over the web using your details. It would certain cause all kinds of problems for spam filters such as Akismet which rely on a collective intelligence.
This wouldn’t be solved by using OpenID
So was it Sam destroying his reputation, or someone destroying it for him?
22 Comments
Andy-
I got the same spam, and I am fairly well removed from SEO as a subject matter.
I do not get it at all. He has to be smarter than this, doesn’t he?
Andy, I’m assuming he hit our forum as well..
http://www.seorefugee.com/forums/showthread.php?p=59563
I just don’t understand the shotgun approach. Do people think people in the community don’t talk?
And that’s not even addressing the issue of the image licenses for those themes…
Isn’t it widely accepted that you must have a reputation before people can set out to detroy it?
I received the same spam. Knowing it wasn’t the usual, I went and took a look. I’m with you, Andy. Everything this guy did was of dubious intent. I’ve blocked him off since then. I wonder if this guy realizes how much damage he did to his own future endeavors?
He must really be getting around… I got hit with the same spam. Of course he started the comment with “i do not want to spam your blog”. lol
I emailed them, suggesting that they might want to reply here and on SEO Refugee, will be interesting to see what happens.
Wait how is this possible, Bill Gates declared spam would end in 2006
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/24/tech/main595595.shtml
Isn’t that amazing – it must have been delayed a little to coincide with the release of Vista ;)
The stupid thing is there are so many ways for a professional SEO to build up their links just blogging with useful professional advise, they shouldn’t need to spam links to ruin their reputation.
The problem is now that anyone who looks up the guys name in Google will most likely find this post in the first page of results.
Maybe I should also tag it slightly more so I have a few more potential landing pages.
I’m feeling kinda left out, what’s wrong with my blog? I only have a little math comment spam plugin thing. Most of the levetrah and fentamean guys have managed to get through :D
I don’t know the exact details of your issue, but even with a captcha or spam plugin like that, spammers can always override that with trackback spam.
Hello Daehee
Seems my ironic sarcasm attempt fell below your radar :)
Yes agreed, spammers are resourceful little so and so’s
Ignoring the fact the guy is a spammer for a moment, and hypothetically he was the victim, you mentioned OpenID wouldn’t work and I agree, but it certainly would be one part of the strategy I would use, along with ClaimID. A combined use of openID from a single server and ClaimID would at least separate the comments made by spammer and victim, along with an explanation open letter you could quite quickly get the message you had been done out. The bigger question would anyone believe you?
I don’t think that would help Tim
If I wrote a comment on your blog, you would have that information available, and could use it anywhere else.
If someone was claiming to be me, I could ask if they were using a Polish IP address, because I write all my comments from a Polish IP address, but that isn’t a 100% solution.
I could use a fixed IP address, but those are harder to come by, or more expensive – for large corporations that is an option, but not for your average blogger.
Hey Andy,
This isn’t really you. It’s really me, James D. Kirk from boldlygoing.com. Just checking to see whether or not I can manually add a comment to your site, but look like someone else (you in this case, since I know you won’t ban me for life for this little “experiment”!)
You commented on reputation management in your post. Whomever the true culprit is might also want to take some copy writing classes or read a book or two, or even attend a Dan Kennedy seminar.
The very fist line of that post/comment, “Please try to view and download our new…”
Well, that sort of ambiguous language is not the sort of hard hitting action words I would want to use in a legitimate effort to evoke some sort of desired response from someone. “Please try”? As our friend and mascot, Yoda would say, “Do or do not. Do not try.”!!!
In this post I had inserted a “disclaimer” at the bottom of the post box but made the mistake of using brackets “” to encase it. Andy’s site removed those brackets and the disclaimer text. It basically said that I was not affiliated with Andy’s site, and that while I have a bit of a professional relationship with Andy, chatting on IM and posting back and forth between our two sites, I would never comment like this except on this particular post. If this offends someones sensibilities, please accept my sincere apologies in advance! Thanks.
Hi guys,
Sorry about that one. My bad. Sam is still fairly new to the SEO field so he tends to want to do things all the way to achieve top rankings by tomorrow. ;-)
I did ask him to start promoting our 2 new wordpress themes but did not give him specific instruction on exactly how to do it (or in this case, not to do it). Thanks for alerting me about it by sending me an email.
Sadly, road to hell is paved with good intentions, as saying goes. Now with your reputation is hit by Sam’s actions, you will have to work much harder to restore it.
Interesting to note the Mybloglog icon being automatically spoofed as well. I mean, the way it works it has to, since it is merely driven by the username and has no authentication involved, but still. Having someones avatar, especially if it happens to be their face, next to the post only increases the impression that it is actually coming from that person.
Doesn’t even have to be deliberate, either. If a non MBL member just happened to use the same username as some MBL member on a blog running the code, then the Mybloglog members avatar would show.
That comment spoofing thing is a little scary.
Maybe I should pay someone to start leaving thoughtful and interesting comments all over the web using my details ;-)
Or stupid ones using someone elses :twisted:
I actually met this Sam guy. He came in for a job interview for an SEO position were I am currently working (in the Philippines). What a small world.
I feel left out too! Sam didn’t hit my blogs. (It’s either that or my spamfilters caught him and I never noticed.)
Hey Andy,
Way to call this guy out. Nice to see that Jonathan stepped up with an apology but was the damage already done?
Managing an online reputation is obviously a crucial business practice to focus on.
Looks like Sam may need a new pair of glasses and/or a new career.