This is actually going to be a short post – I think … I have an awful lot of comments on this blog – and most of them never see the light of day – the spammers love this blog and I generally wake up to several hundred offers to enhance my sex life. They are easy to deal with. The less easy comments are the ones that are just slightly more than “nice post” but not much.
There are various plugins available to manage this sort of comment spam – I have tried most of the usual suspects. But Todd over at Todd’s Tps pointed out a recent plugin which really seems to be the business – its called SEO Super Comments. What it does is basically redirect the link on a person’s name to another internal page on this site UNLESS I have added their website to a whitelist of “friend’s sites”. In either case the link is do-follow.
This solves several problems for me:
- it means I can approve comments that I am not sure of knowing that I am not going to linking to a dodgy neighbourhood;
- I can still reward friends with a do-follow link;
- it has a nice internal SEO benefit of creating additional internal pages on the fly.
Unfortunately it does mean that I”ve had to turn off commentluv – as it kinda defeats the point of this plugin.
If you want to see what the plugin does if someone’s site is not on the white lis t- click on my name in any comment.
Now I just spent 1/2 hour adding a long list of friends to my white list – but its a manual process I may have missed you – especially if you are a friend with a new website. If you think you’ve been unfairly missed out then drop me a comment or a private email via the contact form. This is a site by site basis not an IP or email basis
If your link was to a site promoting SBI or Teaching Sells – its not a mistake you aren’t on the white list…
58 replies on “New Comment Policy”
Just trying it out 😉 BTW, I was wondering of using this plugin and will be interested to see if it reduces your spam?! Or does it just reduce the outgoing links but still keeps your comment section full with useless content like “Blablabla nice site blablabla”. And what a bout subpages, for example if I link instead to my homepage to a blog article? Does the plugin take that in account? A lot of questions, I am curious how you like it in the long run, SY
It not just reduces the outgoing links it produces more indexable pages with relevant title and H1 tags …
Good question about the subpages – try adding another comment and link to a subpage from your site ..
Your wish is my command, lets see what happens, this one should go to this page: http://hospitalera.com/blogreview-if-dogs-could-read/
SY
Askimet didn’t like it – how odd – cause your first comment was fine1
My comment just disappeared in the black hole, didn’t even get the usual “your comment is awaiting moderation” line ;-( SY
Yup that’s an askimet sign – odd though cause your first comment wasn’t in Askimet – did you do some spamming in between comments 🙂
Nops, I tend not to spam 😉 Lets see if that one gets through, might be something in the url that triggers it, every time I used a link to this post, Akismet didn’t like me, SY
Askimet in love with you now LOL
This is actually quite a good plugin to have. I’ll be sure to add it is I ever have a website which has readers 🙂 For now I am good with akismet and “comments are closed”. This should greatly not only lessen comment spam in hope for backlinks, but give more value to the links that you give inside the posts.
(now I will just wait and see if I am on the whitelist :D)
You are Phil 🙂 – I don’t like closing comments because I liek the free content and the new ping to the search engines – though I’ve come close on a couple of posts LOL
Seems sub-pages don’t work at all, my comments (2) are either in Akismet or got never posted ;-( SY
I thought this sounded like a cool idea when Todd mentioned it awhile back.
It will be interesting to hear your reports of how it works out in real life on your blog.
The intersesting thing JL – is that people like yourself who don’t link to site now have your own page of comments 🙂
>>The intersesting thing JL – is that people like yourself who don’t link to site now have your own page of comments :-)<<
Oh mercy! haha
I jumped on the same plugin as you about a week ago after reading Todd’s posts. Small world. I already love it and it allows me to easily add friends and eleminate the crash and burn commenting. I don’t pull in as many comments as you but still hate sifting through the “legit” comments from the “non-legit” comments. I like what plugin creators went for and like how simple it is. As Vic would say, “it is what it is.”
Hi Lis,
I have just learned something new today. I didn’t even realise I could close comments on individual post. I have one from June that receives about 10 spams a day an di have been manually deleting all those that get through the filters.
So thanks for that tip. Will also look into the plugin you are now using.
You can also set comments to close automatically after X days = people often do it after 60 – becasue some of my older posts have PR I get a lot of spam on them.
“I happen to love SBI! and have posted in your blog a couple of times. I don’t “promote” Site Build It!. I just correct the inaccuracies that appear here and share how I’m doing with it as I proceed through this program (and I admit that I love it).
Does that mean I’m not allowed to post here anymore? Or does it mean that I can but that I cannot be whitelisted? And if I can’t be whitelisted, does that mean that my comments are second-class citizens that will link to other pages in your own site, which can in fact make it look like I am linking to irrelevant or contradictory posts, which means that any dissenting voice only makes you stronger? If so, that’s becoming rather totalitarian, discouraging dissenting viewpoints.
Even though I disagree with you, I respected the fact that you treated all opinions equally. I hope this has not changed?”
Carol this is not about belief systems its about money. Your site is whitelisted because regardless of the platform its built on its selling needwork tips and kits and is not an SBI affiliate. In contrast I have had long an involved comments from others who link to a site which is ONLY about selling SBI and other products which are poor value for money.
This is not even about losing readers to those blogs – there is an SEO benefit of having an anchored link from a relevant authority (I use the term in the technical sense) – site and wish to control who I give that benefit to that’s all.
BTW any tips for actually finishing my cross-stich? I have two unfinished projects – I shouldn’t have started another one should I 🙂
If you check my comments or JL above (who doesn’t link to a site – same effect) you will see that non-whitelisted comments go to page of your OWN comments so their content is under your control 🙂
And for the record I did delete comments on THAT post because people got silly and abusive on both sides. I have never I think deleted a genuine comment from any other post which wasn’t spam (hint “Good post, please post more on this topic” is spam),
I’m seriously considering buying SBI!, although I must admit
your review really postponed my decision. For those who do not
have a site (like me), can they be published? If I see this
published, I guess I’ll have my answer, same if I do not. 😉
And second question: Can only people with sites be whitelisted,
and do they have to agree with you in your views?
Oh totally L.Tharp. I wouldn’t support SBI affiliates or Teaching Sells affiliates thats all -they know who they are – you aren’t one! Thanks for your comment
Hey Lis,
You have the honor of getting the last comment I make before I shut down my computer and pack it up for the flight tomorrow …
I’m glad you liked the suggestion … and thanks for the link 🙂
I too will be interested in hearing how this works out for you. For me, so far the main benefit is that I really don’t stress as much about whether or not to approve a comment … lol, except for those one sentence ones that just tell me how “great I am” … I guess am pretty great, but they have no way of knowing that after skimming through a single post on my blog. 😉
Catch up with you again soon,
Todd
And I missed it as i was asleep – have a good flight – I will look out for the Iraq IP address!
I’ve been following your blogs for a while now and this is honestly one of the best I’ve read. Its a simple and organised blog. Thank you for sharing this with us.
ok, I will be switching my blog to a wordpress soon so it will be different domain
btw , Lost 90% of my ND sites, how are yours?
bk
There seems to be something amiss here. In my opinion, I don’t see the SEO benefit of an anchor text eg Prostate Cancer that redirects to Nomad’s Guide to Make Money Online – Book Review.
Also what’s the difference between adding your friends to your whitelist and actually checking each url before approving their comments?
Please note that these are just the opinion of a 7 month old newbie to blogging. I don’t get tons of comments though my site is dofollow with PR 2.
Maybe when I get to where you are in terms of numbers of comments, I’ll start to see the light 😉
The anchor text comes from the content of the comment – I am still not going to approving comments which are entirely off topic – so its not really an issue. The SEO benefit is automatic page creation. I do check every url – however content on urls change quite quickly – its easy enough to get a site indexed with solid backlinks from sites like this and then switch in the spam/porn/drugs/rock&roll site a few weeks/months down the track -then I am linking to a bad neighbourhood – not good at all
Hey Lis, I just installed comment luv on my site because you had it here. Maybe I should have waited a few days.
BTW, Cool new header.
I must confess I’ve never viewed it from the angle of the content of a url changing after sometime. It could probably explain why some folks drop from PR 6 to PR 0 for no reason that they know of.
So help us God, all we dofollow bloggers.
I’ll have to modify my comment policy again and add “No linking to inner pages of a site”
I saw Todd’s post too. I like the idea of the internal link structure building using this plug.
I just wish I had time to employ neat stuff like this on my site. Until then, I will just remain no-follow.
I guess on the flip side, my blog has become a bad neighborhood anyway with some of the language I use, so what does it matter? LMAO
All the best blogs have bad language Allyn in my experience …
Believe it not, I’ve been pondering o the use of this plug-in and just yesterday night it hit me and I think silly me has finally figured out the reason for this SEO 4 Comments plug-in. Do please correct me if I am wrong.
Visitor A leaves a comment on a make money online blog. He uses a casino related keyword as part of his name. Since our site has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with casinos, we make his link open in an entire new page with his comments and website url intact. This way the PR and relevance of our make money online post isn’t diluted.
Is that it? Did I finally come around to understanding it?
P.S: I’m getting ready to install it on my blog too. Will link to this post when I finally get it set it up. Thanks.
I’m just wondering, wouldn’t it be possible to add CommentLuv for all those domains you have on your whitelist? Maybe a bit unnecessary, but just a thought.
Unfortunatly you can’t get commentluv to distinguish between the 2 types of comments- I did try 🙂
1
I thought maybe it was possible to add some PHP which checked if the domain was whitelisted or not. If yes, show Comment Luv. If not, hide it. Unfortunately I have no experience in this specific plugin, but you might get some help from their support or WP Forum.
Hi Lis –
I’ve been seeing the writing on the wall for commentluv because of the increasing number of backlink junkies that are riding it to death with their ever increasing ‘drive-by’ crap. This plugin is one answer, but it would really rock if it could be married to a tiny little bit of PHP (see post above) that verified each comment against your white list – that way we could still keep commentluv??
😀
That would be lovely if I was a php programmer – but Im not LOL
Hello Again – I got interested in this and have just found a do-follow Case by Case plugin that might suit better?
Plugin Features:
* Follow Plugin for WordPress (all comment links are real links by default).
* Strip nofollow from comment links, comment author links, pingbacks and trackbacks (default).
* Selectively apply nofollow to any comment link you do not like to support.
* Selectively apply nofollow to any comment author link you do not like to support.
* If you like to open your comment links in a new window you can.
As long as you do nothing Nofollow Case by Case automatically strips nofollow from all your comment links and comment author links.
It is Here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-case-by-case/
Cheers – Rhys
to be honest its not even do/no follow thing Rhys. I have a bunch of SBI affiliates trying to leave comments – sometimes quite good ones – but commentluv will parse their blog post and then my search traffic may follow thru and they get the commission. If people are hell bent on buying SBI they can find another blog to buy it from even indirectly 🙂
Yep, got that. Seem’s a pity that particular can of worms even got opened. I was involved in blowing the whistle on an online scam (Ponzi) that was invading our town and got hated for killing the golden goose – nobody cared that alkl the next persons in the pyramid lost their nest-egg – the moral aspect was totally ignored and pure greed ruled. Sad!
Yeah the whole teaching sells thing just about drove me out of IM a while back – I though the only way to make money was to rip other people off – really sad. The irony of the SBI scheme is that its not even a very good affiliate payout LOL
Do I see it correctly that you managed to get it working with keywordluv? How? SY
Lis, I think this is a very good idea. I will definitely look into that plugin. Also wanted to make sure you added my URL to the white list? The one in the website field right now. Thanks!
Would you believe this is the first time I saw this post? Heh…
I was using the SEO Super Comments plugin on several blogs and stopped using it. It’s purpose didn’t seem to work too well for me. I get spammed so much regardless of what kind of commenting system is in place that I’m probably going to turn on comment moderation for the first time.
Same here, I am really tempted to add a captcha to the commenting process, should keep some bots out and give me more time to take care of the human spammers ;-( SY
Oh please nota captcha – they are too tough for this old spammer – or maybe I need new glasses?
Just a simple one, no need for glasses, just to upset a few spambots, I am drowning in them, SY
What I am not seeing any additional pages indexed RT – so I may quietly drop it – quietly – because the spammers seem to have died down a bit recently
Even though I seem to have started this whole thing, I too am not so sure there’s any particular benefit to the plugin. But for the time being, my “evil” side finds that it provides a bit of entertainment …
I’m still on many of those silly “dofollow” lists. And I find it funny when people I don’t know still show up to leave keyword anchored links, even though they’re just linking to another page on MY blog.
I almost think a more interesting experiment might be to just turn off links all together (ie., just show the person’s name on comments). And see how much of a hit comment counts take.
Maybe have some other “incentive”, such as a weekly “top commenters” post, that contains contextual in-post links to the selected sites/articles of those who contribute most to the conversation.
I don’t know how much this might hurt or help a site, but it would certainly make moderation easier 🙂
I tried the top commentator plugins – but it didn’t work with keyword luv … Yeah maybe monthly top commentter posts could work…
Hi Lis,
Yes, I think anything automated is subject to abuse. What kind of attracts me to the idea of making top commenter posts is that a lot of people dropping comments probably have some content that might be worth linking to (even the spammers) … you just don’t always get to see it because they’re too busy trying to get their keywords into every comment they make, and eventually someone sends them to akismet land.
I’m just thinking that not having to worry about keywords (because there’s no link) might make things easier on both bloggers and commenters.
Oh well, something to think on. In the mean time, I may end up turning off the SEO supercomments plugin myself, as something happened with my theme’s comment file, and I can’t get my “whitelist” function to work … which is the primary reason I installed the silly thing in the first place.
p.s. do you like my bit of irony? … putting my own keyword link in a post where I make a mini-rant about keyword links in comments 😀
Todd, I was about to call you out on it. I mean ranting about people using keywords and then adding yours…funny!
Anyone using KeywordLuv should expect that the commenter is going to use a keyword. That’s the whole point, right?
Hi Matt,
Actually, my “rant” was/is about people I don’t know coming to my blog and using keywords instead of their name. I don’t mind a bit if my friends do it. lol, and I think Lissie and I are friends, so it should be all good 😀
LOL Todd – actually I held “Matt’s” comment for a while becasue “he” put several comments in at the same time with differnet ID’s – its really not that hard people – if you establish a relationship with me – you get the link – if you don’t you won’t – this is a democracy I make the rules !
Todd I find it particularly amusing with posts which have PR – the people commenting think that I am going to approve each and every comment and then I get complaints that there comment hasn’t appeared!
Lis, this really is “Matt” and I really am a “he” 🙂 I use three different computers (work, home and laptop) throughout the day, so that’s the reason for the different IP’s. No conspiracy there.
Great blog. I just recently found it and am still reading back through all you old posts. I am just getting into the “making money online” game and found several of your posts helpful. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Happy New Year to all!
Happy New Year to all!
Todd, you don’t use KeywordLuv plug-in, so I wouldn’t expect someone to use a keyword at your blog. The blogs I read that don’t have the keyword plug-in I always use just my name when commenting.
People that do use the plug-in should expect people to use a keyword and not get offended. Whether or not they allow that link to direct back to commenter’s site is their right. Friends or not.
Just wanted to let you know that you could incorporate Commentluv back into your blog while using SEO Super Comment.
On my blog, I installed Lucia’s Linky Love and it only dofollows the author’s url. All other links both within the comment, ping/trackbacks and commentluv links are NOFOLLOW.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 😉