This morning I woke up to a round of comment spam waiting in my queue; you see, I personally approve all commenters here. We have a wild, but very real, and always human community. When someone tries to do a drive-by for SEO (this blog gets serious traffic, so it happens), I catch it every time. This instance bothered me because it is a sex toy retailer that I know. They have been good to me and my books, they employ friends of mine, and yet they also have a bad reputation in the sex blogging community. For details on that, read ErosBlog’s post EdenFantasys.com Shoots Itself In The Balls…Again.
I queried friends on Twitter to get a feel for what to do. Since I spent most of the day emailing with PR flacks and CEOs about this article, I did not have the energy to try and track down someone at EF and ask if they knew about this and what the deal is. If this is someone they hired, they need to fire them ASAP. The practice of pretending to be a real person and inserting links via comments on high-traffic blogs/posts IS UNETHICAL.
I’m posting this to raise awareness – among bloggers but especially for companies who engage PR companies who use tactics such as this. It makes your company look bad, and while it might help your SEO, it is your reputation (or the reputation of your PR company) that will suffer. The internet might be a wild west for opportunity, but it’s not a throwaway culture for you to use irresponsibly. I worked hard and sacrificed much to make this blog reputable and successful. TinyNibbles will be a decade old in a few months. That is worth a lot.
If you want to advertise, drop me a line. Don’t fuck with my baby.
date Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 7:24 AM
subject [violet blue ® :: open source sex] Please moderate: “Video Game Sex Scenes by Joystick Division”
A new comment on the post “Video Game Sex Scenes by Joystick Division” is waiting for your approval
http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/12/video-game-sex-scenes-by-joystick-division.htmlAuthor : cinderella23 (IP: 95.65.20.74 , 95-65-20-74.starnet.md)
E-mail : cesser23@gmail.com
URL :
Comment:
And where is the sex scene? I hear only sounds of the sex encounter. Girls themselves are not nude.
*a href=”http://www.edenfantasys.com/”* rel=”nofollow” Top sex toys */a*#
date Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 7:32 AM
subject [violet blue ® :: open source sex] Please moderate: “Cyber(Sex) Monday: Top Sex Toys to Give and Get”
A new comment on the post “Cyber(Sex) Monday: Top Sex Toys to Give and Get” is waiting for your approval
http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/11/cybersex-monday-top-sex-toys-to-give-and-get.htmlAuthor : cinderella23 (IP: 95.65.20.74 , 95-65-20-74.starnet.md)
E-mail : cesser23@gmail.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=95.65.20.74
Comment:
Great choice of sex toys. Thanks a lot.
http://www.edenfantasys.com/
Above link in first comment broken with asterisks (*). Image of Mistress Nyomi from this (extreme) explicit gallery.
Garnet you are most welcome. I’m always happy to try and help folks who are trying to figure out ethical marketing in this brave new world.
By the way, you’ve now told me enough about your SEO company to convince me that they fit my personal definition of “black hat” or unethical SEO — as you’re already aware, the advice they were giving you was very hinky.
Thanks for the response Bacchus. Our SEO company has wanted me to do this but I’ve felt a little iffy on it. I’ve only commented in a couple places thus far and always adding to the conversation and those comments haven’t been deleted. I don’t use anchor text either which is also something they’ve wanted me to do. Knowing your opinions and the opinions of other bloggers is important to me and I will put my foot down about what type of comments I will do and how I link. Having the thoughts of a top sex blogger like yourself and Violet Blue make my argument all the stronger.
Lilly, thank you SO MUCH for adding a second comment – Akismet did think your first one was spam, and I caught it, pulled it and published it. It’s a great comment, too! It should show up in 3… 2…
Hrm. I think that my comments go to spam if I attach my website to the comment form, thanks to Akismet. I commented earlier but it’s not here.
We had a rash of this with Adam & Eve a few months ago and that surprised me but yet….not. I never really thought all that highly of them, but it surprised me in that they are a big name and I didn’t think they would need to resort to that.
Thanks for the heads up on this Violet, I’ll keep a check on my queue.
I generally hate it when anybody, company or not, uses anchor text linking within their comment. I’ve even seen bloggers do it, and I won’t allow that. Your site link is in the comment field, that’s quite enough.
Is it bad though that I’m getting suspicious of commenters without blogs/sites? Like if I approve them once, then their name & email is on the allowed-list and the next time they comment they will get in, even if they add in a site to the comment form. I’ve had that happen as well. Someone I thought was a valid commenter turned out to be just getting his foot in the door for the SEO spam comments he somehow thought I’d be dumb enough to let fly.
Between their link stripping tactics, the way that they interact with their own bloggers, and this kind of comment spam EF is becoming that guy at the S&M party who initiates a type of esoteric edge play without asking because their partner “never stated that it was a hard limit!”
By which I mean, super hot post! Come find more hot steamy lesbian action at my website! [Barely legal anal titties creampie Bikini girls]
Garnet, since I’m the biggest curmudgeon I know when it comes to comment spam, I’ll give you my take on that.
First of all, if your relationship with my site is good enough, your leeway goes way up. If you’re a regular commenter and your comments are valued, I’m less likely to begrudge whatever marketing you do in the Name/Website boxes of the comment form.
As a first time commenter, a post under your company name will be viewed with suspicion, because companies are not humans and companies do not talk. Now, if the post is about your company or about a topic that’s near-and-dear to your company’s business interests, and you come to post in an official capacity for your company, then sure, a link to your company in the Name/Website boxes would be appropriate.
My problem is, I’m always seeing comments (typically short/weak comments, but not always) that seem to being left for the sole purpose of justifying a commercial link. So, if a link appears to have a commercial flavor, it causes me to doubt whether the comment itself should be allowed through moderation. Is this comment real, or was it left simply to support the spam link? Remove the commercial link, and the doubt goes away as well.
If your comment is sufficiently long, strong, or engaged with the post topic, you can probably worry about it rather less. But even so, if you’ve commented in a human voice, why not sign it with a human identity, rather than attribute it to a lifeless entity?
Fortunately, this doesn’t actually come up all that often. People who are into spamming their commercial links typically cannot resist the temptation to try and use keywords in the name field, as what the SEO types call “anchor text”. And I don’t care how beautiful and engaged the comment is, if it’s left by a first time commenter calling herself “Sex Toy”, I’m not going to approve it.
As a PR person I do have to ask whether or not it’s considered comment spam to make genuine comments on posts under my company’s name. For my own blog I’ve always deleted the non-sensical spam that usually comes my way. However, if someone who works for the company adds to the discussion in the comments section I’ve always left it as is as long as they don’t add links within the comment itself. I mean everyone who links to themselves through their handle is promoting themselves in one way or another.
I never understand the practice of link spamming. Most blogs attached “nofollow” to any links posted in comments anyway, so they don’t even get the SEO. It’d just be in case someone clicks on it. So the point is….?
Mistress Nyomi is smokin! thanks for sharing that picture and this post in general… that is pretty lame in my opinion and the comments didn’t even try! congrats on almost 10 years!! here’s to many many more :)
OK, I love the term “drive-by SEO.” And judging from the lack of affiliate code in those links, I would assume that that person somehow works for EF. I’m not surprised at all.
And I’d make a million bucks off a site that offered such a service. Irony: I know actual VC’s and CEOs who engage in unethical business and interpersonal practices, and also engage the services of local doms whom I am friends with. Sadly, it does not improve their character.
I’d pay good money to watch the video of Mistress Nyomi remonstrating with Fred about his business practices…