I think it pretty clearly is. But if so, it's such a bad sales tactic, I really can't imagine what somebody was thinking? I've had Akismet running almost a week, and it's caught 42 spam comments.

One of them is to a post called The Cascade Loop; it's a beautiful and popular route through the local mountains and back home. Most of my spam targets a different post, so at least this one gets points for originality. But looses them for stupidity:

Online Travel Guide…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

The username is Online Travel Guide, or optimized anchor text. It's a no follow link, but I've read the text association still counts with most engines. Anyway, the spam filter caught it either by url or ip.

Why would someone spam a bunch of blogs in their field saying they don't understand what they claim to be an expert about? Wouldn't it be a better move to show people you know what you're talking about, than to tell them you're an idiot?

</rant>

Sounds like spam. Don't know how he could find something interesting if he doesn't understand it.

BTW, I wouldn't trust anyone with a username such as "Online Travel Guide"

Definitely looks like spam. I don't think that they would just say that they don't get, a real reader would say what they didn't get.

Forrest if their name is in bold at the top then it's definitely spam. It's just automated stuff. They make the comments generic enough so they seem like they could be real.

They can make it an obvious sales pitch because they know most of it will get deleted. It only takes them a few minutes to send that same comment out to thousands of blogs and they know some of them will get through. When you figure in the number of links they will get for the total amount of time they actually spend sending them they still get a positive ROI.

Yeah, it's amazing how much you can fit through a T1, or even just a regular, home broadband account with a good bot. I was a little thrown by the travel connection, since that's legitimately part of what my site is about, but then just the name - and hence the link it would get if it made it through - seems pretty optimized...

Anyway, I've deleted the comment and marked it as spam.

i would say spam also

i agree with the guys above me, something smells fishy about that, and i consider it to be spam. spam is getting worse unfortunately for us all

Hold up...just because Akismet flags it as spam doesn't necessarily mean it is spam.

I've seen perfectly legitimate comments from people (one of whom actually posts in this forum, has a well-deserved reputation for helping others, and hates spam almost as much as I do) that were flagged by Akismet. Remember, it's algorithmic.

Here's how I would handle the situation...approve the comment, but remove the link. Ask some questions pertaining to the comment. If you see an intelligent answer, then allow the link too. That way, if it's spam you haven't hurt yourself at all, but if it's a potential regular user you've done at best minimal damage to your rep in that regard.

Adam I agree. I use Spam Karma 2, but it will also flag some legit comments sometimes.

However, in this case I'm pretty sure it's spam. It's the bolded keyword heading that does it for me. I've seen that enough times to know it's spam. I don't think the Online Travel Guide is part of the name the person used on the link, but rather it's the first line of the comment.

I get things like that every day or two and have learned it's not legit.

* points up to Forrest's first post *

He said it was the "name" of the poster.

I look at this like I look at Vasity...he's a spammer and a dumbass, but if he wants to post on my blog I let him, after removing his bgod.net links of course.

I was thinking the 'name' was in addition to the bolded heading, but you may be right.

The one thing about letting spammers post even without the link is that other people still see the comment. It could turn away legitimate comments. It's one thing to leave a comment that disagrees with the post, but it's different when it's spam.

Also spammers generally aren't as concerned with the seo value of the link in a blog comment. They're looking for people to actually click the link so nofollow or not they still get what they want.

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

I think it pretty clearly is. But if so, it's such a bad sales tactic, I really can't imagine what somebody was thinking? I've had Akismet running almost a week, and it's caught 42 spam comments.

One of them is to a post called The Cascade Loop; it's a beautiful and popular route through the local mountains and back home. Most of my spam targets a different post, so at least this one gets points for originality. But looses them for stupidity:



The username is Online Travel Guide, or optimized anchor text. It's a no follow link, but I've read the text association still counts with most engines. Anyway, the spam filter caught it either by url or ip.

Why would someone spam a bunch of blogs in their field saying they don't understand what they claim to be an expert about? Wouldn't it be a better move to show people you know what you're talking about, than to tell them you're an idiot?

</rant>

I think this is also a spam. Writing your name in a bold one and have an a link on it.

Sounds like spam to me