Like spam, splogs are getting smarter every day. According to sources, 10% to 20% of blogs are actually splogs, and the phenomenon is gaining momentum (to a point that some even think the blogosphere is contracting). As most bloggers, I have become used to the daily routine of deleting spam comments. It is generally obvious to see the difference between an authentic comment and a splog comment. Until very recently, spam comments were obviously off topic, and the most subtle were something like “I really like your blog, you should check mine”.
In the past few days, I have started to receive spam comments that are not totally off topic. Their author is targeting key words and has standard comments which almost seen to make sense.
On my post “About the power and speed of word-of-mouth: will Pirates 2 beat Aquaman?“, I received the comment:
“Pirates 2 pretty much sucked compared to the first one. It had a few good parts, but I think it was just a prelude to the 3rd one. I hope number 3 is better!
This is of course off topic if I pay enough attention to the comment, which is my case as a beginner blogger with few comments on my site. But what if I was a A-list blogger and had to moderate hundreds of comments? Would I have the time to identify this comment as a splog?
Same thing on my post “”Johnny Depp vs Zinedine Zidane: bad boys’ weekend“::
Is it just me or does every woman have the hots for Johnny Depp? My wife loves the guy and everything he does. This guy must get hounded by females everywhere he goes!
I guess that “sploggers” now have the ability to search blogs with certain keywords (eg. “Pirates”, “Johnny Depp“). I have always been impressed by spammers’ ability to find loopholes and hack whatever they want. This is really smart. So sad that these smarts are used for the dark side of the Force…
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