Flattery Will Get You…Clicks?
The other day I was looking through my spam comments so I could empty them out. They all looked pretty much the same, except for the very last one. It was from Randy and it said:
“I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.”
I thought, “WOW! Somebody searched on Google and came across my blog and liked it so much they subscribed. A total stranger. Holy cow!”
Well, I’ve been excited ever since. I started dreaming of publishing contracts and book tours. I couldn’t wait for my new career as a writer to start. And to think I was going to waste all that time and money on an MBA?!
Then tonight Heidi was showing me her blog and we were talking about some technical things she wanted me to do. Then she mentioned she was going through her spam comments and found one that happened to be legitimate that got caught. She emailed the person and apologized to her, telling her how sorry she was that her email got caught. Then she added a reply in the comments to the post.
Heidi told me the woman said she found Heidi searching on Google and was interested in her posts and had subscribed.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s great! I had the same thing happen to me!”
…
“Let me see that comment, Love,” I said. She pulled it up and then she pulled up my post with the now suspect comment. Yup, identical. They linked to different sites but they had similar looks and feels. And the sites had a few posts and then huge blogrolls linking to all kinds of different, unrelated sites. Total spam.
I have to admire their creativity, though. The whole thing looks legit in every way and I totally bought it. Kudos to Akismet, our comment spam catcher, though. It wasn’t having any of it.
(Incidentally, if you Google that comment, it shows up 757 times!)
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funny, miscellaneous | m | 
February 24, 2008 10:22 pm
By Heidi, February 24, 2008 @ 10:25 pm
They totally played on our pride–how funny!
By m, February 24, 2008 @ 10:26 pm
Pride?! I have no pride! I am perfectly humble.
By Charlotte, February 25, 2008 @ 5:41 am
Don’t feel bad guys - I’ve had that happen to me too and was similarly fooled! It was a funny post though Mark! Thanks. How are you liking feedburner? It’s my new best friend:)
By m, February 26, 2008 @ 11:41 am
@Charlotte: Really, the same type of comment, etc? Well, I feel better, then…:)
Re: Feedburner, I like it a lot. I found out I had way more subscribers than I thought. So, I’ll be posting more!