flying twigs

Anyone reading this blog knows that comments are disabled. We disabled them from the outset to save having to check for spam comments.

True, WordPress makes it easy to hold all comments in a queue until approved. But commenters like their comments approved quickly, and we can’t always be quick to moderate comments. We can’t because we have other things that take precedence.

You may think that we really should be able to moderate a few comments., And that would be true, but then there are bots.

What Bots Are

Bots are software programs that automates tasks on the internet, mimicking human behaviour. And they can post comments. They can do other things as well, but for our purposes it is the number comments they can send at high speed that is the problem.

Some bots are benign, like chatbots that are programmed to answer questions from customers. But spam bots are malicious.

Bots can post comments quicker than you can say ‘bot’ and they keep coming. Before you know it you have twenty pages of comments to wade through.

Google’s Captcha was designed to catch bots but it’s a pain for real humans to negotiate. You hate it and I hate it. And clever bots can eat it for breakfast.

That’s why we disabled comments. It’s not worth the hassle.

Why Bots Post Comments

So the question is why bots post comments. What do they get out of it? Or rather, what do the spammers who send bots out hunting for place comments get out of it.

Remember, spammers don’t have to succeed every time. If they are blocked or deleted a hundred times, and they get through on the next attempt, that’s a win for them.

Of course, if real humans had to post spammy comments then they would get tired. But bots just keep going. Wind ’em up and set them loose.

So why? They are lots of reasons, but here are a couple.

Spammers use bots to post comments with links to low-quality or malicious websites. The aim is to boost those low-quality sites in the search engine rankings through backlinks. Search engines like Google penalise them for doing it, but that’s only when Google spots that they are spammy sites, and when the cost of sending out bots is cheap than the gains, spammers will still try.

Spam comments leave links to all kinds of sites, maybe to a site that has affiliate links. When other commenters read the article and the comments and are enticed to click the link in the comment and visit those sites, it makes money for the spammer.

Think about it. How many places on a website can anyone leave a link to another website. That’s why blogs are a favourite destination for spammers. Sure, many sites moderate comments. But not all websites do, and that makes them easy targets.

Of course the spammer could take the time to find out which sites are not moderated. But it is easier to just hit every site they can and let the blocked comments be blocked. After all, bots don’t care that they are blocked. And when a spammer can keep on hitting sites without let-up, it makes sense to hit everything.

Being on the receiving end is not joke because if a spam comment with a dodgy link gets through then it affects the innocent site negatively. If Google spots that an innocent website is sending traffic to a dodgy site, then the innocent site can get a penalty even though it is the innocent player in the game.

And that’s the story.