Click around some on my blog and you will find a lot of spam comments. I am periodically deleting them but they keep pouring in. Probably because I believe in a living Internet with a lot of cross linking, and so I am giving my commenters delicious dofollow backlinks.
Recently when going through and cleaning up, I decided to try another approach. Instead of just deleting the spam comments I decided to first click on their links and look for a way to contact the owner of the site I landed on.
My theory was that a lot of smaller businesses hire shady SEO consultants to help them rank better in Google. Without knowing about their dishonest techniques.
So I wrote an email and sent it to every site owner I could find.
Hello,
I have received several spam comments to my blog, tobiassjosten.net, linking to your site. This does not add any value for me or my visitors but it just creates work for me when I need to remove them.
I doubt this leads to any click-through visitors what so ever and since our sites are on widely different topics it will not lend much SEO power. All while making you look dishonest and your business shady.
So please, stop spamming my blog.
Regards, Tobias Sjösten
Guess what? I was right. Replies has been pouring in from business owners, saying they have hired some scumbag from eBay, Craigslist, etc without knowing the implications of these crooks’ work.
I am really glad people are taking this seriously and I would like to give a special shoutout to Bangdrum and King Chronic (more to come) for taking action. Enjoy the well deserved dofollow link! :)
Now it’s time for you to do the same. Go through your spam lists and let people know what dirt they have hired. It does not take long and is much, much more healthier for our interwebs than adding rel nofollow to all your links.