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A Hacker News thread has an interesting post about some of the templates comment spammers use to inject those almost, but not really, real but spammy comments on your site. You know what I mean, if you read them, they will look like a real person wrote them but they make absolutely no sense in the context of the blog post.
To an untrained eye, they often are left on the blog but they are really spam.
You'd think that stuff would be automated but one person in the thread said that a "large marketing company" would hire teams of interns at minimum wage to write up these things throughout the day. The content then would be used to spam Google and other sites.
When this guy posted about it, Matt Cutts of Google, their head of search spam, asked "What's the company" that does this?
Typically, it is hard to get Matt Cutts to personally review spam but Matt is an active user on Hacker News - for now - and it may be your best bet. That is until SEOs and webmasters are flock there and flood it with questions for Matt.
The thing is, you never know what Matt will read and response to on Hacker News, let alone other sites on the internet.
Forum discussion at Hacker News.
Image credit to BigStockPhoto for spam factor
Comments:
newyorker_1
04/23/2013 12:51 pm
looking at their Alexa rank, this site took terrible hit this year. Probably some kind of penalty...http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com
Guest
04/23/2013 12:59 pm
looking at their alexa details, this site was penalized for something in first quarter. Ironic Matt Cutts is very active there...
Anti-SEO
04/23/2013 01:11 pm
A lot of content websites were hit on this date. Squidoo changed their link policy to nofollow after this hit.
Guest
04/23/2013 01:13 pm
Ironic, MC is very active there...
Anti-SEO
04/23/2013 01:27 pm
It just shows, that there is no immunity like Big-Brand or Loved-by-MC. All are equal in front of algo.
keaner
04/23/2013 02:27 pm
"All are equal in front of algo." HAHA yeah and its raining pigs outside too, also I have a bridge to sell ya. :)
Michael Martinez
04/23/2013 02:52 pm
Hacker News is a horrible, crappy Website. I don't understand why anyone with a tech degree would put up with such an awful user experience. I guess they just hand out diplomas to anyone these days.
Gregory Smith
04/23/2013 05:21 pm
:) Lovely comment Michael...
Gregory Smith
04/23/2013 05:22 pm
Great response!
Alex Garrido
04/23/2013 07:30 pm
Hacker news is not about "user experience". It is about getting hardcore content fast, straightforward and without ads or unnecessary bluff. I love how simple it is and how good it is at finding great content through the day.
newyorker_1
04/24/2013 07:26 am
recovery time from penalty might be "slightly" shorter for brands than for non-brands.
Fedor
04/24/2013 01:05 pm
Agreed. I hate going there but sometime you have to.
CandleForex
05/16/2013 10:21 pm
Maybe he is just a sleeper?