Are You Commenting Or Selling Me Something?

The other day a buddy of mine sent me a message on Facebook of someone who had commented on his new WordPress Blog that he is building.  He found it strange that he had received a comment as the site isn’t finished yet, and the content in the comment seemed a little odd.  Over the past few months we have discussed me designing a Custom WordPress Site for him in the near future.

The random comment was made by a “Bruce” whose site domain entered had nothing to do with WordPress sites, Agentpress themes, SEO, or anything close.  His site domain was a religious one.  So when my friend asked me about it, I said, do you have the IP address?  I had a hunch.

To look into things a little more, I asked him to send me the comment because it just seemed rather strange & awkward that someone would not only come & comment on a blog that isn’t even built yet, but to also that the comment would randomly suggest someone to redesign his site.

Here’s a screen capture of the comment:

The first thing I did was a simple IP lookup to find what I had expected.  The IP address of the commenter on his post who suggested a company to do site work for him was in the same location as the company suggested.  Now, I don’t know for certain that the commenter & suggested company are the same, but my gut feeling is that they are since the site that was commented on was 2,300 miles away and the company mentioned to hire does have connections to my friend through various social networks.

Now maybe I’m the only one that finds this kind of tactics really below par, sneaky, and shameful.    If you feel that someone should hire you because they could really benefit from your services, then simply email the site owner and tell them.  I’ve done this before with many people.  Some I’ve helped by giving them solutions to fix something wrong on their site, others have gone on to hire me to do work on their site instead.  But, to impersonate someone else and push your services in the comment on someone’s site is just wrong.

A common courtesy when commenting on someone else’s site is to not try & push your services, or link to something off the current domain you are visiting.  When you have a WordPress site, you gather all the information needed to check where someone is commenting from.  This is just another reason why having your own Custom WordPress Site can be a great addition to your online marketing strategy.

Let’s all try exhibiting a little common comment courtesy and stick to adding comments of value, not selling our products or services dishonestly.