OK, so Google have tried to do something about comment spam. (Yahoo and MSN are in on it too, it seems) The idea is that comment spam is mainly done to improve the PageRank of a particular website, so Google are going to stop using links in blog comments to feed their PageRank algorithm.
It sounds like a good idea in principal, but am I missing something? This will only work if two things happen. First, ALL blogs will have to adopt the technique. Secondly, the low-life, smelly, goodfernutthin’ scum that actually do the spamming have to realise it’s going on.
I can’t really comment on how completely the idea will be adopted, other than to say it’s very doubtful I will be upgrading this instance of MT any time soon.
But even if everyone did patch straight away, I don’t think it would make a jot of difference.
You see, MT has had a little feature since at least version 2.661 (released sometime in the 18th Century, I believe), whereby links in comments are fed through a redirect, stripping them of any googlejuice. But I still get spam. It’s entirely pointless spam because it won’t be raising anyone’s PageRank but it’s still there. All it does is raise my blood pressure once in a while (and Mike’s too, it seems)
So, thanks Google – it’s good to see someone big trying to sort out the problem, but I don’t think this particular attack is going to work.
(My answer would be to round up all the gits and ship them off to some distant moon together, so that they can annoy each other to their hearts’ discontent. Until they run out of air… But that’s just me.)
Buy your l0w pr|ced med5
Hi man – I hear you. Doesn’t MT have options to queu e comment publications, or verify users and the like? Or is that the hammer on the nut approach? Long live proper free (as in beer) non profit solutions and free choice I say (o:
…and while I am at it…. WHO BUYS THIS STUFF to make it a proffitable past time to send junk mail, spam comments, and invest general time and effort in attempting to circumvent the protection mechanisms; maybe we need to round up those people too and award them all a clue each?
Ahh, I believe the newer version of MT will let you do that… but that would mean signing up to their lovely new licensing agreement (including not having more than one author unless you pay).
And I don’t think it’s the actual 1ow-pr|c3d-m3dz vendors doing the spamming; I reckon it’s those ‘Search Engine Optimizers’ (sic) that promise to do ‘top-secret voodoo’ to improve your google ranking (so it doesn’t matter if nobody buys the junk, google just has to index my pages…). I say again, to the moon with them!