1 SHARES Facebook Twitter

“Nice blog, thanks for the info”

“Awesome site. Great job”

“You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!”

I know you like flattering comments on your website. And I know you love to see many comments on each one of your posts (say you community participation). Who doesn’t, right? We love them too.

So we decided to take a closer look at the last 100,000 (well, 98,238 to be more exact) comments that were sent to the network of sites that we are monitoring. How much of them are spam? Who are the most annoying spammers? And things like that.

Comment Analysis

We filtered the latest 98,238 comments received (that’s less than a week worth of comments), and ran them through our analysis engine. Guess how many of them were spam? How many were good?

Spam comments: 79,858 (81.2%)

Good comments: 18,380 (18.8%)

Wow! So according to our analysis, more than 80% of the comments were classified as spam. We even took a conservative approach and classified unsure comments as good comments. So out of every 5 comments received, only 1 was valid.

*Unsure comments were ones we only saw hitting one web site, but the content was suspicious. Those in this list were almost 10,000 (9% of the overall total). If we had classified those as spam, the number would have grown to 90+% spam.

Spam Analysis – Messages

This really amused us. What type of message do you think a spammer was sending? Most of the time, we noticed that they sent a flattering note to increase the odds of the webmaster accepting the comment. Here are the top 10 messages sent by spammers:

238 sites, comment => Thank you very much! 213 sites, comment => awesome site. Great job 191 sites, comment => Nice blog, thanks for the info. 186 sites, comment => Your website is really good! 172 sites, comment => Webmaster, I am the admin at SEOPlugins.org. We profile SEO Plugins for WordPress blogs for on-site and off-site SEO. I'd like to invite you to check out our recent profile for a pretty amazing plugin which can double or triple traffic for a Worpdress blog and we just posted a video showing the plugin in action. You can delete this comment, I didn't want to comment on your blog, just wanted to drop you a personal message. Thanks, Rich 144 sites, comment => Yup, you know it-, just like I've been saying. 137 sites, comment => Louis Vuitton Shoes Ankle Boot 123 sites, comment => Buy Viagra Online 108 sites, comment => You made some decent points there. I looked on the internet for the issue and found most individuals will go along with with your website. 106 sites, comment => You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!

The last one in the list is the funniest (“You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site”). Taking out the Viagra and the Louis Vuitton spam, why do they do it?

They do it because in the URL field, they add a link to their own web site (which can increase their page rankings, visitors, etc). Example:

[author] => Mary Jane

[email] => info@fabfunapps.com

[url] => http://fabfunapps.com

[comment] => Good share! I hope more people will discover your blog because you really know what you’re talking about. Can’t wait to read more from you

Spam Analysis – Emails

This email analysis was not as useful as we would have hoped. The emails are very random and mostly from gmail and hotmail accounts. These were the top spammer emails:

470 [email] => ofangjiancong@gmail.com

222 [email] => colorado@uymail.com

175 [email] => nhaofangjiancong@gmail.com

172 [email] => Rich@seoplugins.org

167 [email] => n9zvrx.dzpbhniuvb@gmail.com

161 [email] => imtheking@hotmail.com

136 [email] => euq.wxtzlrl17fvbx@gmail.com

133 [email] => crearlynaxzex@gmail.com

132 [email] => alms5eg.m0352vbi3@gmail.com

129 [email] => io6llx3za08izklw@gmail.com

123 [email] => mc.1e0l033z.fbr13z@gmail.com

121 [email] => gr794g4ci1a.bhcju@gmail.com

120 [email] => www.realcazinoz.com@gmail.com

120 [email] => hn.58gmso.jvbhxz36@gmail.com

120 [email] => 18ag5yfa46.io0ll2@gmail.com

115 [email] => plm.n5fqls79vmrop@gmail.com

115 [email] => ofawc5j0lhd9uab.8@gmail.com

113 [email] => yoagxxtp4mciouqx@gmail.com

These were the top domains used by spammers:

16514 gmail.com

7300 hotmail.com

3267 yahoo.com

2309 aol.com

2038 gmail.com

1066 googlemail.com

984 gnumail.com

954 123mail.net

950 yahoomail.com

443 ymail.com

349 yahoo.co.uk

261 cwcom.net

219 live.com

202 magicmail.com

197 mail.com

192 Gmail.com

180 mail.ru

160 msn.com

Spam Analysis – URLs

Now it is getting useful, let’s see the domains that are using comment spam to increase their ratings and visitors. Top 30 on this one (out of 24,976 different URLs):

1163 [url] => http://www.kitsucesso.com

1114 [url] => http://www.listasegmentada.com

677 [url] => http://stevepavlina.com

481 [url] => http://afriendshipquotes.blogspot.com/p/poem-for-best-friends.html

344 [url] => http://online-viagra-online.com

332 [url] => http://movie-web.org

317 [url] => http://www.divulgaemail.com

314 [url] => http://www.linklegends.com/free-trial

254 [url] => http://earn7800permonth.com

225 [url] => http://www.tvturn.com

208 [url] => http://www.zimbio.com/General/articles/-rEPnqoftf3/live+stream+TV+personal?add=True

208 [url] => http://www.filpan.ru

202 [url] => http://www.prlog.org/11261550-phone-number-lookup-catch-cheater-quickly.html

197 [url] => http://filter-paper.net

193 [url] => http://lnklicious.com

190 [url] => http://www.listadeemail.org

187 [url] => http://www.wordpress-subscribers.info

187 [url] => http://onlinepharmacy-levitra.com

179 [url] => http://eng.umek.su

172 [url] => http://www.seoplugins.org

167 [url] => http://5millionebooks.com

161 [url] => http://whatwhatwhat.com/

150 [url] => http://www.pharmacyreviewer.com/

146 [url] => http://www.japancoachstores.com/

144 [url] => http://www.guccibagoutletjp.com/

132 [url] => http://rsproductsonline.com/

129 [url] => http://diablo-3-for-free.com/review/diablo-3/

127 [url] => http://terbelizzder.com

126 [url] => http://www.cialis.vc

Spam Analysis – IP Addresses

To finish, some actionable information for hosting providers and website owners. This is the list of IP addresses sending the most spam so you can block them out:

296 62.75.181.210

238 216.59.22.16

238 188.138.84.93

227 66.85.128.34

182 204.12.237.43

166 204.45.108.226

162 37.59.151.187

161 37.59.173.137

129 178.32.151.208

126 37.59.151.182

119 91.201.64.4

113 178.137.160.195

107 192.162.102.221

104 83.136.86.21

104 83.136.86.105

101 78.112.161.207

100 178.32.201.178

93 94.153.9.47

92 109.73.77.149

91 94.45.168.67

90 91.207.8.26

84 80.84.51.194

83 91.210.104.143

80 69.194.161.228

79 83.22.254.204

78 75.35.174.45

73 120.62.1.232

71 120.62.1.174

69 91.236.74.133

68 71.21.19.133

68 63.141.237.224

68 210.192.65.242

66 120.62.16.89

65 74.108.93.214

The total list is very big (12,190 unique IP addresses), but blocking the top ones is a good start.

Spam Analysis – Countries

Out of curiosity we decided to check the top Countries sending spam (based on the IP address):

23,899 United States (31%)

16,888 China (22%)

5,145 Russian Federation (6.7%)

3,291 Brazil (4.3%)

3,094 France (4.0%)

2,850 Germany (3.7%)

In the olympics of SPAM, the USA is #1, followed by China (Silver), Russia (Bronze) and Brazil.

Conclusion

Yes, there is a lot of spam out there. I would say that 9 out of 10 comments are spammy in some way (even if not automated – we only classified automated messages as spam). In any event, let us know if you want any more information from this list. We have raw data, so we can run numbers and different analysis as requested.