Why Is Someone Spamming Our Comments On Behalf of a New York Attorney?

Sep 17, 2009

By Ken.

Update: The attorney responds in the comments.

Second Update: I’ve removed the attorney’s name. See the end of the post for why.

Our friends and colleagues Mark Bennett of Defending People and Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice are tireless critics of crass legal marketing, which is a topic we also cover. Bennett repeats repeats this mantra over and over:

When you outsource your marketing, you outsource your ethics and your reputation.

Now, granted, I don’t know if Mark is repeating it for emphasis or because, like my 92-year-old grandmother, he has forgotten that he already said it several times. But Mark is dead right. It remains an apt observation of which all attorneys should take note. All attorneys.

I’m looking at you, attorney in New York.

I learned of Attorney in New York because someone spammed us with a comment promoting him. Here is the comment:

New York’s [specialty] attorney has won millions of dollars in jury verdicts for [types of cases] and much more.

The comment, left by a commenter identifying itself as “[Specialty] Attorney New York”, was accompanied by the attorney’s web site url and purported email address [note: in comments, the attorney says that this is not his address], and left from IP address 121.243.172.241, which unless the IP was spoofed suggests it was left from Bangalore, India.

The comment was left on this post by Patrick, which ridiculed a plaintiff suing a bar for allowing him to ride a mechanical bull while drunk. Like this blog in general, that post is not calculated to promote personal injury suits, nor is it likely to be sought out and viewed by people hungry for positive comments about personal injury suits. I daresay that the comment left in the attorney’s name is singularly unsuited for the post, rather like leaving spam for your porn site on an evangelical Christian blog.

I struggle to imagine a reader who, while perusing Popehat whilst harboring a need for an attorney of this specialty, would see that comment spam and say “Aha! This is just the attorney I need!” Similarly, I struggle to imagine someone searching for information about attorneys of that specialty, coming across that comment, seeing that someone has promoted this attorney on a snarky blog like this, and saying “Aha! This is just the attorney I need!”

In truth, such comment spam is probably not left — at least not by anyone who understands what they are doing — with the primary intent that people will read the comment and follow the link to the product or service and use it. Rather, it is calculated to create links back to the service or product, so that the service or product’s web site will enjoy a more prominent listing when an internet user searches for terms used in the comment. Here, if I had approved the comment touting the attorney, the primary benefit to him would not have been Popehat users rushing to his door when their penis pump malfunctions or they swallow the TV remote again. Rather, the attorney’s site would enjoy a marginally more prominent page rank when people searched for “[specialty] attorney from New York.” If many sites approved similar spam comments, then the many resulting links might allow the attorney’s site to enjoy a substantially improved page ranking in search engine results, bringing more business to the door.

Of course, that would come at the cost of someone leaving little turds of spam all over the internet. That would have a countervailing consequence for the attorney’s reputation, and some might say, for his ethical stance.

Now, what are the possibilities here for how this comment spam in favor of this attorney came to be left on a hilariously inappropriate post on Popehat, and what does it say about the attorney’s judgment? Let’s see:

1. The attorney might have personally decided that this spam comment was well-placed on that particular post, and put it there himself. This seems unlikely. The attorney’s picture on his web site betrays no gross signs of brain damage. Also, it seems unlikely he is posting from Bangalore.

2. The attorney may have downloaded and installed one of the many automatic comment programs that will automatically spam hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of sites with your comment spam, after you input your preferred search terms (which helps the program determine where to leave the spam) and the comment he wanted. If this is the case, the attorney is either (a) of extremely questionable judgment, if he set in motion a program to promote himself on the internet without a grasp of how it worked, and without understanding that it would annoy tens of thousands and clutter blogs by leaving impertinent comment spam, or (b) a major-league asshole, if he knew that was what it would do and did it anyway to promote himself. In either case, one ought to think twice before hiring the attorney. Having an attorney with poor judgment is dangerous. Having an attorney who is an intractable asshole (as opposed to one who is only an asshole for strategic purposes when it benefits your case) is also dangerous. This particular possibility strikes me as unlikely, given the Bangalore IP address, unless I misapprehend how such programs work.

3. The attorney may have outsourced his reputation, and ethics, by outsourcing his marketing to someone who did (1) or (2) — more likely (2). The Bangalore IP address makes me suspect that the attorney hired some slick-talking marketer, who outsources various work to people in Bangalore. That marketer had his outsourced guy in Bangalore run the automatic comment program, after instructing him on the search terms and comment content to use, probably based on the attorney’s vaguely delivered preferences. It is possible that the attorney knew this is exactly what would happen, in which case he is a judgment-lacking asshole. Or it is possible that the attorney, unfamiliar with online marketing, hired an online marketer and set him loose without a clear idea of what he would do, in which case the attorney displays poor judgment. It is possible that the internet marketer promised to deliver better search hits without explaining to they attorney how he would do so, and the attorney failed to inquire vigorously and supervise effectively, displaying poor judgment. Or, I suppose, it is possible that the attorney inquired vigorously and supervised effectively, but the marketer defied his instructions and did this in secret — which raises the question of what judgment the attorney displayed in hiring the marketer in the first place. Remember — when the attorney outsourced his marketing, he outsourced his reputation and his ethics. There, I’m repeating myself like Bennett. Drooling and incontinence loom on the horizon. Shouting at kids to put down their talking music machines and get off my lawn, like Greenfield, await beyond that.

4. Or maybe some malicious person is sending comment spam to make New York Attorney look bad. It could happen. Do you have enemies, New York attorney?

[Note: in the comments below, the attorney asserts that he did not know that anyone was doing any internet marketing for him. Read his comments.]

Nobody — nobody — who runs a web site or reads web sites likes comment spam. It’s irritating. It shows that marketers view the internet as their toilet. It shows that they are willing to clutter people’s blogs with impertinent and unwelcome spam if it improves their clients’ search rankings. That’s why automatic comment programs are widely detested, and the people who write and market them and the marketers who use them are widely viewed as vermin. And that is why you would never want to hire an attorney who knowingly employs this method, and why you should be gravely concerned about the web-savvy (at the very least) and judgment of an attorney who outsources his marketing and as a result unknowingly employs them.

Update: the attorney responds, and offers his position, in the comments.

Further update: I’ve decided, after the dialogue with the attorney below, to remove his name and stuff that would make it very easy to identify him, both from the post and from the comments. That’s not because I retract my comments above that failure to supervise marketers lacks judgment. It’s also not because anyone has shown me that anything I said was inaccurate. It’s because it’s our site, and I can, and I felt like it. I leave the comments above to reflect my continued feelings on attorneys who use comment spam or fail to supervise adequately their minions or contractors who do.

Last 5 posts by Ken

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38 Comments

Marketing

35 Comments

Max Power • Sep 17, 2009 @10:26 am

Ken I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish, but [attorney] is the best lawyer of all time. The best lawyer of all time!!
Andrew J. Barovick • Sep 17, 2009 @11:17 am

I hate to rely on a cliche, but you have made a mountain out of a mole hill. To presume that [attorney] “outsourced his reputation and ethics” simply because an article of spam touting his firm ended up on your site is irresponsible, and without factual basis. I can’t tell you anything about the source of the spam, but I can say that [attorney] is a highly regarded member of the NY plaintiff’s bar, and has earned the respect of both plaintiff’s and defense lawyers over the course of his career, precisely because of his ethics, which are beyond reproach. In fact, Steve has become the “go to” [specialty]. I know this because I work with him, and because I have worked in this field for quite some time, more of it on the defense side than the plaintiff’s.
I’m sorry you found the spam irritating. But how about letting the punishment fit the crime?
Ken • Sep 17, 2009 @11:22 am

But the punishment an (annoying-to-him) reference on the web does fit the crime of using the web either annoyingly or recklessly. And the entire point of the post is to point out how attorneys who carefully build up good reputations through hard work can threaten them through outsourcing marketing. I have absolutely no reason to doubt that [attorney] is a fine attorney with, at least in other contexts, excellent ethics. But there are legitimate ethical implications of spamming.

The purpose is not to punish [attorney] — who will experience reputational punishment simply as a result of having comment spam with his name cluttering the internet, whether or not this post is here — but to deter lawyers from using scummy marketing methods, from using scummy outside marketers, or from failing to supervise marketers thoroughly.

Andrew, can you identify another scenario other than the ones I posited how spam touting [attorney] wound up on this site?

That said, we’ve taken down such posts in the past when the marketing attorneys in question have apologized for spamming, or foolishly hiring spammers, and reliably indicated that the conduct will cease.
Danimal • Sep 17, 2009 @11:34 am

Ummm, if you want to call him out on his spamming and linkbaiting, why post the links without a “nofollow”?
Andrew J. Barovick • Sep 17, 2009 @11:39 am

The “crime of using the web either annoyingly or recklessly”? Come on, Ken. I think you’ll concede that the reality here is that a marketing firm did this on its own, using its own SEO methods, without necessarily having reviewed that lone act with [attorney]. Should your noting it serve as a warning to others that they should delve deeper into what their marketers are doing for them (or to them)? Sure it should. But you’ve gone way beyond that salutory purpose. And there was no need to mention [attorney] in your post. Instead, you took it upon yourself to inflict reputational harm, without having all the facts. And because your blog is usually so good, and therefore so widely read, the resulting harm is quite significant compared to that which might result from someone inadvertently stumbling upon such spam during an internet search.
That you would even raise the idea of [attorney] apologizing shows that you have very little appreciation for the power of the web, and the realities of legal marketing. And I must say, for someone who has just trashed the reputation of an attorney baselessly, you have a lot of nerve.
Patrick • Sep 17, 2009 @11:45 am

This is not a post about [attorney]’s ability as a lawyer. This is a post about spam, and this is a post about fucking manners.

If [attorney] is so awesome Andrew, why does someone marketing on his behalf feel the need to post his awesomeness on our humble blog? I have no doubt, just based on your say-so, that he’s wonderful, but we out those who employ spammers. It’s just our policy, based on many many readings of crap spam from people like those [attorney] evidently employed here. Which we have to do to rescue filtered comments from people like you, who actually read the blog and have interesting comments about what we write. When spam comes from a fellow lawyer, whether or not it’s some marketer acting on his behalf, it’s all the more galling.

The spam wasn’t even on topic (we never post about great medmal lawyers here), but even if it was this site is not owned by [attorney]. If he wishes to market himself on the internet, or anyone wishes to do so for him, that shouldn’t happen through our site. It should happen on his own site.

We don’t market ourselves here. We assuredly don’t take kindly to strangers attempting to do the same for themselves.
Ken • Sep 17, 2009 @11:48 am

I wouldn’t say we’re “widely read,” Andrew, by any stretch of the imagination. But that isn’t the point.

Do you think I have inaccurately described the possible scenarios by which the spam wound up on my blog? Did I leave out a scenario which exculpates [attorney]? I’m happy to hear and consider it.

But it seems to me that even under the scenario you posit — a marketing firm did this without reviewing the specific act with [attorney] — that it very much makes the point that “when you outsource your marketing, you outsource your reputation and your ethics.”

Attorneys who choose to use internet marketing firms without vigorous, exacting, meticulous supervision of exactly what they are doing risk exactly this sort of thing. Comment spam is scummy. It casts disrepute on the entire profession. It offends me when I get it because lawyers, at best, don’t know what they are doing or don’t supervise their marketers.
Ken • Sep 17, 2009 @12:05 pm

Also, Andrew, I need to ask this:

Instead, you took it upon yourself to inflict reputational harm, without having all the facts.

Exactly what fact did I not consider? In a prior post, you suggest that the most likely scenario is that [attorney] knowingly hired a SEO marketing firm, but did not know that the firm would use comment spam. In my post, I say this:

Or it is possible that [attorney], unfamiliar with online marketing, hired an online marketer and set him loose without a clear idea of what he would do, in which case [attorney] displays poor judgment. It is possible that the internet marketer promised to deliver better search hits without explaining to [attorney] how he would do so, and [attorney] failed to inquire vigorously and supervise effectively, displaying poor judgment. Or, I suppose, it is possible that [attorney] inquired vigorously and supervised effectively, but the marketer defied his instructions and did this in secret — which raises the question of what judgment [attorney] displayed in hiring the marketer in the first place.

Other than your disagreement with the opinion such levels of supervision of marketers reflect upon judgment, what fact is left out of this scenario?
shg • Sep 17, 2009 @12:14 pm

I smell a friend trying to help another friend out of a jam. Nothing more. It’s a fine, friendly thing to do, but Andrew’s got no real beef. If [attorney] outsourced his SEO marketing to Bangalore, he’s got no one to blame but himself for this crap kicking his online reputation in the butt.

Another good reason to put an end to all these marketers, social media experts and pro-marketign CLEs teaching lawyers that this is the way to get rich. Don’t blame Ken because [attorney] took his chances playing spammer.
Patrick • Sep 17, 2009 @12:16 pm

In accordance with Dan’s suggestion, I no-followed the link in question.

What would we do without our computer-literate fanbase?
Mike • Sep 17, 2009 @12:48 pm

Why doesn’t [attorney] just drop in with a comment, send an e-mail, and apologize?

That’s what I’d do. Heck, it’s even worked on me.

I posted a truthful – but damaging post – about something stupid a young lawyer did. He wrote me a long e-mail detailing the facts. He made a mistake and was asking me to help him move past it. I confirmed his story. Pulled the post. Stuff like that no doubt happens often.

It’s pretty amazing what can get done when you don’t lecture people who have been on the ‘Net for over a decade, about good e-manners. Especially when said ‘Net peeps are posting from their own blogs.
Andrew J. Barovick • Sep 17, 2009 @1:00 pm

Yes, Scott, I am a friend. No reason to engage your sense of smell, as I acknowledged as much in my initial comments (”I work with him”). And you are a friend of the Popehat folks, I imagine, based on your being lauded as a “tireless critic of crass legal marketing” in the first sentence of the post. It’s nice of you to come to your friend’s aid, but I don’t think there is much you, or anyone can do to defend Ken’s unwarranted attack on [attorney]’s ethics, all based on a single, apparently extemely irritating bit of spam. And while I appreciate your concerns about the effects of such spam, I doubt that it has succeeded in kicking his online reputation in the butt. His clients care about how he is as a lawyer, and not so much about an errant advertisement that he may or may not have known about.
Ken • Sep 17, 2009 @1:06 pm

His clients care about how he is as a lawyer, and not so much about an errant advertisement that he may or may not have known about.

I’m sorry, Andrew, but now you are losing me. If clients don’t care about such things, how is his reputation harmed by us writing about it?

It seems to me you can’t have it both ways.

And I would still welcome an answer to my question about what fact I missed or what exculpatory scenario I failed to mention.

Also, you say I have made an “unwarranted attack on [attorney]’s ethics.” Actually, I have only questioned his ethics with respect to advertising, based upon receiving a spam comment promoting him. Moreover, I have detailed scenarios that might reflect only on judgment rather than on ethics. That’s rather clear from both the post and the comments.

Is it your position that spam advertising has no ethical dimension? Will the relevant New York rules back up that provision?
Ken • Sep 17, 2009 @1:13 pm

By the way, as I typed the last post, we got a new spam on another post from another attorney with this text

Really enjoyed reading your blog post. I will have to bookmark your site for later.

. . . . complete with link to attorney’s web site with shit-eating grin pic.

Andrew, I take it that you think I should not name the attorney, or his site, in a post about that.

Which do you think will be more effective in deterring attorneys and the marketing vermin — naming, or not naming?

Edited to add: By the way, the new comment spam is on this post, which is about scummy marketing.
shg • Sep 17, 2009 @2:08 pm

Hey Andrew. You conflated your purpose with mine. Ken doesn’t need my support. He owns the delete and edit buttons, and he can disappear you or me any time he wants. I add my 2 cents in your favor, as distinguished from calling you a twit because your argument is asinine. I laud you for doing something a friend would do, and unlike Ken, [attorney] could use a friend because he got caught with his zipper down and his pecker out.

So it would have enhanced your credibility to show a little appreciation rather than persist in your approach that Ken’s post is “unwarranted” because you says so. Do you really think you’re opinion that your friend didn’t engage in scummy marketing is going to win the day here? You certainly don’t seem that stupid. See, there I go with another compliment. I really am the voice of moderation today.
Mike • Sep 17, 2009 @4:11 pm

Mr. Barovick: Here is what you don’t get, since your blog is a piece of shit marketing device.

My blog gets a lot more readers than I ever would have imagined. My full name isn’t on my site. I don’t blog to get cases. I blog because I care about content. Thus, my posts are pretty good.

Same with Popehat. These guys don’t even use their real names. Content is king.

While SHS uses his full name, he does fuck-all to promote his practice.

NOT coincidentally (and I really cannot overemphasize the “NOT”), we all have respectable audiences. When you blog to educate rather than reach your hands into someone’s pocket, you get the respect of an audience.

Leeching motherfuckers like [attorney] want to do what we have elected not to do – capitalize on our hard work.

Look, man, if anyone is going to make $$$ off of my blog, it will be me. Yet [attorney], who contributes nothing, seek to suck money out of us. Rather than offer to pay Popehat’s bandwith fees (blogging has expenses other than time), he wants a freebie. He’s a head lice.

Do you not get how disgustingly parasitic that is?

If [attorney] would just come in to apologize, at least I would move along.

As it is now, I am pissed off and thus likely to make my ow contribution. I am considering a blog post with [attorney]’s name prominently noted. I guarantee that whatever I post, will end up on the first page of Google’s search results.

I have real work to do now, though.

If [attorney] would just do the decent thing, apologizing for his scummy, Four Hour Workweek marketing practices, I will forget it.

Otherwise, he will be viewed as the paragon of the only thing I hate about blogging – comment spam. I need a concrete target for an abstract hate. Such is life. It ain’t fair.
Mike • Sep 17, 2009 @4:15 pm

So… TypePad does a pretty good job of catching spam. I haven’t gone into my spam folder in months. If I miss a comment, unlike Popehat, I don’t care. I don’t dig through shit for truffles.

Today, however, I took a peek. I found several spam comments from July; from the “Lucas Law Center.” I went to his URL. For a good laugh, here you go:

http://lucaslawcentertoday.com/

Spamming today; in receivership tomorrow. Epic.
Ken • Sep 17, 2009 @7:13 pm

By the way — whoever is spamming on behalf of [attorney] is meeting with some success. Here is one that got through a week ago. Searching further. [link deleted]
Linus • Sep 17, 2009 @9:30 pm

What I’m getting from this post and the comments is that some attorneys just flat don’t think comment spam is a big deal. So it makes sense that they and their friends would object that you say or imply that they are unethical, and accuse you of “going way beyond” or inflicting a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime. One gets the sense that they would view ANY criticism of the spam as overkill.

I’m with Ken; if you don’t think it raises ethical concerns, you either don’t know enough about it or you don’t care. Ignorant or unethical. Unless there’s someone who’d like to present the rational argument of why comment spam is hunky-dory?
Bruce • Sep 17, 2009 @11:30 pm

If we remember our internet history it was lawyers who created the very first bulletin board commercial spam advertising green card assistance.

Plus ca change and all that.
Bob • Sep 18, 2009 @6:40 am

This comment thread is right the border of some kind of epicness.
PLW • Sep 18, 2009 @6:59 am

I especially like the implication by Mike that the goal of Popehat is to educate.
New York Attorney • Sep 18, 2009 @8:00 am

Hello:

This matter just came to my attention last night and you do indeed deserve a reply from me.

I appologize for any consternation this may have caused. I fully appreciate you efforts (very well expressed and well written) to “police” the internet. I equally subscribe to the belief that no one should secure an unfair advantage by manipulating the internet.

That being said, I wish to let you know the following:
1. I have never used a “gmail” address (referred to in the spam) in my life;
2. My name is spelled wrong;
3. I have never outsourced any work to India or anywhere for anything ever;
4.I am disturbed to learn that my name is poping up on the site that you described – something that I would never authorize, directly or indirectly. I agree – it is unflattering and unappealing.
5. I have used the same web host for probably 10 years or more and have never had a problem. I have found that company to be professional, ethical and responsible. They seem to enjoy a good reputation and have many solid corporate clients.

I have contacted my web host and asked them to look into this matter and to take whatever remedial action that is possible. I do not know what more I can do.

Since I am from the “old school” and not a “blogger” (this is actually the first blog that I have ever written), I only learned of this matter through my collegue. I would appreciate the courtesy of a direct e-mail to me at [email deleted] in the future should there be any further issue so that I can have the opportunity to address it immediately.

If my web host does find out anything further about the spam, I will report it here.
Ken • Sep 18, 2009 @8:34 am

New York Attorney:

Thanks for your comment. I’ll respond in detail today.
Ken • Sep 18, 2009 @10:20 am

New York Attorney:

Thank you for your comment.

I’m taking you at your word for purposes of this discussion. I mean no offense by pointing that out; it’s just that it’s typical for people to offer excuses when this sort of thing comes to light.

A couple of comments:

1. You almost certainly don’t need to talk to your web “host” — that is, the company hosting your web site on its servers, which you pay for bandwidth and hosting. Rather, you probably need to talk to your web designer — the person, or firm, who built your web site. Some such people imagine themselves SEO experts. I suspect you will find it is your designer, not your host, who is the guilty party — unless you have ever hired anyone to help market your firm in any way. Are you sure you’ve never hired a marketing/advertising/networking consultant?

2. You might want to check out the results of [link deleted] which reveals that the text of the spam comment left here has been used to promote you on several directories and sites. Some might characterize those directories and sites as third-rate, and not up to the level of quality you might want to maintain. If you aren’t doing that, someone is doing it on your behalf.

3. It’s hard to say this without sounding snotty, but I’m going to try. People who want to have a professional website, and any other sort of online advertising, designed and hosted by a third party should either (1) educate themselves on basic elements of this form of advertisement — such as the difference between a host and a designer — or (2) have a trusted close adviser like an associate, paralegal, or spouse who is knowledgeable. This is especially true for anyone who hires a marketing/advertising/networking consultant who offers to do any sort of online advertising or search engine optimizing or anything else designed to use the internet or social media to attract business. Without that basic knowledge, it is impossible to supervise what is being done in your name, and you are leaving your reputation (and possibly even your compliance with the law) in the hands of people you don’t know well and whose practices you don’t understand.

New York Attorney, as I said, I’m taking you at your word. I’ll be happy to remove your name from all parts of any post on this site. That’s not a special courtesy to you, or anything done because we must, but an offer we have extended to other attorneys who have spammed us after they’ve commented. I’d be happy to do that before, or after, you comment further. After a while, the original posts (and titles) will no longer appear through searches. Please let me know.
New York Attorney • Sep 18, 2009 @11:25 am

Thank you Ken, I appreciate your courtesy. Obviously I am not happy to have this public dialogue and would be pleased to have it removed.

My “web ignorance” is apparent from my terminology. The company that I was referring to, and which I have used over the years, does all of my web stuff – “hosting”, “designing”, etc.. And the company is good.

The obvious problem with your suggestion is having the time to do my own internet eduction to oversee people who I pay a fair stipend to do things that I cannot do, do not have the time to do or not know enough about. I usually try to find high end service people (doctors, even lawyers, accountants, car mechanics, consultants, scuba instructors, and the like) and expect that they will be responsible. I often, maybe naively, take them at face value – trusting my judgment of the character of the person that I am dealing with. Rarely am I disappointed. Time is a very precious commodity for me as is the case with most lawyers. I think that the time demands of good lawyering, especially trial law, is far more than most other profession – many evenings and weekends, always!!. I realize that where I retain people to act on my behalf and they take action that have implications that may affect others, then I will have to exert a different level of scrutiny. I will try.

Meanwhile, why can’t I spell check on your site? (Is it because you are so literate, and you really are, that you do not need it?) I am embarrassed with the errors in my last e-mail.

Thank you for the education and the time that you spent with me

New York Attorney
Ken • Sep 18, 2009 @11:48 am

New York Attorney,

There are some things upon which I will throw the first stone. Spelling is not one of them. A previous iteration of this site had a word misspelled in its title for years. Fortunately most people thought I was being ironic.

I think there is a plug-in to let commenters spell-check. I will look.

As to the substance, we will be happy to remove references to your name in this post and these comments. I will change your comments to a pseudonym. I’ll do so this weekend. Please consider posting an update under a pseudonym on what you learn from interrogating your web people.

Let me suggest this: as an experienced lawyer, you probably know that there are some categories of people you hire who require more close scrutiny and control than others. Summer associates, for example. Or brand-new associates. Or — for most people — private investigators, particularly relatively new ones who just left the police or FBI and might not yet be well-trained in civilian behavior.

You take the extra time to supervise such people really closely because you know that they their screw-ups can have dramatic consequences for you and your clients. Sometimes you supervise them more closely because their industry has a culture of corner-cutting or misbehavior. If you need to use them, you do so at the price of taking the time to supervise extremely closely.

I submit that web designers and marketers fall into that category. Straight web designers — people who just build your site, and don’t do any search-engine-optimizing or marketing — require very strict supervision because the site is your public face. Also, it’s going to be taken as a statement by you. If some disgruntled client unfairly accuses you of malpractice, you better believe he’ll quote your web site if it’s helpful to him — and you want to make sure that you have vetted and approved every word on there. You’ll need just a bit of special knowledge to supervise whether your designer is putting tags on your site to attract search hits. Tags are not visible to someone simply reading the site, but search engines read them. Some of those tags may be saying things about you, or attracting hits, in ways you don’t approve. if you aren’t figuring out how to read them yourself (and if you navigated here and posted here, it will be trivially easy to learn how to do), you don’t have full control over what your advertising is saying about you.

And marketers — my God. I would put internet marketers in a reliability category with jailhouse informants. I know some excellent ones, but the market is flooded with marketing businesses that are the equivalent of telemarketing boiler rooms. Again, a relatively trivial amount of training will allow you to (1) ask the right questions of them and give the right instructions to them, and (2) perform periodic searches to make sure they are not doing things they ought not do (like use comment spam to promote you).

Lawyers shouldn’t hire them unless they are ready to invest the time to supervise them, and to know how to do so. I have no trouble with the concept that you have too little free time. My firm — which has more than ten lawyers — still doesn’t have a web site years after opening because we haven’t found the time to do it right.

You could learn what you need to know to do due diligence on your marketers and web designers with, at most, five hours of work with a web-savvy friend.
Bob • Sep 18, 2009 @12:01 pm

Steve, use Firefox. It has a built in spell-checker and is generally considered to be a much better browser than Internet Explorer.

(I’ll never get why otherwise smart talented people can’t spell without one though.)

And if it’s your web company doing this for you, then they are not good, they are weasely slime balls. This kind of SEO is commonly used by folks selling fake penis enlargement pills. That’s the company that your web guys have put you in.
New York Attorney • Sep 18, 2009 @12:16 pm

Thanks again Ken. I did not realize that you were a lawyer.

Without beating this matter to a pulp (I have spent more time on this than I expected) supervising people regarding subject matters within my kin is a no brainer (other lawyers, people who investigate matters for me – I have done investigative work of sorts – etc.). But outside of my arena is another story.
Until now, I did not even know what “spam” was all about. I am still not really sure. It is time to learn. Is there any book or web site that you can refer me to?

New York Attorney
Ken • Sep 18, 2009 @12:31 pm

New York attorney, I think that I’ve now removed all references to your name. Let me know if you see one I missed.

Some people will probably chime in with suggestions, but the best resource for learning about the internet is an internet-savvy friend who will sit down with you for a few hours if you buy him a case of beer.

Please do consider updating us — using this pseudonym I have given you — once you find out who did this on your behalf, and what they said in their defense.
Linus • Sep 18, 2009 @12:59 pm

Please allow me to jump in at this point and be a nitpicking, usage-Nazi asshole: I believe that it should be “subject matters within my ken” not “my kin”. I decided to be an asshole about this because a) considering the name of the Popehatter you are responding to, it would have been cosmically awesome and b) I am currently reading the first Outlander book (at the ~~command~~suggestion of my wife) and have been wondering if people will look at me funny if I use the word in ordinary conversation. “Hey, Linus, what time does the Florida-Tennessee game start?”
“I dinna ken, Alex, but I’ll let ye know.”
Grandy • Sep 18, 2009 @1:11 pm

You’ve almost certainly heard of spam in reference to email, Attorney? But if you haven’t it is, in effect, traditional junk mail in a new medium. The principle is simple: throw lots of hooks into the water to get a few hits. The internet makes this easier than ever to do (ok, this is not quite true; doing this can involve non-trivial and malicious things. Also, if you wanted to do a mass-email for your business, you couldn’t just add 200k people to the CC section in outlook and do it that way).

The spam being discussed here is a little different, and relates to how Google searching works (I name Google here specifically because they pioneered this change in ranking pages, if memory serves). To simplify, the more popular your site is (not just things like page hits and site visits, but how many people link to you), the higher your ranking will be. These things are weighted; so if super popular people link to you it counts more (regular linking from Andrew Sullivan counts lots more than regular linking for little old us).

As such, it has become an underhanded practice to do things like what Ken described in the post here: posting a throw away comment with a link back to your (editorial your) own blog. Some blog software have settings to present this (the “No follow” mentioned above – when the setting is toggled links are created with no follow set, basically), but for the reasons Patrick mentioned Popehat does not use it by default.

Now, what you may be thinking is “who in their right mind spends time wandering around the internet wilds and doing this?” And the answer is: nobody. It’s too time consuming and tedious to be a worthwhile endeavor. Technology can fix a lot of problems, and it sure “fixed” this one. People use “bots” to do this. “bot” is a term that is often used to mean different but similar things. Put simply: someone automated the process. Whatever the newest porn site on the internet is (in the time it took to type that sentence, 8 or 9 appeared at least), it likely has a program/script running on a computer somewhere whose job it is to flood the internet with spam links. It “crawls” the web finding comment threads to post those spam comments to.

We don’t like spammers of either of these sorts. At all. If Patrick, Ken, and Myself became some sort of tri-lateral world ruling entity our first act would be the obliteration of any and all spammers with extreme prejudice (we’d follow this up with beer, and then a fierce conflict between our 3 factions. There can be only one, after all).

Do understand that links are a precious commodity here in the internet wilderness. They are often traded judiciously (check out our own blogrolling policy to see one take on how to hand them out, but many different sites do it different ways). How you want to trade yours is a matter of personal preference, but I’m sure we can point you to plenty of examples of similar policies so you can get an idea of what people are thinking.

Here’s the Wikipedia article on SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization”. It’s relevant because that’s what the sort of spam being discussed in this comments thread is all about. I’m not even sure where I’d point you to getting starter in getting familiar with all this technology. I know it can seem daunting but it’s not as hard as you think. Mastering the internet is about knowing how to pinpoint searches and filter. Being a malevolent artificial intelligence helps, but most of us don’t have that option.

A long post, so I hope I don’t throw you off here (succinctness is not one of my strengths. Actually, coherence can be touch and go too. . .).
Chris • Sep 18, 2009 @1:58 pm

“We don’t like spammers of either of these sorts. At all. If Patrick, Ken, and Myself became some sort of tri-lateral world ruling entity our first act would be the obliteration of any and all spammers with extreme prejudice (we’d follow this up with beer, and then a fierce conflict between our 3 factions. There can be only one, after all).”
I’m sure somewhere between beer and “fierce conflict” you would hit “give the nation of Australia to Jeff Vogel in order to create some sort of terrible combination of Avernum and Most Dangerous Game”.

Actually, that might be a fine way to obliterate the spammers.
Grandy • Sep 18, 2009 @2:22 pm

Chris that is a wonderful idea. We’ll make you Grand Poobah of something awesome as a reward. While we at Popehat are very much anti-Czar, we’re very pro Grand Poohbah.
Mike • Sep 21, 2009 @10:13 am

More on our good friend, the spammer from Lucas Law Center:

“SAN FRANCISCO – Saying ‘unprecedented’ complaints against some members of the bar leave it no choice, the State Bar on Friday released the names of 16 attorneys it is investigating for misconduct related to loan modification businesses.

One of those lawyers is: “Paul Lucas, Lucas Law Center.”

It shouldn’t be surprising that someone who spams law blogs would also be under investigation for other misconduct. Still, it’s an amusing footnote.