A random visitor, Paul, left a comment on my What is bumburbia post from the other day.  This is a comment I’ve received emails about, so I figure I’d address it here.  When people have blogs that receive little traffic (they’re new, or they’re niche topics, or Google hasn’t taken them out of the sandbox yet), it’s usually a surprise to find that only one or a small number of posts get spam, while others go unnoticed by the spambots out there.  Paul asked:

 

Here’s a question: I notice that about 80% of the spam comments I get are all going to one post. Do any of you notice anything similar, or have any idea why that might be the case? I have enough posts by now that it’s not like that’s the only thing on there for someone to spam.

 

Spambots look for posts for a variety of reasons.  One big attraction for the typical bot are pages with a high Google Pagerank.  You can view a page’s Pagerank with any of the popular Google Pagerank tools.  Check the posts specifically to see what their Pagerank is.  Pagerank can be lifted sometimes just by Wordpress’ endless inbound linking to itself, or when other blogs or sites link to you.

Another thing Spambots look for are posts that land on Google’s top search pages, even as far down as the 10th page (the 90-100th hit for a search).  Even if your main site is still in the so-called Google Sandbox, you may have individual pages that are indexed because of being linked to from other sites.

Also, pages that contain certain keywords may be targetted if they’re indexed by other, less popular search engines.  It’s hard to know WHY your page got targetted.

What you can do is use your site’s access log, and try to match up when your spam comment was left versus who left it.  Usually you can find referrer data (how they found your site, what search engine and terms they used, etc), and discover why one page is more popular than another.

The upside of spam comments is that by finding you, they’re actually telling you that a particular page has more notoriety over another.  It can sometimes be a good idea to work on posting MORE information on that given topic in the future, and using internal links between pages to give yourself some reputation.  Why?  If spammers are searching and finding your page, real readers might, too.  And through advertising sponsorships, you could get a few extra pennies here and there, thanks to the spammers for doing some hard work for your site.

Related posts:

1. What is bumburbia?
2. Ugly Wordpress Theme
3. G.U.N. Comments Feed
4. Online advertising income down, or just scattered?
5. A response to praying at the pump comments
6. Libertarian newsfeeds
7. Dada is back! (Sort of)
8. Tribune Company Bankruptcy: It still doesn’t matter
9. Google is NOT making their own web browser
10. The Corporation versus the State: Go Target!