A Disturbing Trend in the Blogosphere

I've noticed a rather disturbing trend recently in the blogosphere.  Well, maybe it isn't so recent but it is a bit more apparent.  For whatever reason, some bloggers view blogging as a competition.  As a result they actually try to take down another blogger.  They purposely try to lower another blogger's PR.  The most common method used is via veiled comment spam.  Now the comment itself may be borderline and in most cases appears to be a simple reply related to the post.  Where the catch is instead of using their name/url to gain some backlink love, they use their Blogger profile link.  This creates a black hole that if effectively done can certainly lower another blogger's PR.  The sign that someone is doing this is a comment left daily on a very consistent basis over an extended period of time.  Over that time the hole in your PR grows.  It usually starts out with them leaving what appears to be genuine comments.  This builds a bit of trust.  Then they move on to somewhat borderline comments and finally comments like "nice post" or they may relate it to the post with a "looks yummy". 

The problem is it really is a subtle way of sabotaging another blog.  The blogger tends to let the boarderline comments through because they have had several comments from the person before.  The person doing the commenting usually reigns their comments in if there is any sign the blogger is on to them and may even start the whole process over again to build a little trust.  Over my years of blogging I have encountered this three times.  The first time it took me a couple of months before getting suspicious and the second time I recongnized what was going on within a couple of weeks.  Recently this was happening on one of my blog but I let it slide for awhile before deciding what to do.  When I turned off comments on my blogs this person was the first to complain.  When I turned comment back on, the person resumed commenting daily.  When I changed the HTML code to strip the url from a commenter's profile, the comments from this person abrubtly stopped.  I think the person realized that I was on to what they were trying to do.

What I don't understand is why anyone would do this.  If I'm leaving a comment on another blog it is because I have something constructive to say.  The backlink is a bonus and I always leave the name and url of one of my blogs, closest related to the blog I'm commenting on.  I don't why anyone would try affecting another blogger's PR.  It is a very childish thing to do.  The reality is aside of affecting a blogger's PR it serves no purpose at all.  It is not like the commenter gains PR or even traffic to their blog.  It could get them labeled or reported as a comment spammer and it could cost them their Google account of which Blogger owned by.  So my question is, why are they doing it?  There is no real benefit to them at all.  Go figure!

Garden Gnome
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