Comments on: Talking About Spam http://www.sciencetext.com/talking-about-spam.html Sciencetext Tech Talk, PC tips, blog hacks, browsing, blogging, social media Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:01:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: David Bradley http://www.sciencetext.com/talking-about-spam.html/comment-page-1#comment-27944 David Bradley Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:09:07 +0000 http://www.sciencetext.com/talking-about-spam.html#comment-27944 Thanks for your thoughts, interesting point in comparing the keywords that appear in the stats and spam...hadn't thought of it like that. It definitely all adds up to making the most of the spam you receive rather than seeing it nothing but a pain. db Thanks for your thoughts, interesting point in comparing the keywords that appear in the stats and spam…hadn’t thought of it like that. It definitely all adds up to making the most of the spam you receive rather than seeing it nothing but a pain.

db

]]> By: Heidi Cool http://www.sciencetext.com/talking-about-spam.html/comment-page-1#comment-27839 Heidi Cool Sun, 16 Dec 2007 02:38:55 +0000 http://www.sciencetext.com/talking-about-spam.html#comment-27839 I'm intrigued by that final paragraph. My blog is a .edu and therefore I don't use advertising, but even so, I think you are on to something with the idea that we can learn from the keywords used in our spam. While some may be the usual gibberish, we could find that some may actually reflect keywords that our legitimate users may use when searching for the type of content we create. What I might try would be to keep a log of any keywords in spam that seem on topic, then compare their frequency in the spam messages with the frequency of the same keywords in our site stats. If we find that certain keywords show up equally in our stats and our spam comments then they were probably only used by the spammers. But if those keywords pop up more often in the statistics, then they may be keywords we should focus on using more often--assuming they make sense in the context of our posts. I’m intrigued by that final paragraph. My blog is a .edu and therefore I don’t use advertising, but even so, I think you are on to something with the idea that we can learn from the keywords used in our spam. While some may be the usual gibberish, we could find that some may actually reflect keywords that our legitimate users may use when searching for the type of content we create.

What I might try would be to keep a log of any keywords in spam that seem on topic, then compare their frequency in the spam messages with the frequency of the same keywords in our site stats.

If we find that certain keywords show up equally in our stats and our spam comments then they were probably only used by the spammers. But if those keywords pop up more often in the statistics, then they may be keywords we should focus on using more often–assuming they make sense in the context of our posts.

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