I recently created our corporate blog at http://jojet.typepad.com/ - usual corporate blog kind stuff, the only reason I mention is this, it took about 2 days before it started receiving spam comments. This amazed me,  saddened me and pissed me off in equal measures.

I think what pissed me off was that some idiot somewhere had grasped mindlessly onto the concept that "backlinks are good" and had taken the concept to a moronic extreme. The spam comments I was encountering were hopeless, totally off topic - so blatent it was obvious - an aimless grasping at SEO straws,

Why don't people realise that Google's automated indexing systems are designed to mimic humans looking for relevant content? They are not simply a static mechanism which can be methodically reversed engineered in an attempt to gain unwarranted organic search engine rankings.

I don't say this from a holier than thou SEO perspective - it just seems obvious to me that if you try to pull the wool over Google's eyes then they will find you out - maybe not today but tomorrow (Casablanca anyone?).

For example, if I worked at Google and they said to me "Joel, what do you think we can do about spam comments?" I would probably throw around the folliowing kinda thoughts:

- What sort of pattern does these SPAM comments generate?

- Do we see a regular lineup of sites appearing with backlinks from not related blogs?

Now I know as well that Google's automated systems must walk the line (in the words of the late, great JC) because they don't want to throw false positives and then automatically penalise your average "Joe the plumber" websites. However I'm sure there are some obviously tell tale signs for the blatent offenders and for the less obvious ones why don't these get flagged up for Google 'special ops' to investigate. The guys and gals would look at the evidence - see if a "crime has been committed" and see if the automated systems need amending to account for it, in short, a feedback loop.

That's why I always recommend just white hat SEO strategies to people - build it right (what's wrong with XHTML strict?) and use the appropriate markup but, best of all, create compelling content. Tricks are for idiots.