I read an article on Wired yesterday titled “Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story than a Human Reporter?“. The article discusses Narrative Sciences automated content creation technology currently in use – mostly for little league baseball recaps. Their product can write it’s best content when dealing with fluctuating numbers and is yet to the point of writing a full blown news story with unique angles and award winning personality. If you were simply intending to write millions of comments angling and reiterating what the author said while speaking in a complimentary tone and adding slight value then Narrative Science could deceive the most experienced bloggers.
Everyone has encountered the new generation of blog spam, led by incompetent SEO’s or ingenius blackhat traffic generators. The average comment goes something like this:
Thanks , I have just been searching for info about this topic for a while and yours is the greatest I have found out so far. But, what in regards to the bottom line? Are you positive concerning the source? What I do not realize is in truth how you’re not really much more smartly-preferred than you might be now. You are so intelligent.
With Narrative Science, the comment could go something like this:
Chris, I can imagine if Narrative Science had come sooner. I also read the Wired article and would recommend that everyone read it.
Point being: had quality algorithms been available for spamming comments when comment spam was a viable tactic, you could have killed it in the SERPS. Can you imagine having the ability to post a comment on 1/50th of every blog post written? Traffic and ranking potential would have been enormous.
The good news: if your a spammer who could care less about search rankings, you could create a less intelligent algorithm in which you can determine posts that would be possible to add perceived value to. Using your algorithm, you could write a unique comment which the author could not possibly know was a fake, and generate a large amount of traffic just from comment links clicks.
The best news: if your a blackhat SEO, there are plenty of angles for you to benefit from spamming nearly every blog post made in your niche – primarily in that you can casually mention your companies name. A quality comment, no URL, written in perfect english; who wouldn’t approve your comment. People reading your ingenius comment may decide to search your business name, and then click through to your website. Having a large number of searches for your business or products name is a positive signal to search engines. With a massive increase in searches for your business name and clickthrough rate, you’ve got to be relevant somehow right?
Example:
I’m a staff writer at Placement Edge, we have a lot of comment spam. I’m going to share this with everyone I work with.
By the way, writing comments for backlinks wasn’t a good idea last year or the year before, so you can stop now if your intent is search rankings.