Link-building comment spam

That ever-present pox on blogs and just about any site with commenting – otherwise known as comment spam – is finally getting its day in the sun. In this case, the sunlight is sanitizing, and Google's most recent algorithm updates have actively and aggressively penalized the sites who used comment spam for link-building.

I've covered legitimate ways to build to links in class, and those methods – seeking relevant, quality links from other sites – are still good practice. But the darker art of massive-scale link building that went on for many years in the comments sections of websites around the world has now come back to haunt the companies that benefitted from those strategies, and the results are sometimes hilarious.

For a great rundown of how all this happened and the plaintive requests that site owners are now making to have their links removed, read this great piece over at The Awl. It's a fine, brief history of "black hat" link building and a pretty humorous review of the requests that The Awl is now receiving to have those links removed.