So I managed to get a listing from Project Honeypot on all the latest nasty activity and it shows the whole C class is up to no good and gives us an idea of the numbers this person has spammed. If you want to support Project Honeypot you can install the WP-Honeypot plugin which will help you fight comment SPAM.
I’ve noticed a HUGE increase today in spam coming from these four IP’s(94.102.60.150, 94.102.60.151
94.102.60.152, 94.102.60.153) which are originating from Amsterdam. To me it looks like someone is testing out a new comment spam tool and it’s now being reported across the Internet. I’ve already seen some active topics about this spammer from other bloggers and I’d like to here if any of you are experiencing the same thing. All the posts are generated from a random name and email but all are producing a weird “hash” mixed with numbers and letters.
My guess is that this person is gather a giant list of all the spammable WordPress blogs and we will soon be hit with an even larger comment spam attack. I know that the digital world is just coming over the hump of Xrumer spam, but I hope you all block these IP’s within wordpress to avoid getting dropped into some spammers comment list. You can use your .htaccess to block IP addresses, and if you don’t know how to do that click on this link for a tutorial. I’ve got over 20 postings just today from the same three ip addresses so it seems like things are heating up.Here are a few blog posts on the topic as well another good look at some of the SPAM;
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/217088
http://newyorktraveler.net/getting-spammed-like-crazy-today/
http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/wordpress-comment-spam-from-amsterdam/
Busby SEO Test or Busby SEO SPAM Test
I used two different tools to analyze the backlinks of the first two listed there, Yahoo Site Explorer and Backlink Watch. It took me no longer than a few minutes to sell all the blog comments these contestants have used, as well a bunch of other link spamming on sites such as DeviantArt. Now the way these contestants have used questionable tactics is not something you’d want to do for a client, or even for your own site. In the long run Google will catch onto this but for now there’s no doubt that anchor text is still the number one way to rank.
So go ahead and check out some of the contestants links from DeviantArt, blog comments and link exchanges. The comments left behind on blogs are the usualy one liners “thanks for the great information” which defeats the whole purpose of commenting on blogs, and is now a form of spam. This kind of link building gives us all a bad name.
So without getting too nasty or diving in any more into this silly contest what are your thoughts? Am I being rude and unfair? Have you been spammed by a contestant and want to vent? There is a positive and that is the example and real world results you can see from link building, good or bad.