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I’m thinking about creating a designation for Comments in an effort to make managing comments easier. I’m doing this for two reasons.
Do Follow SEO Lists
There are now multiple lists of blogs which allow or use “do follow” on their blogs comments. These list have lead to an increase in what I refer to as comment spam. These are comments like “Great Post” “Wow, I really got a lot out of this” “Your blog has a lot of useful information” You get the idea. These are usually posts using keyword spamming (taught to them by the same SEO guru publishing the list) in the Name field. Another sure sign of this kind of spam comments are the ever changing urls used in a string of comments left one after another in a short period of time.
As I wrote earlier in the post on Lucia’s Link Love Plugin you can set a limit to the number of character acceptable in the name field to trip a switch and remove the “do follow” from the comment. I like this and find it helpful. I’ve recently heard some “SEO types are saying this selective do follow will be penalized by Google” Hum, why would they do this? But, if they do, then there will be on do follow plugins activated, or all comments of this type will be deleted in moderation, better yet, these types of comments will be designated “SPAM” and Askimet will flag any comment by this author as such.
Active Rainers Let Loose on The Blogosphere
I recently joined Active Rain because of an assignment for REBlogworld in Las Vegas. I find Active Rain to be the best peer to peer industry related social network and forum bar none. I say this without malice, it is the closest thing to a Real Estate Blogging Cult there is. They even call themselves Rainers. They comment with abandon for “points” for both posts and comments. It is like a giant RE Video Pinball parlor where you can rack up points for just about anything and get your name put on the “Highest Scores Board”. It is the Place of Virtual Real Estate Life.
However, I’ve discovered they don’t always stay confined inside that life. Some of them inadvertently venture out into the Blogosphere and view leaving mundane comments on do follow blogs as another type of “Point System”. (Rich I wrote this just for you, I thought you might be missing Active Strain : )
The LBC Designation for Comments
Therefore, I’ve decided to create a Link Back Comment or LBC designation for comments. If you are commenting on a blog and it is just for a link back, use the LBC at the beginning of your comment to designate it as such. It is like using a hashtag on Twitter.
This will save you the time of reading the post. (Which most don’t anyway). It might also keep your comments from being reported as spam instead of simply being deleted. If you are in need of a link back because you don’t have the time to create quality content yourself then using the LBC in front of your comments might get more of them published on blogs.
It also tells readers of a post and the comments associated with the post they can skip this comment since it isn’t really adding to the discussion in any manner it is just a self serving comment for the LBC author.
This will make it easier for legitimate readers since they will not have to wade through these mundane self serving comments to get to those that really do contribute to the discussion.
Here is an example:
“LBC Great post, you really said a lot of interesting things here.”
Bolding the LBC is optional, it might be a good idea however to make it easier to spot for readers so they can skip it.
There might be a few LBC bloggers that read this and I would like you to leave a real comment on the idea and not an LBC comment.
I would also like to hear what other bloggers think about the idea. Would you approve LBC comments? Would you use them as a quick way to identify comments to delete or send to Askimet Spam? Is it just a bad idea and we all need to learn to live with mundane comment spam and the occational Rainer that escapes.
If you’ve read this far what do you think? Is my tongue firmly planted in cheek? How many times did you smile as you read this, how many times did you laugh out loud? If you should get an LBC designated comment would you be willing to share it or just delete it and keep on smiling?
