Comments on: Suggestion: Akismet Should Connect With Google

By: Alex Newell

Alex Newell — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:16:36 +0000

I’m a huge fan of Akismet so I’m all in favour of your idea. I hated trawling through pharmacy spam and Akismet saves me from that.

What I wanted when I created a forum a few months ago was to run forum posts through something like Akismet. I got so fed up of junk posts that I deleted my forum!

Why not suggest this to Matt Cutts Donna?

By: DazzlinDonna

DazzlinDonna — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:05:54 +0000

Those are definitely good points.

By: Jayson

Jayson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:42:03 +0000

Although it’s a great idea, I agree with Feydakin, it’s just too easy to get a competitor in trouble.

If you time “their spam campaign” right, it could mean that they’re out of business or at least unable to compete on the same playing field over the next few years.

It’s easier to spam blogs than buy a bunch of spammy links.

It would just add another expensive department that does nothing to help their index. They regulate this kind of spam by punishing the bloggers that let in slide on their blogs (I think) – in my opinion, this is the best and cheapest way to do it!

By: Michelle MacPhearson

Michelle MacPhearson — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:21:58 +0000

Per Andy, Akismit false positives are horrible, particularly in the “internet marketing” arena… I had a post recently asking about user’s experience with MLM’s and EVERY comment got tossed in Akismit. Having mentioned it here, this could end up there as well!

I have several comment/day I have to remove from the spam queue. And commentors who get mad because their comments don’t show up, when in reality they were tossed into an Akismit spam hole and I missed it when doing my daily quality control check.

Feydakin has a great point too – this would make it VERY easy to get a competitor’s site nixed in Google. Don’t like the #1 listing since you’re #2? Comment spam his URL everywhere!

This actually happened with Squidoo lenses – people started trackback spamming their Squidoo URL’s on people’s blogs for link juice, then Squidoo figured it out and started deleting the accounts of people who’s lenses were using this technique. Then people started sending trackback spam with the URL of competing Squidoo lenses and getting them deleted.

Nasty stuff.

By: Feydakin

Feydakin — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:17:17 +0000

On the surface this seems like a great idea.. But as a former ISP owner that has had to deal with anti-spam nazis tossing entire ip ranges in to black holes, with little to no recourse to get out, other than buying a new IP block or changing upstream providers, I have taken the stance that stopping spam is an end user issue..

The biggest problem you have is the issue of just how easy it would be to get a competitor’s website removed from the index by simply paying a couple hundred dollars to have some Russian or Indian posters go out and just spam blogs at random with your competitor’s information.. Even if there were an “easy” re-inclusion option, killing an ecommerce website right before Christmas could wipe them out..
This may not be 100 reasons, but I think just this one is enough..

By: DazzlinDonna

DazzlinDonna — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:43:51 +0000

Dave Dugdale :D

By: Dave Dugdale

Dave Dugdale — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:32:20 +0000

Perhaps we thought even more alike when you used to code in Coldfusion. 🙁

I guess I shouldn’t say that because I am starting my first PHP site next week.

By: DazzlinDonna

DazzlinDonna — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:26:10 +0000

How scary is that, Dave? 😉

By: Dave Dugdale

Dave Dugdale — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:11:52 +0000

Donna, that is what I thought too. Wow, we think alike.

By: DazzlinDonna

DazzlinDonna — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:51:45 +0000

Andy, I’m thinking the false positives issues could be best dealt with on Google’s end (or whatever search engine). I would assume the search engine wouldn’t just blindly use Akismet data, but would analyze it and make decisions upon it, based upon their own ideas of what truly constitutes spam.

Akismet would merely be the data provider, and the search engine would work algo magic against that data. At least that’s how I see it unfolding in my head. 🙂