"Nice Blog" Spam Is Recently Becoming More Obscure, In Content And Style

In 2009, we discovered an odd style of spam comments which, from all appearances, served no purpose.

I recently came across your blog, and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

When discovered, Google Search suggested that over 22,000,000 copies of these comments had been successfully installed, on various blogs and websites.

A couple years ago, I suggested a possible reason for the spam - and later showed how Google+, and various Blogger security measures, were making the spam less useful.

Last month, we began to see suggestions, from some blog owners, that this "nice blog" spam was morphing, into more obscurely phrased and structured styles.

A lot of spam comments are being published on my blog. This problem started a few weeks ago - though previously, Google almost always put them in my Spam Folder.

Upon examination of examples of the spam comments, we see the same spam style as observed in 2009 - yet more imaginatively phrased.

Today, I spent a couple hours, and scanned through the comments queues on this blog. Both the Awaiting, and Spam, folders yielded some interesting specimens.

This topic is very educational and it took my interest. Hope it will always be alive! And provide productive information to many others.

and

Nice post. I learn something new and challenging on websites I stumble upon every day. It's always interesting to read articles from other writers and practice a little something from other sites.

These were the comment bodies of just two examples which I located - and these resemble others identified by various other blog owners.

The bodies of the comments examined, this week, will sometimes contain embedded links, while other examples will have external links - and some comments seem to contain no links at all, to any payload. The only thing consistent about the comments is their vague and apparently pointless nature.

The comments are both large in volume, and varied in content and structure. Both patience and persistence, from every blog owner moderating the spam, is required. The spam filters must be trained, to recognise the new content and structures - and this will require more effort, from everybody seeing the spam.

Since various reports about the spam have been seen recently, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we added a rollup discussion there, where we are requesting minimally organised details about the comments being observed.

• Are you moderating before, or after publishing?
• What's the average amount of time the spam comment sits in "Awaiting" or "Published", before being moved to "Spam"?
• How often do you check "Awaiting" and "Published", looking for more spam comments?
• How often do you check "Spam", looking for non spam comments?
• How many spam comments do you typically dispatch, in each batch?
• Looking objectively in your personal "Awaiting", "Published", and "Spam" folders, what number of this style of comments do you typically see in each, without your intervention?
• When did you first observe this threat, in your comment folders?

As always, please help here by answering as carefully and completely as possible - and please only post relevant replies. Do not turn the rollup discussion into a chat room.

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