I run the do follow blogroll and lately I’ve seen a few trends going on. Over perhaps the last two weeks I’ve noticed more and more people leaving comments and using website urls when they sign the comment.

I do realize that not everyone has a blog, but prior to this, the majority of people that have left comments on my many blogs were bloggers and they would sign their comments with either their own name or the name of their blog and use their blog url when leaving their comment.

I’m suspicious since there’s been a steady increase in the amount of people leaving not just business related website urls, but they sign their comments with what could only be called a SEO term. I must suspect that they are doing this so that the links they leave will give them higher standing on the search engines.

For the most part the comments that are being left by these people are relevant to the post – but some are a little empty or seem to copy what someone before them said. Then these comments are signed with “cashmere sweaters” and a clothing business website url. That’s not a real example of what’s been left – but you know what I mean, who signs an url with a product name? Only someone practicing search engine optimization techniques.

I’m sorry, but this makes me feel a little used. That might not be the commenters intention but that’s the way I feel.

Considering that my husband and I have oh lets see 9 blogs on the do follow list and that I tend to approve all of the comments I see trends.

I see people signing their comments with different names and different deep pages within their site, people adding extra links into their comments, people using tiny url within their comments, and people that say pretty much the same thing on all of our websites that they visit.

When someone says pretty much the same thing on all of our sites I feel that the abuse is confirmed. Sure, they might actually comment on the post but then they’ll say something like “I’ve been following your site and visit it daily” on all the sites. Surely you didn’t become a fan overnight when I’ve never seen you here before?

For the most part the people on the do follow list are not abusing the list members although a few newbies need a talking to I think.

Unfortunately getting a link on a do follow blog seems to have gained popularity and people are copying the lists on to other sites and none do follow list members are going around commenting on all the sites.

Not all of these people are abusing our kindness but some are and few people abusing sites that are giving links away for free kind of spoils it for the rest.

I love getting comments on all of my sites. Especially if the comment is true feedback on my post. I just don’t like feeling used by those who are only commenting for a link. I’d prefer that people only comment if they truly got something out of my posts.

Oh yes, another thing making me suspicious of the comments I’ve been receiving lately is the fact that there’s a new company where an advertiser can hire this company to write comments on blogs to get their link out there. You can read the article that was posted on Problogger about comment spam to learn more. If I suspect that someone has left a paid comment I’ll be deleting the comment. Apparently they’ll be targeting bloggers who’s links follow.

Now that’s something to think about isn’t it?