Does spamming actually work?

My blog is hosted by, as you can probably tell by the URL, WordPress.
It’s an excellent service…and it’s completely free. If you’re considering writing a blog, I recommend using WordPress.

Among they’re many features is an excellent Spam filter.

Every once in awhile I check my “spam folder” and delete the comments in there from some unscrupulous companies trying to add links to their sites onto my blog.

These spam comments are obviously generated by a computer program that attempts to incorporate words and phrases related to my blog hoping to get past the spam filter.

I’d estimate that ninety-nine percent of their efforts fail.

But, I wonder, if their efforts are successful and they manage to get one of their ridiculous comments onto a blog, does it pay-off? Does anyone actually click on one of the links for “Viagara”, diet supplements or whatever else they attempt to traffic?

As an example, here are a few spam comments that were in my spam folder today. I deleted all of the links but left the “username” as they wrote it and I didn’t change any of the wording in the body of the comments.

They attempted to posts these comments on my blog’s “About Me” page.

Here they are (in red) with my reply to them (in black):

●　From: loseweight
Wow!! Nice post!

Really? My “About Me” page?

●　From: consolidateyourloan
What I dont recognize is how youre not even a lot more well-liked than you’re now. Youre just so intelligent. You know so considerably about this subject, made me think about it from so many diverse angles. Its like people arent interested unless it has something to do with Lady Gaga! Your stuffs great. Keep it up!

Well, thank you Mr. consolidateyourloan! Very nice of you to consider me “so intelligent”…but what makes you assume that I’m not as “well-liked” as I should be?

>You know so considerably about this subject

I’d hope so. Considering the “subject” of my “About Me” page.

●　From: celebrity Magazine
Between me and my husband we’ve owned more MP3 players over the years than I can count, including Sansas, iRivers, iPods (classic & touch), the Ibiza Rhapsody, etc. But, the last few years I’ve settled down to one line of players. Why? Because I was happy to discover how well-designed and fun to use the underappreciated (and widely mocked) Zunes are.

Mrs. celebrity Magazine, if you had used a more “conventional” username and hadn’t added links to obvious spam sites (which I’ve deleted), you could’ve added this comment to my post that I wrote about the popularity of the Walk-man in Japan (They’re popularity has been declining since I wrote that post, though. The I-pod is much more popular now.) or my post comparing the original Walk-man to the modern one instead of my “About Me” page and I would’ve assumed it was a legitimate comment.

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Do you have a blog? Do you get a lot of spam?
Do you get e-mail spam often? My current e-mail spam filters are as good as my blog’s…so, thankfully, I don’t get much email spam anymore.

Annoying pop-ups

On this, and other WordPress blogs, an annoying* Snap preview window pops up when you hold your mouse over a picture or website link (* it’s annoying to me, at least).

I disabled that function on my computer…I wish I could just disable it to my blog (as it’s seen on everyone’s computer).

I can’t. But you can disable it on your computer, too.

When one pops up, click the small gear image in the upper-righthand corner.

It looks like this:

Then click “Disable“.

Then check “For All Sites“

Then click “Save“.

If you find those pop-up previews as annoying as I do, this will save your sanity!

(By the way, if you don’t already, you should use Firefox as your web browser (rather than Internet Explorer).

Firefox blocks pop-up windows while you’re surfing the internet.

You can download it for free here ).