Comment spam from within NZ: people not to trust

[Brett Taylor]

Hi all,
Just checked my blog for comments and this one got through the filters:

 -=-=-

Locksmith Christchurch

locksmithchristchurch.co.nz

lock...@locksmithchristchuch.co.nz

112.202.254.227

Submitted on 2010/02/02 at 6:50pm

Cool collection! I have firemint flight control. It is difficult yet addicting at times, whenever I lose my patience, its boring hahah

-=-=-

So I went to that site and as you'll see on the about page, this is no legitimate locksmith, but rather some marketeer trying to 'rent websites' to people. On that page is the phone number 03 351 2959. I called them to complain about their blogspam. They gave me a bullshit excuse that he has instructed his team to provide useful comments to peoples blogs. I said that's not the problem, as the comment is debatably useful but the practice of doing this is just to get google juice. He has said that he has now taken my domain name inner.geek.nz out of his database.

Now I wouldn't normally do this. I only did it from the simplicity of finding their phone number and the fact that a New Zealand business spammed a New Zealander's site.

I don't encourage you to do the same, but I won't stop you if you feel like getting indignant with them. I recommend you call 03 351 2959 and ask for your sites to preemptively blacklist all your domains from his dirty dirty comment spam database. They're the worst kind of black-hat SEO littering on our own websites and they're in our own back yard.

Angry as hell,

--
Brett Taylor
http://inner.geek.nz

[Miles Thompson]

Just rang them up, got their answer machine, I wasn't rude I just said that I had heard they had been leaving blog spam and that they had a block list and then proceeded to carefully list out every single one of the website / blogs that I administer and carefully spelled them out.

With any luck some secretary or someone is carefully taking down the list of websites to foward on to their spam-sorry-i-mean'useful comments' team.

I figure if enough people call they'll just go ah to hell with it lets call off the whole program

miles

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miles
http://blog.tradeify.org
http://google.com/profiles/utunga

[Brett Taylor]

Hah, awesome! 

Just dug a little deeper: here's a cellphone number:
027 5577 000

I did a whois too:

registrant_contact_name: GSL
registrant_contact_address1: PO Box 29-029
registrant_contact_city: Christchurch
registrant_contact_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
registrant_contact_phone: +64 3 3512959
registrant_contact_email: adc...@adcard.co.nz
%
admin_contact_name: AdCard Ltd
admin_contact_address1: PO Box 29-029
admin_contact_city: Christchurch
admin_contact_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
admin_contact_phone: +64 3 3512959
admin_contact_email: adc...@adcard.co.nz
%
technical_contact_name: GSL
technical_contact_address1: PO Box 29-029
technical_contact_city: Christchurch
technical_contact_country: NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
technical_contact_phone: +64 3 3512959
technical_contact_email: adc...@adcard.co.nz

Brett Taylor
http://inner.geek.nz

[xml.net]

Common guys, don't be mean. Everyone does it one way of the other. This
is what spam filters are for.
Trolling is a good way to success. It let's you jump the queue and get
traffic for crappy websites.

I was always amazed how a certain Allen Stern was always commenter #1 on
any topic on TechChrunch some time ago. He would always say something
"... I also wrote about it in my blog <link> ...". Look at 'm now?
http://www.centernetworks.com/ He did troll his way to the top. What's
wrong with it?

www.killerstartups.com did absolutely the same. The list is endless.

So, take it easy and keep those filters tuned. There are better ways to
spend your time than on angry phone calls. :)

P.S. I guess there were better ways of spending my time than writing
this .... post :)))

On 2/3/2010 11:27 AM, Miles Thompson wrote:
> Just rang them up, got their answer machine ...

[Juha Saarinen]

It's not being mean - NZ law says Thou Shalt Not Spam and it applies to everyone.

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Juha Saarinen

Juha on Geekzone Trade Me, the behemoth on NZ&rsquo;s Internet

[Harvey Kane]

That business of renting out domains is interesting. I used to do some
SEO work on a hotels site - they were handing over a fortune each month
to someone to rent a one-pager at
http://theirhotelname.somecheesyhotelsite.co.nz which just happened to
rank well for their hotel name. The traffic this cheesy rent-a-site
brought in was far better value for money that Adwords and other means
of promotion.

Harvey.

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Harvey Kane

New Zealand:
-Office: +64 9 950 4133
-Mobile: +6421 811 951

Email: har...@harveykane.com
If you need to contact me urgently, please read my email policy www.ragepank.com/email/

[Brett Taylor]

Yes, trolling can be a good way to success, but in this case, it seems that the business in question is essentially a network of glorified cybersquat sites with a team of comment writers who don't know what rel='nofollow' means instructed to write trite comments on blogs with metadata links to their target site of the day.

This is spamming, no question. It's not email spam, but it is spam none-the-less. They are attempting to game Google for their own gain at the time expense of people like us.

I am keeping my filters tight: I noticed this happening. Akismet thought this was a legitimate comment, emailed me and I could tell it wasn't.

Because this was a more close-to-home spam, the web community of New Zealand needs to tell the businesses that exist within it when their practices are unethical. 

I am NOT saying an eye-for-an-eye; I am NOT saying let's spam the spammers.

I AM saying let us send the message that these actions are not tolerated in our corners of the internet and we are disappointed in those who black-hat techniques.

Brett

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Brett Taylor
http://inner.geek.nz

[Miles Thompson]

nicely put

[stuart frisby]

I've been lucky enough during the last couple of years or so to work
of good projects, for great clients with people who shared my view
about SEO which is surmised as thus:

SEO is the result of a pessimistic view of the world. It says that
good service, good design, great content and a compelling product
aren't enough. It says that even with all of those things, you need to
have an arsenal of underhand tactics with which to prosper.

My own strategy has always been that if you build good enough
websites, offering good enough services of products that people
genuinely have a need or desire for, they're going to find your site
whether it is #1 on google or not. You write clean HTML and give
google a good enough chance of understanding your content, and you let
the rest happen organically.

I got into a very heated exchange with some SEO nutjob recently, and
it really god my back up. I realise there are quite probably people
here who make a living from such means, and all power to you, I'd do
it too if I had too, but that doesn't make it right.

Stuart.

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Brett Taylor <br...@webfroot.co.nz> wrote:

> Yes, trolling can be a good way to success, but in this case, it seems that
> the business in question is essentially a network of glorified cybersquat
> sites with a team of comment writers who don't know what rel='nofollow'
> means instructed to write trite comments on blogs with metadata links to
> their target site of the day.
> This is spamming, no question. It's not email spam, but it is spam
> none-the-less. They are attempting to game Google for their own gain at the
> time expense of people like us.
> I am keeping my filters tight: I noticed this happening. Akismet thought
> this was a legitimate comment, emailed me and I could tell it wasn't.
> Because this was a more close-to-home spam, the web community of New Zealand
> needs to tell the businesses that exist within it when their practices are
> unethical.
> I am NOT saying an eye-for-an-eye; I am NOT saying let's spam the spammers.
> I AM saying let us send the message that these actions are not tolerated in
> our corners of the internet and we are disappointed in those who black-hat
> techniques.
>
> Brett

[Brett Taylor]

I was hoping you would chime in, Harvey ;) I respect your opinion as you're at the top of the game in NZ, and you're not unethical like _some_ SEO practitioners. 

No doubt that those sites you mention Harvey are good, heck at times some of those sites are all some visitors really want. And there's a place for those in good white-hat online marketing.

What really gets my goat about this particular instance is not only are they spamming my site, but they are spamming my blog for a site that doesn't seem to be promoting any locksmith from Christchurch at all, and are just trying to get good rankings before they can sell the 'online billboard'. 

So the formula: Get the site up with one page of keyword rich content, get it a good ranking with black-hat SEO (that won't even work when people use rel='nofollow'), then maybe sell it to someone who can actually use it?

It sickens me.

Brett.

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Brett Taylor
http://inner.geek.nz

[Harvey Kane]

I think one of the key reasons that SEO people are considered parasites
is that they don't always have great material to work with. Let's say a
business owner has $2000 to get good rankings for a site that isn't the
best in it's field. The design is a bit ugly and it doesn't offer
anything unique, so there goes any chances of getting it featured in a
magazine or on a prominent blog. The site owner is too busy to start
promoting a regular newsletter, and the URLs on the site need to be
cleaned up and SEO plugins installed before anything else is done. By
the time that's finished the SEO has just enough time to submit a finda
listing and spam a few blogs before signing the job off.

The sorts of companies that go looking for SEO services are usually the
ones that aren't ranking well and don't have the resource to make their
sites awesome, so they look for the shortcut. Often, marketing the site
hasn't actually been brought up in conversation until now. The poor old
SEO is just catering for his market, doing the best he can with what
he's got. (I'm quite a bit more picky about the jobs I take on though)

There's no point getting all upset about it - this is market forces at
play, there is demand for these kinds of SEO services. It's good to call
people out on it though if you can spare the time.

Harvey.

[ksuyin]

So ... this is the second comment spam I've gotten on our website from
the same outfit — Get Sales Lead.

---

Name: John
Email: in...@cleaningchristchurch.co.nz
Website: http://cleaningchristchurch.co.nz
Subject: new comment
Message:
Blackout day is a pretty good tactic but it has to be translated into
votes by members on a winning candidate so that a more effective
battle can be made on the legislative floor.

Name: Debt Collection Christchurch
Email: in...@debtcollectionchristchurch.co.nz
Website: http://debtcollectionchristchurch.co.nz
Subject: new comment
Message:
Those were the days...alas societies change too!

---

I've requested they remove our domains from their list and even got a
response from Nic Dale, the head honcho. http://idzr.org/sg0oky
Obviously this has worked a treat ... NOT.

Very angry too,
Su Yin Khoo
http://idealog.co.nz

On Feb 3, 11:22 am, Brett Taylor <br...@webfroot.co.nz> wrote:
> Hi all,
> Just checked my blog for comments and this one got through the filters:
>
>  -=-=-
>
> Locksmith Christchurch
>
> locksmithchristchurch.co.nz
>

> locksm...@locksmithchristchuch.co.nz

[Juha Saarinen]

Time to speak to the DIA, methinks.

--
Juha Saarinen

Juha on Geekzone ComCom: Don&rsquo;t forget mobile roaming rates

[Juha Saarinen]

Interesting... got some of the AdCard spam comments on my blog now as well. Hmm.

--
Juha Saarinen

Juha on Geekzone European Parliament throws spanner in secret ACTA works

[juhasa...@gmail.com]

On Mar 20, 3:05 pm, Juha Saarinen <juhasaari...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting... got some of the AdCard spam comments on my blog now as well.
> Hmm.

Looking a bit further, the URLs dropped by Adcard seem to be all over
NZ blogs as well as Facebook.

--
Juha