What Kind Of Comment Spammer Are You ?

February 28, 2011 - Last Modified: February 28, 2011 by Rohan Pawale

We all encounter a lot of troubles in our daily schedule of blogging and one of the most amusing thing is to observe how desperate people behave when it comes to comment spam and link building ! Lets have a look at how many types of people or should I say spammers we can expect to see.

The Bot :

We are all familiar about these kind of comments simply because they are so frequent ! We get to see these comments every day be it GASP or Akismet , you cant avoid to see the volume of these kinds of comments and they are obviously spun in a very funny way ! That makes a good laugh if nothing else .

How often do we end up getting comments like these!

The Thankful Spammer

“Thank you , nice post” this is a comment that needs no introduction whatsoever !

These are the most irritating kinds and are not by bots but by humans , these are the kind of people who are led into believeing that their irritating thank yous are their prime link building strategy ! Not to mention , that the person who fooled them forgot to tell them that such comments rarely get accepted !

The One Timer

These are the hybrid kinds who are smart in making the comments , and these comments get accepted but you will notice one thing , once they get a backlink they dont bother to see what replies their ‘Smart Comments‘ have got . Their job is done !

The Oversmart kinds

These are the fourth most popular kinds of comment spammers . You will find them in every discussion and are more frequent than the bot comments itself . They never seem to follow what the thread is about or what people are discussing . They just want to make their presence felt .

The Pseudo Intellectual

These are the kinds that never seem to agree with what the author is saying! They always have a ‘better’ version of their story on their own ! They will go an extra mile to explain how the aothor is not only wrong but also why they make a better blogger than the author and they fit the fourth category most of the times

The Knowledgable One

These are the ones who are really interested in your content . They understand what you are saying , and while they may not always praise you , but they make sensible comments which help the author and the readers and add value to the post. Do i need to add that these are the rarest kinds ??

So what kind of comment spammer are you ?

About Rohan Pawale

Follow @techlunatic

A web entrepreneur and a social media evangelist, Rohan is a blogger who loves to ramble about blog marketing and SEO strategies on his blog.

{ 59 Responses }

John Allen says:

This is a very interesting post. I could have never thought of grouping spammers in that way. Spammers will never end so the best way to deal with this issue is to put all comments under moderation then you can only release those that are genuine.
Scott says:

Great post. I'm new to blogging and niche sites and this was very insightful. Of course I am trying to build backlinks to my new site like anyone else but this is a nice reminder that you have to add something of value when you comment. One thing I have found interesting is that the comments left on my site via bots don;t seem to register with google analyitics as a visit... is this normal?
Debby says:

Rohan, I appreciate the humor in such a subject as spammers. I actually came to this blog on another post and then saw this title and decided to read it, nice headline. There is some real psychology in those different kind of "spammers"/blog commenters. So thank you for the post, you won't see me again here on your blog but maybe somewhere else for one post and actually I don't agree with anything you say (: Cheers
Selina says:

Rohan, Thanks for the thoughtful approach to what kind of a comment spammer am I... It definitely makes me think about it (: I realized that I float between the types based on the content... If we are all honest I think we all drift between them, no? This was a very thought provoking article and for that I am thankful. Selina
divas says:

Amazing classification of commentors (or spammers)...I think I am a mixture of all of them :D
Prince says:

Comments posting is a good source for getting backlinks for a blogger and also good for the blog to be commented in this point that they have got a huge traffic with good bounce rate. You have described here the precautions for commentators are very useful and fruitful. Thanks..........Rohan.
Cosmin Stefan says:

Thank you, nice post! :D One other comment spammer I don't like is the "Keyword" spammer when there is no KeywordLuv installed on the site. It gets a bit ridiculuos when you are talking to "Make Bigger Muscles Online".
- Codrut says:
  
  Ha, ha. I used to do that years ago. I guess we can easily track spammers: e.g. people who only comment on ComLuv-enabled blogs... LOLRohan, I like the last graphic you included :)P.S. Imagine the one timer... going to a party, saying hello, but never chatting with anybody else afterward. Crazy, right?
Murugappan says:

Hey Rohan! Check out --> http://goo.gl/fbsS :P Haha, not to worry, that is linked to Google. No spam, I swear. :) Of late I can find many people, though not bots, using shortened URLs in comments, and show themselves as spammers. Thanks for sharing this great article!
Mavis Nong says:

Hey Rohan,Great description of comment spammers. Although I leave comments on several blogs, I don't think I spam.I always leave meaningful and relevant comments :)You're right, there'll always be spammers, just trash their comments!Thanks for sharing your insight, Rohan.All the best, Mavis
- Codrut says:
  
  I can vouch for you Mavis!I'd not call them spammers though, but people who don't know or ignore the blogging rules each blogger setup on their site.
Brankica says:

Hey Rohan, nice to see you on Famous bloggers :)I would add human spammers that post same comment on 25 and even 50 blogs. I had this situation on my blog when I found out that a guy sent the same comment 25 blogs. Not to mention that recently I got a comment that seemed genuine, I Googled it and it was posted on (believe it or not) 99 other blogs!!!!You made a really cool list here and named them with interesting names :)
- Codrut says:
  
  Brankica, I think people are hired by firms (or others) to post such comments, not sure if they're using bots or software tools. As it seems they could easily go past anti-spam filters. What do you think?
  - Brankica Underwood says:
    
    No, it was a human with a popular blog. I wrote about it on my blog
Alex says:

Hello Rohan (hmm, like the Rohan from Lord of the Rings? ), I think the knowledgeable one and the pseudo-intellect can't be considered spammers because they do participate to the conversation after reading the article and also they are on topic. Also, The One Timer, unfortunately I am guilty of this one too, but not because I went there just to get something, it's because those bloggers don't have a way of announcing the commenter that there are new replies to their comments. Also, I don't know about you but if I visit a blog I would like to receive an update if they have a new post(just one update and if I don't come back those updates should be discontinued). One great example would be to have some sort of plugin that thanks the commenter for leaving a comment and sending them a notification if they have a new reply. This should decrease those one time hitters.
Bican Valeriu says:

What can I say ? I like the article :D . But I really like it, not because I'm "The Thankful Spammer", just because I like the clasification of this spammers. I think the most "used" form of spam is "The Thankful Spammed"....I've seen a lot of comments like "Hy, nice post or Hy, awesome article. Thanks for sharing"
Sabrina says:

I try only to leave comments when I can relate to what’s being discussed in the post. I think that subscribing to a blog’s RSS can prevent being a onetime commenter. It definitely helps me that I get blog updates sent to my email to help keep up with what’s going on.
sm says:

3rd example is like my last comment. while commenting what i feel write it down as comment. if blogger answer it ,informs me then exchange of comment starts until both satisfied.
TJ McDowell says:

I try to leave quality comments and be a participant in the conversation. Sometimes, I feel it's more the blog's fault for the one-time comment and run scenarios though. If the blog doesn't have email-on-reply functionality set up correctly, it's tough to remember to check back frequently to look for replies.
AJ says:

I am the bot. haha :) Great post man. Actually I am not much of a commenter as I don't have much free time these days to follow other peoples blogs, but occasionally when I see a good post on my feed I check it out. Anyway, I pretty much only comment if I really like a post, find it funny, helpful or want to complain about something. Nice original article Rohan - this can be rare to find these days.
Gustavo says:

I think I'm all except for the bot and thankful spammer. I do comment on websites mainly that support keywordluv or/and commentluv plugin. The reason is not only because I get a backlink, but also because I get more comments on my site from the owners of those blogs (I have those plugins also). At the end, I contribute to keep their site to look alive by commenting on their posts and they also bring life to my blog when they comment on mine.
Mani Viswanathan says:

Thanks to the Conditional Captcha plugin, I don't have to deal much with spams. According to the stats it has captured/prevented around 50K Spam Comments. But still some commentators escape that & post something weird just for the sake of being listed in the Top Commentators Widget.
Justin Germino says:

Hot topic so let me put in my insight here, first of all "MOST" comments are spam, once your blog reaches a PageRank of 2+ then you will start noticing tremendous spam, once your site reaches PageRank4+ you will see 10x as much spam. Often you can weed out the spam by the comments, the friendly spammer is a good example. However realize that only other bloggers or commercial sites know or care to 'steal' backlinks. If you see a rather light comment but it has an email with no target URL or no keywords in the name, these are not likely to be spam. Secondly, if you use the GASP plugin this weeds out 99% of the bots as it requires a javascript enabled browser to post the comment, this is greatly helpful and reduces spam only to those who actually hit your site with a browser (human spammer instead of bot). But as a rule of thumb I almost always look at the target URL left by a commenter and it if is a bad site or URL or the comment is valid but clearly a link steal by leaving keywords instead of a real username then I will strip the URL out of the comment but let the comment approve without any outbound link. If commenter confronts I will tell them why and refer them to my commenting policy. As a site administrator and free speech believer I don't censor comments, however that doesn't mean I can't remove URL's and outbound links from the comments if I don't like where they link to or don't feel the commenter is nothing more than a link stealer. One note, I have many commenters who clearly just want the link, they link with keywords perfectly and link to a marketing or business website. But they engage the post and other readers as well as myself and I allow it because providing good and quality comments to a post is worth the exchange of a little link back and promotion in my opinion.
Ryan says:

I'm definitely a one-timer, which is bad because I usually ask questions in my comments too to create conversation. Generally I'll spend one or two mornings a week out in the blogosphere checking out blogs and leaving some comments as I go to posts I think are interesting (like this one). Although my intention is to possibly meet a few new bloggers and gain a few backlinks a lot of it has to do with just being respectful to the blogger by acknowledging their post and giving feedback. I do understand though, that most of us are motivated a bit by the "dark side" to want to spam and leave comments just for the backlinks. I guess if you're gonna spam, at least write well thought out spam!
Lennart Heleander says:

Hi Rohan, This with all the spam comments is something we has over the last weeks starting to write and talk about in many blogs, also here on Famousbloggers and that’s good because a good article with many good comments creates better depth and a view on the subject of the article is about and it is also the commentator job to clear and create quality instead of quantities of the comments.
Animesh says:

I would say wow! What and observation about commentators. I had read a similar article from one of my fellow bloggers. You can read it here. http://myworldmyperception.blogspot.com/2010/07/art-and-science-of-commenting.html I also experience such commentators on my blog and I have to accept that at one point of time I used to be "A thankful spammer". I have learnt with time and with my own experience and changed myself completely:) One of the reasons I see behind this online gyaan. You'll find a lot of articles on the net which ask you to comment on blogs and articles and leave your link there. This is used to increase your traffic. What they fail to mention is comment actually means sensible comment and not just nice comments. Some people learn it over time, some do not. I still face such commentators. Most interestingly, some of them are regular LOL. The day I post a new article, I find these loyal readers of mine which say, "Wow! Nice one". What do I call them? Spammers or fans?
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Commenting ethics is as important as having a moderation policy on a blog . Because people may not mean the best when they drop a negative feedback but it tarnishes the reputation of the blog in question nothing else ! Glad you pointed out that people are fed with the input that the more comments the more SERPs and in a bid to get more people start missing the whole point of dropping a comment is giving feedback , good or bad does not matter , its a personal choice but if you just "thank" people then that really leaves the author in a tricky situation :) Even worse than a negative feedback :) Thanks for dropping by :)
Shariq says:

lol According to you most of concentrators are spammer. Well done dude. Tell me about yourself.
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Ahh again , please don't kill my Iguana with heart attacks dude . He has put on make up just to be able to present the post lol read the content above his head !! Don't break the poor animals heart like this LOL As for your second query , its an evaluation to be done via introspection , not by pointing pinkies at each other . Still to make it fair for you , I would let you put any link on the entire web with a senseless comment from me . Makes sense ?
  - Shariq says:
    
    You have written a great post and I was just kidding. Your classification for people those make comments is really awesome.
Hemal Shah says:

I am sure that everyone appreciates comments. Except for mindless comments, a simple appreciation for anything that you wrote even for a back link is fine and I consider that good. However, its not that I support that idea. Everyone likes to have people leaving their genuine reviews about the post that you wrote. Its their way of thinking and you cant do much about it. I have had people coming to my website and leaving a link in the comment saying that visit my website as well. We should understand when we started off with our blog, some point in time we also did this. Appreciate people and visit their blog, post a genuine comment and am sure you will have that person coming back to your blog and realizing that he ought to write a better comment next time. Its true 90% of the times. If we change, the change will happen on the other end as well.
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  I like that "If we change, the change will happen on the other end as well." Appreciate your input Hemal :)
Moosa Hemani says:

lol... your post title stop me from reading as i found this a crap from the title but when i start reading this is really good. and Thank you for sharing that... I love the way you said 'over smart spammers' though its also rear in population... by this comment of mine you yourself decide what kind of spammer i am!! :)
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  WOW ! that is honest and I appreciate it :) The title and the post itself is not meant to judge the one who is reading it , infact it is a problem that everyone faces and that is what we feel when we see a comment that we categorize it . That is what the post is intended to be . It is a sarcastic title , don't know why people are taking it personally :) It is for each one to decide what their intention for commenting is ;) so no comments on that.... hhehe I appreciate your input thank you :)
  - Moosa Hemani says:
    
    lol... you are right and about the 2nd part i didn't took it personally infect i like the title so this is the one why of showing love :)
Patricia says:

Hi Rohan I have managed to keep spam mostly out of my comments. I'm sure I let through a few when I was first starting out. However, now if I get a new commenter on my blog, regardless of how much the comment contributes to the conversation, I always check out the blog site to make sure it is not just a spammy site or a bad neighbourhood. That way, community is being built and my readers add to the conversation. Some people will approve "great post" but I don't. And I comment on other people's blogs when I learn something or to acknowledge appreciation for the post. So as far as I can recollect, I don't spam ;-) Patricia Perth Australia
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Oh no you don't spam mam :) I have seen your comments on a lot of sites and those are the longest and the most relevant comments on the articles in concern :) Yes , perfect point mentioned there, even if a comment looks cool from the outside we need to check where it links to , otherwise we are inviting a big shiny penalty from the search engines for sure :) Thanks for dropping by :) And I appreciate your comment :)
  - Patricia says:
    
    Thanks Rohan for those kind word. We never know who will be reading out comments do we ;-) That's one way my small niche blog began to get traffic. I think people were intrigued by what this lavender lady was blogging about.....a single flower??!! Better go see for themselves lol Some of those bloggers are now very dear friends :-) Patricia Perth Australia
    - Rohan Pawale says:
      
      One correction for sure in your comment , Your site ,is in no way, a small site going by the present stats :) I think you have picked up the lavender niche as a pioneer if I am not mistaken . And it is better to know everything about something than to know something about everything , that is what a real expert is :)
Shiva says:

That is really an excellent categorization of commenters. Well, I really wonder which category I would fit in. I most of the time try to act like a knowledgeable kind and try to add comment which is of value to the post as well as reply back to all the replies but sometimes I can turn out to be a one timer too since I "May" not have subscribed to the follow up comments. The Thankful spammers are really irritating like you said, I wonder sometimes if those commenters know any words/lines in English Besides "Thank You". And Well the Pseudo Intellects, they are another kind of irritating people, come across a lot of them but it is indeed very essential to know how to handle people of that kind
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Yeah true ! And then I missed to mention a different kind lol but that is a different story which only 3 smartians over here know , maybe reading with a smirk ;) The reason people would want to subscribe to follow up comments is when a person knows he made a comment which demands and deserves a response . That is how comments should be in reality , I get your point :) Thanks for dropping by :)
Me says:

Thank you for the post. He's right. So much spam in blog comments, and it's annoying!
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Thanks for dropping by :)
Alicia Jay says:

Well, I see lots of comments on this post about comments;) I think you make a good point about the kind of commenter we all really want on our posts (ie: The Knowledgeable One). While it's nice to tell a blogger that they wrote a "nice post", or you "enjoyed reading" it's even better to explain why or add your own two cents. It's also okay if you don't always agree with the post, but I think it's important to say so respectfully to spark a HEALTHY conversation. We're all out here doing the same thing!
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Yeah, lot of comments about comments and comments on comments about comments :D I completely agree with you on what you said about adding 2 cents , while a person may have a different opinion , they must have the maturity to post it in the proper way and reason it out accordingly :) Its not too cool to appear as someone who has too many cents always ;) Healthy conversation ? yeah rare luxury ;) thanks for the feedback :)
TroyRoark says:

Thank you, nice post... I had to do it! I can't believe no one else has!
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Ahh nice spotting :) I appreciate that :) Thanks for dropping by :)
ptaylor98 says:

I'm enjoying the comments to this post. Whoops! I just posted this comment--does that make me a spammer?
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  No sir that does not make you a spammer at all , infact it makes you a very smart person to have commented again having realized that your last comment missed some comment LOVE ! OPSS ! LOL
Nikoya says:

I love this post... I'd hope to be the "Knowledgeable One", but I am sure we all would, right? :) At the rate my blog is going right now, I'd appreciate having any personality comment (minus the 2K Askimet spam) on my blog... maybe soon, its still a baby.
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Thats right Nikoya ! We all do :) Whether small or big , good comments are always welcome by any webmaster .
Delena Silverfox says:

I think I'm the One-Timer, or course it's by no deliberate intention. I follow as many blogs as I can, and respond to replies on my comments, but sometimes I can't keep up with the replies of replies and still keep a 6 month-old happy. So family comes first and juggling conversations on dozens of blogs just has to wait. Unfortunately. I'll work on it, though.
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  It does get difficult sometimes to track comments and reply to the replies (nice rhyme there ;) ) that is the point in having limited comments that are of good quality . If there are one liners all the way saying "thank you" , "nice post" and the blogger says "thanks for the comment" to and gets back a "you are welcome" from every commenter in return, then in no time there are dozens of comments to manage , it is bound to kill time ! Neither is it an ideal communication is it ?
- John says:
  
  I'm with you on that one - as much as I try to keep with replies and new blogs, it is really tough to stay up to date on comment replies and interesting articles. The Google RSS reader is a mixed blessing, because it is so great for finding new conversations, but pretty bad for keeping track of the older ones!
  - Rohan Pawale says:
    
    Appreciated :) good to have friends ;) yes , there seems to be a similar feeling of discomfort among many bloggers about notifications , either there are too many or there are none if we opt to not subscribe .
    - John says:
      
      New versions of Wordpress are pretty good about managing comment notification subscriptions, but there are a lot of websites where signing up to the comment updates will give you notice of hundreds of very very spammy messages with no way to unsubscribe. I've got at least a few of those junking up my inbox each day, but I'm trying to get over that annoyance for the sake of keeping up with the good conversations. I just hate having to blacklist email from domains that don't let you manage these subscriptions properly!
ptaylor98 says:

Great distinction between comment spammers. I'm just wondering what kind I am. If I read the entire list, it seems to me that any comment is spam. Is that really what you're suggesting? I would think that commenters who have at least read the post should be considered genuine, but your post doesn't seem to suggest that. Can you clarify?
- Rohan Pawale says:
  
  Yeah sure ! Important things first ! I think you just gave my Iguana a big heart attack ! Poor guy was sitting there as a 500 x400 pixel width big image with a nice and shiny header that depicts the last and the good kind of commenter, and still did not get noticed ! You would have noticed that , had you read through the entire post since your 'query' is already answered in the last point of the article ;) About considering what is genuine , how does a webmaster decide what is genuine and what is not ? Infact its fairly simple ironically ! I could go on a blog about rocket science , read what others are commenting , and still drop an apparently smart comment ! Does that help the discussion in any way ? No ! Spotted easily . Why is there a need to "fit in" the comment 'somehow' as a valuable comment with criteria like 'read the entire post ' . The point still holds good though , and i wish i had that luxury ! :D

What Kind Of Comment Spammer Are You ?

The Bot :

How often do we end up getting comments like these!

The Thankful Spammer

The One Timer

The Oversmart kinds

The Pseudo Intellectual

The Knowledgable One

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The Bot :

How often do we end up getting comments like these!

The Thankful Spammer

The One Timer

The Oversmart kinds

The Pseudo Intellectual

The Knowledgable One

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