How to successfully spam blogs (and how to fight back)

Now I know why Superman has comments disabled on his blog (… with apologies to Batman)…

You may have noticed legitimate looking comments on your blog from people with suspect names. Usually the name will be a brand name, service or literally anything that sells. The commenter’s website is obviously related to that business. Why do they bother using special keywords when Google is supposed to not follow those links? Do they know something you don’t? Yup. They know that keywords, even on nofollowed links, matter. I’d provide reference links to SEO blogs explaining this but then they’d know I’m reading and they might shut up.

On the subject of “suspect names” there has been a surge here in comments from “people” with names like Sam01, Sam02, and so on. Needless to say they have very little to contribute to the topic at hand.

I used to appreciate the fact comments could add useful discussion to a post, but now I’m beginning to wonder, as some days the facility seems to be more trouble than it’s worth.