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Lately, I’ve seen more and more comments coming into the lab and my other RE sites there were obvious to me the post hadn’t been read at all.
Today I ran across this “Free” tool for creating instant great backlinks to your site. The little video created to tell about this “tool” has some obvious mis-statements about how Google works. It also promotes this free tool as white hat. It could be, but more “Grey Hat” in the way it is being promoted.
It is a tool to “Troll” for keywords you want to rank for on blogs. Next you can use this tool to quickly fill in the comment required fields and leave a comment which will bring you wonderful “Google Juice”. The tool will indicate which blogs have no follow turned off. You want those blogs because they provide more juice than the ones with no-follow turned on.
But there is one thing they are not recommending, in fact they seem to blatantly thumb their nose at the idea of “READING THE POST”. Why would you want to read the post. After all you are only commenting to get backlinks.
Until now when I’ve seen comments that were obviously just trying to get backlinks (I knew they hadn’t read the post by the comment) I have dumped them in the spam folder. But not anymore.
Google isn’t the only one who can Black List
From now on any comments I see which are pure trolling for backlinks or it is obvious they have not read the post will have their email Black Listed. All comments will go directly to the trash for disposal.
One little thing they didn’t mention. IF YOUR COMMENT ISN’T APPROVED YOU DON’T GET ANY GOOGLE JUICE.
I would recommend to real estate bloggers.
- DO NOT USE COMMENT KAHUNA
- START BLACK LISTING BACKLINK TROLLS
- START BLACK LISTING PEOPLE WHO COMMENT BUT HAVEN’T READ THE POST
- CREATE A COMMENT POLICY (I think mine will be in the footer short and sweet)
Don’t Be a Juice Thief
The Google Juice I have is mine to share or give away. Try taking it without permission and you will be locked out.
Setting up a Comment Blacklist
Wordpress 2.5 Settings, Discussions
Before 2.5 Options, Discussions
Near the bottom of the page you will find “Comment Blacklist”
I’ve only used this for a couple of people in the past that seemed only have a four letter vocabulary, but I’m not afraid to put a black list into use.
Once again I find myself quoting my 5th grade science teacher. “A Word to the wise is sufficient”
Post Tags: Backlink Trolls , Comment Kahuna , Google Juice Thief
Technorati Tags: Backlink Trolls , Comment Kahuna , Google Juice Thief
Stumble it!
16 responses so far ↓
1 Steven // Apr 19, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Dave,
I got an e-mail last week telling me to download and use this program to build backlinks. I agree that it is gray hat at best. I don’t get that many comments on my blog. I just added the “do follow” plugin that you linked to on another post. I hope I don’t start getting comments because this software tells people I have a “dofollow”.
I think anyone who uses this will eventually get sent to the penalty box.
That troll is cool.
Steven
2 Dave Smith // Apr 20, 2008 at 6:11 am
Steven,
It takes time for comments to come. It was over a year before there were very many here at the lab.
The RE blogs I run still get very few comments during the course of a week. But has your content grows you will be found and comments will come.
3 James // Apr 21, 2008 at 6:56 am
People should show some respect and read the blog post if they are going to comment. If your getting a good back link to your site at least speed read what your commenting about. People just want to take, take, take. You give em an inch they take a yard.
I haven’t ran across this tool yet but I’m sure it would be helpful if used properly. People could use to tool to find good blogs that don’t have the “no follow” tag. Then they can actually read the post and make a thoughtful comment about it.
I know its annoying but people are always going to try and get over on ya.
JB
4 Dan // Apr 21, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I am wondering if Google could just use these types of service as part of their algo and say any blogs within this network will not pass link juice in their comments. Is this possible?
5 Dave Smith // Apr 21, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Dan,
Nice thought but not possible. It is a standalone program that auto fills the fields. No way to track the origin.
6 Marc Rasmussen // Apr 22, 2008 at 11:41 am
I’m one of those guys….kinda. I found your blog through a dofollow search in the new Google beta search. I didn’t really know this existed but a friend of mine showed me.
So now I am writing a comment for a little link juice but I did read your post as well as a few others. Great blog.
7 Dave Smith // Apr 22, 2008 at 11:49 am
Marc,
Recognize you from REW. The way you are “Trolling for link juice” is different from being a “Link Juice Troll”.
Checking for sites with topics you are interested in and noting the ones with do follow enabled then reading and leaving a comment that contributes to the discussion is in my opinion a valid approach to Trolling for Link Juice. Thanks for dropping by.
8 Marc Rasmussen // Apr 22, 2008 at 11:56 am
Dave,
That was a fast response. I love it.
I am glad you don’t classify me as a “Link Juice Troll”. I will keep checking back to read more good posts. Keep up the good work.
9 Dave Smith // Apr 22, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Marc,
LOL, I’m finishing up a do followup : ) post right now and you are a featured part of the post.
Talk about gathering some juice.
10 Marc Rasmussen // Apr 22, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Great. I look forward to reading it.
11 Ki Gray // Apr 23, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Whats wierd about this whole “comment with reading a post” thing is I think I get way more value out of reading post than I ever get out of link juice from a comment. I get a lot of those comments on my blog as well.
Or comments along the lines of “great post about the market. everyone should use my great home staging services”.
12 Marc Rasmussen // Apr 23, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I try to leave interesting comments that will promote a discussion. It is annoying to see people leave generic comments just to get a link to their site.
I get them every now and then on my blog and usually do not approve them. I believe my Blogger blog is has a nofollow command. I am planning on getting a new REW blog. Perhaps I will make it dofollow.
13 Karl // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:15 pm
That is one ugly Orc. I have been getting a lot of multiple spam messages on my blog lately. They will spam multiple articles on my blog. I have been blacklisting those IP addresses. I haven’t had any comments from people who have not been reading the blog, but if I do, yours is good advice.
14 Boston Condo Blog // Apr 28, 2008 at 8:12 am
The idea of a comment policy is a good one. Ever since we moved ‘latest comments’ above the fold, our comment levels have picked up, which is great, the blog is more valuable with constructive input from legitimate readers. However, we do see an occasional “troll” backlink, and the idea of blacklisting them is fair. Blatant spam has been entirely handled on our blog by use of the spambam plugin (fyi to bloggers looking for a solution).
15 StevePark // May 5, 2008 at 2:38 am
Hi Dave, this is my first visit to Realestatebloglab. I found your site with a google search like .
I`m only using it for a couple of days and was trying to figure out if there’s any chance of getting banned by google for the comments I posted. I DO read the posts, and then try to post something related to the content, like an idea or question. I’m also putting links to other pages of my website instead of just the domain name.
Guess this way I can`t get banned by google, can I? Nice article, and, if I may give you a suggestion for a future article, something about using social media websites like stumbleupon, reddit,digg, etc would be very interesting, as many webmasters use them to drive huge amount of traffic to their sites. For now I’m only using Stumbleupon, my stumble ID is stevepark, if any of you want to get in touch.
Cheers
16 Dave Smith // May 5, 2008 at 6:56 am
Steve,
No Google won’t ban you for using Comment Kahuna Whew, sigh of relief. But individual sites will put you on the blackmail list if they feel you are comment spamming.
The way you are using it, is what I would consider the best way to use it. Find content you are interested in read it, then leave a comment that contributes to the topic or discussion.
I’ve never used any of the social media sites, so I’m not a good one to write about them.
You see, if you have monetized your blog and are making money from adsense then traffic is what it is all about. Get those clicks on those ads and make some change.
But most RE blogs are not monetized. So for us we don’t care about traffic as traffic. We want focused traffic which you don’t get from those sites usually.
I too have a stumbleupon account but have no idea my ID and haven’t done any “stumbling” for months.
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