The reasons why I am mentioning this?

I think Erik represents the “good” human side of affiliate marketing and is learning his lessons well, and working hard. His affiliate blog is obviously wrtten by a person, not “admin”, has a privacy statement, and real about page which discusses why he is promoting the product as an affiliate, and lots of content.

But this also gives me the opportunity to offer a few tips.

It would be fairly easy to add some kind of disclosure statement in the sidebar about affiliate status, and depending on geographical location there might be a need for more contact details such as a P.O. box.

First link priority – Erik didn’t abuse my comment policy, but his second link with anchor text wouldn’t have counted, even if he had enough comments on my blog to get followed links, because there was already a link to the resource in his name field (where he used his name)

Email address – The email address used was for the new website – that might close some doors for spying out some of his other properties, but there are other ways to do that anyway, as I am sure he has multiple sites on the same domain, maybe common use of adsense etc.
However by not using a consistant email address over time, it is hard to build up a reputation on blogs like mine which enable dofollow links after a period of time, or after a certain number of comments.

The best practice, to be 100% above board?

• Always use a consistant email address
• Establish a real identity – gravatar etc
• Always use your name in the name field
• If your comment is just in response to a post, and won’t include a link to a resource, then you can justifiably link to your favorite money site (or maybe a pumper) as long as it is high quality and obviously yours (like Erik’s is)
• If you are going to include a resource, then for the name field link it is best to use a totally different domain, or at least link to the root domain there and use a deep link to real solid relevant content within the comment body

Including a link in the content you really need to be on target with a resource that is without doubt relevant to the conversation, something that if not mentioned would reduce the value of the discussion.

Quite often any link drop within the content will be held for moderation even on blogs where you have an existing high quality profile and reputation, so it must be up to human scrutiny.

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Here is the official proclamation of best practice in the eyes of Google

I should note that Google classifies their post as “Webmaster Level: Beginner”

I am classifying this post as “Webmaster Level: Here We Go Again”

1. It is effectively a case of “Do As We Say, Not As We Do”

You see, every time I leave a comment on the Google Webmaster blog (something I avoid doing too often), I get pummelled with email spam.

(edit: added a smaller image without thumbnail that doesn’t use WordPress gallery)

If you are using any kind of subscribe to comments feature it can absolutely kill your email delivery rates if you let through spam like this, especially if you don’t have effective blacklist control and a feedback loop.
Somehow Gmail always lets through spam like this, but blocks legitimate comment threads I have subscribed to. True I have subscribed to the comments on the Google Webmaster blog because I want to read legitimate comments, but I don’t want the comment spam in my email box.

Maile Ohye did eventually close the comments on the original blog post, but they almost certainly need better controls.

2. What can I do to avoid spam on my site?

Whilst Google warn about cleaning up bad comments you might have left elsewhere, they don’t give a hint that linking to dodgy places, maybe even using nofollow links could have a negative impact on search results.

Maybe they should have taken this opportunity to warn webmasters about Page Level Penalties for Comment Spam

At least they didn’t pimp Recaptcha which they bought not too long ago

Don’t misunderstand this, I think it is a terrible user experience to have to wade through poor quality comments trying to pick out the gems – one of the reasons I take a harsh line on comment spam is because I respect my readers. I want my comments area to be worth reading.

3. What Happened to Google’s Old Legal Slant?

At the height of the paid links crackdown 2 years ago, there were lots of warnings about the potential problems with disclosure and paid links – in August 2007 I even suggested that the FTC should take a look at Matt’s blog shilling for Google…
Matt now has a disclosure policy, but he doesn’t practice what he preached for so long, very clear in post disclosure which is probably what the FTC would hope for.
Here is an example, his most recent post on Google OS does not state he is an employee of Google within the content.

Shill comments from a legal perspective are probably just as bad as shill blog posts

But I am not a lawyer, and Google employs 100s

In many ways I support the actions Lord Matt has taken on recent comment spam, contacting the supposed company who left comment spam, Rapunzel Rapunzel to see if they were actually aware of the dangerous SEO strategy employed by their contracted SEO company, or maybe a marketing employee.

BTW – Jim Edwards interviewed Mr. Rich Cleland, Assistant Deputy covering topics such as FTC, Disclosure, Blogging, Testimonials etc
Whilst there are tons of kits on sale prepared by laywers, I would strongly recommend this as a first base of call on anything to do with the new FTC advisory on disclosure.

4. Similarities Between Paid Links & Comment Spam

Almost none other than their effect on Google rankings and the vehemence with which service providers defend them, such as when I changed my comments policy, or wrote about Wide Circles and Wide Circles Comment Spam.

• Comment spam generally leads to poor quality sites – paid links generally lead to a site with commercial focus, but it would be rare for someone to invest lots of money in paid links trying to rank a malware site.
• Paid links are generally vetted – comment spam generally isn’t
• Paid links from a human perspective historically were often more disclosed than comment spam

What will possibly become the biggest similarity going forward is the way Google punish site owners who host comment spam, just like they punish people who host paid links. They can’t easily punish sites that are gaining links in this way if they have an otherwise normal link profile, because ultimately the comments could just be a competitor trying their hand at “Google Whacking”.

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Most disturbing of all though are the SEO consultants and agencies who I have caught commenting on behalf of their clients, or as themselves with a link through to a client’s site. Some of them are totally dumb about it.

I now have a new comments policy in force though most of it is just a clearer interpretation of what has been in place for the last 3+ years.

Comment Policy Update: Nov 13th 2009 Keywords Etc

Looks like Friday 13th is a very bad day for comment spammers…

• No more keywords within anchor text in the comment fields
• No sig links under comments
• Highly relevant links in the body of a comment can contain anchor text such as the blog title but they will be judged on a case by case basis.
• Even after these changes, I still expect to delete 90% of human comments as the vast majority are just an attempt to get a link rather than adding real value to the conversation.
• SEO Consultants/Agencies – If I catch you commenting but linking to a client’s site, your online reputation, your firm’s and that of your client are being put at severe risk.

My full comment policy

I should really do an update about Disqus, but we can save that for another day – I still haven’t found enough time to fully clean up the mess they left my comments in, and some things will never be recovered.

This is part of my cleanup for when the new FTC rules come into effect at the beginning of December, though effectively the new US rules aren’t any stricter than rules currently in Europe & UK.

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We definitely do not tolerate any kind of SPAM at all

Unfortunately the evidence available to me at the time not just on my own blog but elsewhere, was in stark contrast.

Washington Post Spammed – great way to encourage press coverage

Any legitimate service, if they wanted to get press coverage from an international news publication, might issue a press release, and contact a newspaper through legitimate channels directly, or maybe through their public relations company.

Wide Circles seem to have a different approach that might gain them coverage, but for totally different reasons…

First of all we need to look at the Washington Post Discussion Guidelines

3. You understand and agree that the discussion forums are to be used only for non-commercial purposes. You may not solicit funds, promote commercial entities or otherwise engage in commercial activity in our discussion forums.

The first spam is on an article about parental filtering by OpenDNS

The second is on an April Fools Day security warning

Wide Circles Spamming Wikia

I am sure Jimmy Wales will love this example of “Viral Marketing” – for obvious reasons I don’t quite trust the content, so I am nofollowing the link, and didn’t give it any suitable anchor text.

More Wide Circles Spam Examples

Note: I am nofollowing links where they might not get cleared up.

Chris Dockery seems to have been spammed in just the same way I was.

Scott seems to have been spammed by Wide Circles, but he really should nofollow the link to them, both on his blog, and on the sites that syndicate his content, such as Gooruze.

Gobala seems to have had his forums spammed by Wide Circles.

The Blog Herald seems to be a very soft target for comment spam these days, just look at this post as an example.
But amongst the junk, is a very familiar comment
Just curious if anyone ever heard of WideCircles internet viral marketing service ? I was referred to it by another webmaster. Apparently they work by injecting viral messages into various forums, blogs, wiki’s, classifieds and so on. These messages then contain backlinks which help with SEO, as well attract lot of referral traffic. They bill around 0.40c per each post that’s been active for 5 days and say a single post can easily attract 100 or more hits a day, I am going to give them a try today and see how it goes. http://wide circles.com?imt=2

The BizInformer – spammed

Another example of Wide Circles forum spam over on Angelfire.

FastCompany isn’t immune to this kind of junk, though it is in the form of junk blog posts – again the wonderful claims

Here is an interesting comment on Andrew’s blog post, on companies looking to increase email marketing spend.

its ok.. but i have a different opinion as most of the people now days dont even try to open the mails that comes from unknown senders because simply it might be a spam so i guess the majority that opens such mails are the new users of the internet and i agree that they are growing but they are not the majority of the internet users.

——–
franko.

Put The Message Where It Matters! WideCircles aka Wide Circles represents relevant, distributed, highly targeted and efficient internet word of mouth marketing using entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion using social network mediums such as blogs, forums, wikis and so on.
http://wide circles.com

My personal interpretation: The comment intent is to drop the link, and possibly to suggest that their “viral marketing” is a better alternative. Just because there might be some relevance to the comment doesn’t make this legitimate as a form of marketing.
This is a borderline case, but I would have spammed it.

WebProWorld Spammed

This example is actually very sad

WebProNews like many forums allow you to use a sig which has followed links – all you have to do is take part in the conversation, and you can get a link back to whatever sites you like, though probably best to link back to sites you own.

We have a thread asking for an alternative video hosting service for use with Wordpress

The first comment was totally off topic, just spamming a link

The second message is highly generic with the link in the sig – but the person doing it doesn’t even know how to format an HTML hyperlink correctly. As well as running male beauty contests, Jaan just happens to be a moderator at WebProWorld. I am sure he will be interested.

Wide Circles Spamming Sphinn

This last example is a little more personal, because it involves a blog post that is about me, and calls into question my initial evaluation of Wide Circles.

I would like to state for the record I have no objection to open dialogue, and even criticism, but I much prefer criticism from real people rather than sock puppets.

There is a thread on Sphinn that has appeared and as others have noted, it is a little on the dubious side… to say the least.

Despite the extremely dubious comments, I actually hope the Sphinn moderators leave this example of Wide Circles comment spam online, though they should probably prevent the sock puppet accounts from voting on any more stories. IP addresses might not be much value, as some people working with Wide Circles are known to use proxys.

Do you also see how they are down voting comments made by legitimate members of the Sphinn community?

A quick shout out to thank Jonathan and Bob – I am not sure who Sleuth1 is.

The is a little history behind Bob’s comment, I once wrote a highly negative review of one of his services. I didn’t know him at the time, and it wasn’t actually obvious that he was involved. It would have taken a little detective work, and I found out quite by chance many months later when doing some other research.
So having written negative things about him, he now includes me on his blogroll.

Bob Massa also offers SEO linkbuilding and content generation services. Even though I have corresponded with Bob a little now by email, if his guys were blatantly spamming in the same way as Wide Circles, I would probably write a similar post to this one.

The Sphinn Sock Puppets

Just for the record…

JustinLang1

Jacklassape

Nancyd91

Jdanston

The Sphinn Story Itself

First of all, Jackie Nerito is a pseudonym

It was in some way a response to my coverage of Widecircles, but they didn’t deem it worthy of a link, even if nofollowed, or even provide a reference that could be copy / pasted.

I am not going to link through to the post, because they could just flag me as spam in Akisment, and I wouldn’t link to them with a followed link anyway, as I have no trust in the content.

http://circle world.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/andy-beard-on-wide-circles-aka-widecircles/

I have added a space in the URL – I wouldn’t want the post being linked to automatically by splogs.

This is actually one of two highly questionable blogs on the topic of Wide Circles, here is the other one

http://widecircles world.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/wide-circles-releases-new-version-of-the-system/

There is a high chance that they are both on the same WP.com account.

The points raised in the post?

• I did mention other services, such as forum posting and wiki spam – I didn’t concentrate on them – based upon the comments I have seen, if they have moved into also providing a blog post service, I really would stay far far away from it, unless your target market wouldn’t know the difference between literate and illiterate English. That is based upon what I have seen. I spent a fair amount of time on the first post, and again on this one – I also left comments with opposing views, even though they were anonymous with fake email address, and left using a proxy
• “Comments when done properly and by trained staff are not dangerous, they can increase your rank, help you with seo and allow you receive lot of referral traffic” – just look at the junk examples that Wide Circles have excreted over the internet to promote their own brand
• Referral traffic – the only referral traffic woulld be from people wondering “Where the hell did this junk comment come from” – once the domain starts being trashed in spam filters, and being talked about in negative light, the comment spam just increases the damage already caused.
• Comment spam as paid links – it appears the writer doesn’t pay careful attention to the Google webmaster groups, for instance this thread on penalties for one site, and in particular this comment by John Mu
  

  Similar to how you have removed spammy links in your own forum, you
  may want to consider what you can do to help clean up similar links on
  other people’s sites. Blogs and newspaper sites such as
  http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com sometimes receive short
  comments such as “dont agree”, apparently only for a link back to a
  site. These comments often use keywords from that site instead of a
  user name, perhaps “tree bench” for a furniture site or “sexy shoes”
  for a footwear site. If this kind of behavior might have taken place
  for your site, you may want to work on rectifying it and include some
  information on it in your reconsideration request. Given your
  situation, the person considering your reconsideration request might
  be curious about links like that, so the more you can explain about
  that, that may help as well.

  John

  Thus Google can look on spam comments as a factor for ranking penalties.

• Legitimate Paid Comments – I get the instinct impression that the author was working from a print out of my previous Wide Circles post, because the paragraph regarding legitimate paid comments contained a clear, obvious link to a previous blog post on paid blog comments. I have just included a link to it again.
  This would include for instance Tamar, who is paid to write articles for Mashable, Lifehacker and is the Associate Editor of Search Engine Round Table. If I link to an article she wrote on Mashable, and she came to my blog and left a comment, in many ways she is being paid to write that comment.
  If you were using an outsourcing company such as Bob’s to create your blog content, then in theory it would be legitimate for the person writing content for your blog to also respond to comments, but as themselves or their personal pseudonym, not as “you”.

As for being a “SEO expert” I let other people judge – I don’t sell any kind of consulting or work for any 3rd party clients.

I have a screenshot of the post itself for my records, but this page is already quite heavy with graphics, so in the interests of page load time, here is that broken URL again
http://circle world.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/andy-beard-on-wide-circles-aka-widecircles/

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