Good Bye Spam! Welcome Quality Comments!

April 23, 2008

Shock! Horror! I suddenly stopped ranking for many keywords in Google SERPs.

I noticed yesterday that Google, that had been sending me 200+ visitors daily, started pretending as though I didn’t even exist. I can’t figure out why it happened. Maybe it’s just some algorithmic change and I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill, but it’s equally possible that Google thinks I’m selling text link ads.

I’ve been creating web sites for four years, and I know if a site all of a sudden drops from all its rankings, there’s definitely something wrong.

So maybe Google thinks I’m selling links below the deceptively titled heading “Top Commenters”?

It’s not very unlikely as recently some folks have been trying to misuse my Top Commenters list by putting keywords where they should be writing their bloody names.

Right! That’s what you give a good guy in return for him giving his precious readers some link love. I’ve now decided to remove the Top Commenters list so all you spammers can go find yourself.. err.. another good guy?

But losing Google rankings is not the only reason I’ve removed Top Commenters widget.

One quality comment > a lot of useless spammy comments

I’m beyond that phase now when I wanted anyone to comment even if they mildly spammed. It happens. When you start a new blog, you desperately want people to drop by your blog, and want even more desperately to have someone leave you a comment.

However, as a blog evolves, the blogger gains more experience, and realizes the value of having a quality readership, he/she stops caring about numbers alone. Increasing subscriber count and comment count by any means possible aren’t important to them anymore.

Well, I think I no longer welcome useless junk in comments anymore, left only to get some link juice from my blog. I still welcome each and every comment, but if you want to advertise your keywords, please.. here’s the door.

Ah… I feel much better now!

For now, I’m showing my Twitter updates in place of top commenters list. Be sure to follow me on Twitter so we can chat in the best open messenger in the world!

I still feel I should reward all of you who take the time to write comments on Blogging Bits. So if you have a suggestion as to how should I do that, please chime in.

Tags: Google, Readership, search engines, seo, SEO Tips

26 comments so far and counting

Easton EllsworthApril 23rd, 2008
Mohsin, it could just be a temporary Google shake-up of the algorithm. Watch it for a week or so and see how your rankings are doing.

I’m planning to post today at my blog about high-quality commenting, so this post is a good reminder to me of just how much more valuable good comments are than the common “thanks, nice post, goodbye, here’s my site, visit it” comments.
MohsinApril 23rd, 2008
Easton, it’s possible. But honestly, my gut feeling is that I’ve been penalized for a crime I didn’t commit!

OK, could be that I’m bitter because another site of mine stopped ranking for a major keyword, and as a result, lost half of its traffic, but as you said, I’ll wait and see if I regain my rankings.

But my decision to remove top commenters list to discourage spam comments is still right, isn’t it?

I’m looking forward to reading your post about high-quality comments.
Easton EllsworthApril 23rd, 2008
If the top commentator links had the nofollow tag on them, I don’t think you would be penalized by Google for that. You might want to contact them via Webmaster Tools to make sure there isn’t some other kind of problem. I certainly can’t see any reason why you’d be penalized. As long as you’re not selling links that pass PageRank or linking to “bad neighborhoods” or putting out duplicate content (which I know you’re not), you should be fine.

But it’s better to be safe than sorry, so it’s can’t hurt to take down the top commentator list for now.
MohsinApril 23rd, 2008
Yep, they passed pagerank.

But as I said, Google is not the only reason I removed the widget. If someone wants to comment on a certain post, they are most welcome. But if all they are looking for is link juice, well, too bad for them, I don’t dish out free links anymore.
rjleamanApril 23rd, 2008
Mohsin, I took the Top Commentators list off one of my sites about two weeks ago, fed up with spam comments and frankly begrudging the time to moderate them. Hadn’t considered the potential for Google penalties – didn’t even begin to think of it until I read your post here this morning – but I’ve gradually been coming to the conclusion that anything with the *potential* to serve spammers more than readers is likely to be frowned on by the Big Goog… which is maybe not at all a bad thing, you know as a reminder/guideline?
MohsinApril 23rd, 2008
Jen, it’s just a theory of mine, so I definitely don’t claim to know if Google really penalizes sites for using Top Commenters plugin.

Though, since Google has been harsh on link sellers, you never know when the Big G penalizes you for publishing anything remotely similar to paid links.
Abhijeet from Jeet BlogApril 23rd, 2008
Mohsin, I believe one good way to reward the commentators would be to use the Comment Luv plugin which I use on my blog. It pulls up the latest post of the commentator’s blog. Although this will only help those who have their blog but I think mostly bloggers comment on your blog, so that could be useful. But the plugin is sometimes resource heavy and when my blog hit the Digg front page, I had to disable it. But still its worth experimenting with. Try it out.
Aaron StroudApril 23rd, 2008
Mohsin, I’d second Abhijeet’s Comment Luv recommendation. I’ve clicked through to a few new sites because a commenter’s most recent post had a catchy title. (I use the plugin on my site.)

I sure hope Google isn’t penalizing you for imaginary text links. Selling text link ads must be pretty rampant though. Many of the personal finance blogs are selling ads which look pretty tacky, but they have enough readers that losing PR doesn’t hurt so much. Also, there’s a feeling that everyone’s doing it which also helps people ignore the consequences.

I can certainly identify with them. I received my first text link request which mentioned numbers and I was surprised to find that I could earn a few hundred for sitewide links on my site.

On the topic of spamy things, has anyone else had trouble with their spam filters trashing bloggingbits comment updates? Mediatemple started trashing bloggingbits emails a few weeks back and I didn’t notice intially because I don’t often review my spam folder for mislabeled emails.
Scott FillmerApril 24th, 2008
This seems to happen every so often, and it seems like googles magic ball is the only one that really knows when someone gets the boot (albeit temporarily sometimes), or all of sudden you are ranked.

I agree about the comments though, they are good to a point. I have been blogging for years but recently spread out my blogs into topics (basically started over) and have yet to get a google foothold, so I do check for comments now… again… weird going the other direction.
TKMay 3rd, 2008
keep an eye on it and let us know. i’ve seen it happen periodically, hope for the best.

thanks
Frank CMay 6th, 2008
I’ve been working on some tweaks to the Top Commentators plugin. The most recent one I posted takes care of the problem of people hijacking existing top commentators’ links.

I don’t think that Google will penalize you for having dofollow comments or Top Commentators unless you get a lot of links going to bad neighborhood sites. You just have to moderate comments closely.

As for getting spammy comments, I don’t worry about this much. Comments add new content to page and that will get it crawled and indexed better in most cases. If a comment is overly spammy (ie “Great Post!!!” style or entirely off topic) I’ll usually edit it to make it better and either replace or delete the link.
VirajJanuary 8th, 2009
Hi , mohsin . M a blogger from india. just drop a visit to my site and make a comment.Thanks
Rakesh BhardwajJanuary 8th, 2009
It was till 2 days back my web pages getting a lot of traffic from google, and for a lot of search pharas it is on the first two-three pages but now all of my pages are supposed to disappeared from the list and after a lot of searching some of them was found on late 30 or more pages, while he content what i seems is to relevent to the website. I don’t know why can someone tell me what happen as i have not any clue, what to do now?
Max the Micro Niche FinderMarch 24th, 2009
Hiya, i have seen your site when searching a few weeks ago and i really love the design! I just bought a new 3 character domain (cost me a packet) for a niche review blog, and i was wondering if your design is a free or paid one? I’m new to Wordpress and about to set it up, and i would really like to get something with a similar look to yours. Any ideas where i could download or buy something similar? Thanks for your help!
RazorMay 6th, 2009
Great Post Thanx.
BrendaMay 26th, 2009
I’m just getting started with blogging and have learned some nice techniques from your site. Thanks!
VictorMay 28th, 2009
You are a very smart person! I never would have thought about it this way. I’ve been looking for info on this topic for quite some time.
AmyLeeJune 11th, 2009
Nice!, when it comes in india hope it can make a nice place for youngster.. hope that come true.
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FuzuOctober 29th, 2009
Ooh dang i just typed a big comment and as soon as i submitted it it came up blank! Please please tell me it worked properly? I do not want to write it again if i do not have to! Either the blog glitced out or i am just stuipd, the latter doesnt surprise me lol.
brenda b. jamesOctober 31st, 2009
Hello just thought i would let you know i had a problem with this blog appearing blank also. Might be chimpanzees in the system.
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