Tons of bogus comments

susann said 2 years, 3 months ago:

We are getting lots of on one of our blog posts
that are “fake”..they make no sense and come
from strange sources. Can anyone explain this
and what do we do about it?

jeremyt said 2 years, 3 months ago:

The comments you have described sound like some type of SPAM. You should consider marking the comments as SPAM, and blacklisting the commenter. The following help article explains how to do this:

http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/3149

susann said 2 years, 3 months ago:

Thanks for your quick reply. I have tried that..it
takes tons of time and each new comment is from a
different source. Blocking one that has come in does
not seem to be preventing a new one from coming in
the next day. What can we do??

MimiMeredith said 2 years, 3 months ago:

It doesn’t matter if you block IP and Email addresses all day long, once the spammers find one post to latch on to, they attack in waves. I’ve asked other bloggers and no one who has spam filters (which we supposedly have on QuickBlogcast) has this kind of issue. I have tried moderating comments (highly poor practice for those who want to grow their blogs); I have tried not posting new posts for a week. Nothing works. I would be happy to share the comments with GoDaddy if they’d be willing to improve their spam filters to catch these comments. Ironically, this was the subject of my blog post today!

big_dip said 2 years, 3 months ago:

I’m having the same problem.

susann said 2 years, 3 months ago:

I talked to GoDaddy on the phone yesterday and the
woman was nice, but did not have any ideas for a solution and the whole situation seemed new to her, like she had never heard of it. I asked if it could be an automated spammer and she said each comment would have to individually entered on our blog. I find that impossible to believe…they all come from very unusual names at “gmail” addresses..there aren’t that many individuals out there typing weird blog comments to us!! She said the traffic to our blog is a good thing, even if I don’t approve the comments to show up on the blog post…is she right?

MimiMeredith said 2 years, 3 months ago:

She probably meant that more traffic to your blog increases its visibility with search engines, which is what you try to do strategically with Search Engine Optimization. However, spam is not a good thing, regardless. If you moderate comments to keep the spam comments from being visible, then “real” comments decrease because people don’t have the sense of interaction that good blogs provide. If you leave comments open, all the recent spam comments people see look ridiculous and make your blog community appear to be a bunch of knuckleheads! A spam I deleted yesterday said, “Great post Nick!” I was told by a GoDaddy representative that they never meant QuickBlogcast to be interactive. They meant for it to be an online journal type of forum. However…it’s sold as a blog application. Regardless, I think it’s the lowest priority of anyone in their organization. I keep saying I’m switching to WordPress, but here I am on GoDaddy’s forum whining…so obviously I have issues of my own . Good luck to all of us!

eds40 said 2 years, 3 months ago:

Hello, and sorry to hear about your spam troubles. One thing that can give you a clue as to how these spammers are finding your blog is to look at your Blog Statistics. If you look under Visitor Interaction > Statistics then follow the link under Detailed Statistics for Traffic you can see where the spammers are coming from and how they find your post. Look at Top Search Terms as well as the links under your Top Entry Traffic. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that can be done outside of moderating all comments to prevent spammers from finding your site. As you’ll see, spammers use the same search engines to find your site as your target audience, so it’s a bit of a double edged sword.

Hope this helps!
EDS

MimiMeredith said 2 years, 3 months ago:

I for one, have done that as well as monitoring trackbacks which can be a portal for spammers as well. Here’s the thing: these comments are getting through. Perhaps one out of 10 is caught by GoDaddy’s spam filter. I would guess I–with a relatively light page view rate–get between 15 and 30 a day. The numbers have jumped dramatically in the month of January. I don’t think we’re just randomly complaining about spam here. I recognize the pitfalls of having an internet presence, but I don’t think I should have to spend this much time marking, blocking and deleting spam IP addresses and emails. It seems that since I’m reporting an increase in spam, but don’t have a corresponding increase in “good” visitors; GoDadddy should want to help me…its customer…by at least checking into the situation.

susann said 2 years, 3 months ago:

Thank you for all your responses…perhaps with so many of us being frustrated, GoDaddy will take a look! I guess for now I’ll have to review all comments and only allow the few that seem legitimate. Do other blogsites have mechanisms set up for their bloggers to avoid this problem? If so, perhaps I’ll to consider switching too!

big_dip said 2 years, 3 months ago:

This is my first blog, and would be interested in anyone’s experience on another platform. Does this kind of spam happen regularly? Also, I’m intrigued by MimiMeredith’s comment that GoDaddy “never meant QuickBlogcast to be interactive.” I wish I’d known that before I signed up!

chrisg said 2 years, 3 months ago:

I wish to thank all members who have posted in regards to this matter. I have reviewed this concern with our advanced support who has confirmed additional reports of spam comments being received through our Quick Blogcast services.

As we are aware of this, our advanced support teams are working to address these concerns as quickly as possible. In the meantime; if any other community members begin to experience an unusual increase in spam comments, do let us know by posting your Quick Blogcast site that is encountering this traffic.

Christopher G.

Richardhc said 2 years, 3 months ago:

http://superyacht-career-training.com/
Same problem – some suggestions -
1. have an option to create a profile for people who want to post – like on this forum
2. make all people who want to post register and jump through the email verification loop.
3.the posts on our site look like they are done by (semi) human beings but the captcha is extremely clear and easy to read so maybe a bot could do it.
The comment about blogs not being interactive – what are we to think of such a silly statement? This is not what godaddy customers expect from you guys.

MimiMeredith said 2 years, 3 months ago:

Thank you so much for your sincere and direct response Chris! Here is a post that gets a great deal of spam traffic. There are others that consistently get hit as well: http://blog.thegoodnessgrows.com/2010/10/02/is-passion-an-essential-quality-of-leadership.aspx

Thank you for your attention!

TinaC said 2 years, 3 months ago:

All -
If you have a Deluxe or Premium Quick Blogcast account, there is an Akismet SPAM filter available that can be set to auto-delete spam comments. You can try enabling this if you have not already. Here is a Help article to walk you through that process.
http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/5157
I hope this helps.