I have no idea what is bumburbia, but lately I’ve gotten that question posted to almost all of my blogs as a comment. Â First, I figured it was some sort of spam, but the poster didn’t include any sort of URL to try to link to.
It could be a form of “commentor acceptance” spam. Â Basically, if someone comments enough on a blog, the blog’s anti-spam filter eventually whitelists them, so that future posts, with spammy links, are automatically approved.
Or may it could be some new Hollywood movie pitch that they’re trying to get virally marketed.
Either way, I’d love to know where it’s starting. Â I did a Google search for Bumburbia and “What is Bumburbia?” and came up with a few thousand hits — all in blog comments. Â That leads me to think it’s just a spam leader.
If anyone knows the source of this madness, comment below. Â At worst, maybe it’s a good domain name to pick up. Â I sort of like the word.
Update:Â Looks like Google decided to put me at the top of the search for bumburbia, pretty much 15 minutes after I posted this. Â Whoever is spamming the blogs didn’t do too good of a job. Â If you run a blog or better yet multiple blogs, and have had this posted to your sites, drop a note below.
Google search count: 2720 (as of 8am CST January 8, 2009)
Google search count: 10,290 (as of 10am CST January 11, 2009)
Google search count: 50,600 (as of 1pm CST January 14, 2009)
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I have just seen this on my blog also.
Doing a google search for it doesn’t ravel much.
I just got one of these comments too.
The only thing I’ve found is this MySpace page with a link to a Russian website, bumburbia.ru, and it looks like it could be a band or something.
Rule of thumb: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… It came through as one of my whitelisted comments, too. And I get so few comments on my blog that I’m actually a bit suspicious when someone comments and there’s no link on the post to another blog or website.
Here’s a question: I notice that about 80% of the spam comments I get are all going to one post. Do any of you notice anything similar, or have any idea why that might be the case? I have enough posts by now that it’s not like that’s the only thing on there for someone to spam.
Yeah, I’ve gotten this comment, too. I occasionally get spammy comments (which get through the spam filter) that don’t seem to have any URL, hyperlink, brand name, or anything in them. I don’t get it, either. The only thing I can think of is that some spammers might be mis-configuring their spamming software, bless their short-circuited, little minds. But doing a quick Google search usually confirms that they indeed have been posting similar, spammy comments all over the blogosphere. Whatever. Easy enough to click the “Spam” button.
Clicking the “Spam” button now…
-TimK
Just had one on my blog too. Very strange, but a clever tactic. I wonder if submitting comments like this as spam will be bad for akismet though, because they aren’t obviously spam and might impact negatively on real comments…
Just got it on my site too, it’s very interesting to see your site on top of Google’s results for this term..
someone just hit my site with this as well, i googled it and yours was at the top, so here i am! very strange though.
think i might email the guy from an non afilated email address and see what he’s up too, as its nondiscriminate about who he hits it would seem.
cheers,
bod.
Yep, got it myself. Did a google search and ended up here. Sure you’re not the spammer?
dm
An alternative theory to the “spam leader” theory is that the spammer is asking a question that people will reply to with a link (which will help the spammer).
E.g. Someone might ask “where can I get DodgySoft AntiVirus?”, and then someone innocently replies to the comment with a link to the DodgySoft AntiVirus website, thereby giving the spammer pagerank and traffic.
The weakness of this theory is that it doesn’t seem possible to find out what bumburbia actually is, so it’s impossible to link to.
Cheers,
Stu.
Just got this, and being the digger that I am, I looked up the whois for bumburbia.com. It’s registered to ThoughtDivers LLC in Fort Wayne, IN. The registration was on January 9, 2009, so assuming the site and the comment/spam efforts are related (a coincidence seems unlikely), the commenting preceded the domain reg by a few days.
ThoughtDivers is a small Web service company with a rather thin-looking portfolio. They don’t appear to specialize in SEO or viral marketing at all.
Bumburbia.com holds a single page, blank except for Google Analytics tracking code.
On my blog, the comment came from a (presumed) junk gmail address on an IP in Russia.
So, to the theories: a) it’s a new Web site being built and they’re trying to get a jump on SEO (if so, they outsourced); b) it’s part of a test or study to see the effect on Google traffic using various comment efforts; c) it’s a giant conspiracy, and the attack will occur any day now (sorry, been watching too many action movies); or d) agile minds at ThoughtDivers realized that the comment spammers hadn’t registered the most likely domain and jumped in, hoping to profit on the reselling.
Actually… Option D would be your best bet.
For a few bucks, I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of traffic the name would generate with no effort.
I was actually really surprised when I discovered the domain was still available.
Right now Google is showing around 66,000 occurrences of the term.
It took less than a week for a completely blank page to take the number one spot in Google for a page with ZERO content.
I was even a little more surprised when I found this comment on the number two link for bumburbia.