

The Golden Era Of Spam Comments Has Ended - SmileyKeith
http://www.theawl.com/2013/12/the-new-spammer-panic

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KrisAndrew
Don't count on it. There are many software developers out there with knowledge
of NLP algorithms, statistics, symbolic systems, etc. who aren't employed by
Googles, Facebooks, Ciscos and Twitters. They're bored out of their minds and
waiting for a challenge.

As time progresses, SEO companies will adapt. I contributed hundreds of
thousands of pages of web spam prior to the Panda modifications. If I were
still working at the company I did it for, and there were proper incentive, I
would definitely be able to get around Panda.

It took me about 10 hours to build a cute little tool, and after about 3
months of using it judiciously, we were able to push many sites up to number
one for some very competitive terms. The search engines might be ahead now,
but there are thousands of intelligent programmers out there trying to pick
the black box apart. No black box stands unbroken forever.

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pavel_lishin
The companies who hired the shady SEO companies to spam the internet
presumably paid them; I wonder how they'd feel about paying content hosts to
remove those comments as well.

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KrisAndrew
They'd definitely pay if you stated it nicely. ("I would love to help you in
removing these links, but my developers are occupied. If you want to expedite
the removal, it will be $X per link.")

I get many requests a month to remove spam links that get through our filters.
I've debated charging them for it, because I know in most cases the people
asking me to remove them are the same people who had them placed there. I
haven't charged anyone yet, and I don't think I'm going to.

I do take my time when removing them (lowest priority), and I don't remove the
links where the requester cites some legal consequences if I don't comply.
Those stay up forever.

~~~
devicenull
I can't believe I never thought of charging for this. I've been ignoring the
requests because if you were spamming us you get what you deserve.

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mattzito
It seems like there's also an inverse application - if you have a competitor,
post a bunch of spammy blog comments for them and watch as how google
penalizes them.

