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Is Cuil, the new search engine that seems to have lost momentum, trying to bring brand awareness back to the forefront by adding spam comments to blogs? That's what I'd say -- after all, they spammed my blog:
And that's also what forum members have caught. A Sphinn submission points to a blog post where it's obvious that I'm not the only one who was a victim of the Cuil spam. Even WebmasterWorld forum members are a bit shocked.
On my flickr screenshot (click the image above for the link), Brad from Cuil writes the following:
Hey Tamar, it actually isn't us (Cuil) posting the spam. We are as against spamming as you. We'll be doing a blog post later today to clear things up.
And just as promised, the Cuil team has written a blog post to publicly inform the community that it's not them either.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.
Comments:
Samantha
12/18/2008 05:44 pm
Yeah, but is it a marketing firm they hired? I worked at one place where we had hired a marketing firm and they were doing comment spam on our behalf. I was personally against it, but didn't have much say in the matter until later when I had more authority. The thing that people like this will tell you is that "we're still learning what works and what doesn't in online marketing" - um yeah, but it seems that using social media in a way that's clearly spammy can't and won't work and can actually harm your brand.
Michael Martinez
12/18/2008 06:38 pm
No reputable marketing firm would resort to comment spam. It is foolish and naive of people in the SEO community to point fingers at Cuil over the comment spam. These accusations and criticisms display a real lack of judgement among SEOs. People need to learn how to analyze their server log files all over again and stop resorting to conspiracy theories.
Saad Kamal
12/18/2008 07:28 pm
They are the members of culi fanatic club...
Randolf
12/25/2008 11:26 am
Why don't people do some basic research before only assuming it might be CUIL themselfes? Your screenshot shows 213.239.236.132 as the originating IP. http://whois.to/213.239.236.132 shows this IP hosted at dedicated server company Hetzner is owned by german "DTmedia GmbH Event- & Medienagentur" A further google search http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=213.239.236.132 shows that this IP comment-spammed many other URLs as well: http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_213.239.236.132 (the usual motel and phentermine stuff)