Well, looks like it only took about 3.5 weeks to bump the number of Spam responses up over 200,000.

So, I hit the 100,000 mark on May 7, the 175,000 mark on August 7, and the 200,000 mark on September 2. It looks like I’m averaging about 25,000 Spam comments per month, or over 800 spam comments per day!!! To put this in perspective, I currently have just over 9,000 legitimate, approved comments on the blog.

At the current rate we should wrap up 2008 with over 300,000 and then in 2009 we should see the 700,000 mark. Of course, I would assume that the numbers will increase, and if they do there could be well over 1,000,000 spam comments on this blog by the end of 2009.

I can’t wait until the first time some geeky Webmaster tracks down a spammer and murders him just for spamming. I will contribute to his defense fund. Furthermore, I’ll vote for any presidential candidate who promises to make Spamming a capital offense punishable by death (or at least time in a federal prison.).

Thanks to Automattic for Akismet, without which I would probably have quit blogging.

Well, it was exactly three months ago that I shared the fact that this blog had reached the 100,000 spam mark according to the spam fighting plugin Akismet. But it looks like in the last 24 hours the count has crept up above the 175,000 mark.

76,000 spam comments in 90 days is just a little out of hand, don’t you think? So, this is why I heavily moderate comments and delete anything that looks spammy. You would have thought that maybe they would simply go elsewhere since it’s not getting through. But instead they just keep increasing.

Ok. Here is a question that is going to rile some people up.

So, there is a site that wrote an article titled “The Best Places to Get Quality Backlinks” that lists sites for people to leave comments on for the sole purpose of increasing their Google PageRank since they get to leave a link back to their site.

Guess which site is at the top of the list? Yeah. This one.

So, when I get comments from people who come directly from that site I think of them as disingenuous and completely discount their validity. I mean, I spend time to write articles for those of you who really enjoy the same general stuff as me.

Now, if ANYONE leaves a comment - no matter how brilliant - which contains a spammy link, I delete it as fast as possible. So the question is why should I treat bullshit comments any differently? Shouldn’t I just can them as well?

PS - How do I know when they arrive? Woopra.

Damn! Someone over at Google has seriously got it out for me! Why is it that just 30 days ago I reported that I was number 2 for a search for “John P.” and number 12 for the word “John“, but just today I was amusing a friend and noticed that if you search for John I’ve now dropped to number 206! Oh, and Pope John Paul II just passed me for “John P.” But I’m going to let that one slide…

Oh, this is such a huge blow to my ego. I’m just not sure I can keep going on. I’m no longer more important than John Dvorak, Sir Elton John, John Travolta, and the Johns Hopkins University. How do they justify this egregious act!

I’m telling you. Someone over at Google reads my blog and they are manually manipulating results to keep The Man down! Just like YouTube. Those people keep turning off the videos I link to within a day, even if they’ve been on YouTube for a year! And just because of a little copyright violation? Bah!

These big and powerful Internet companies need to stop messing with little old me.

Folks, this amuses me. By the way, make note of the date. It is NOT April Fools day…

Yesterday when I was on Cali’s show I randomly mentioned that I wished I was like Matt Mullenweg because if you search for Matt he comes up as the first result in Google. The last time I checked “John P” I was like the 90th listing. However, someone watching the broadcast dropped me a note to let me know that I’m actually now the second listing!

It looks like the number one position is occupied by a gospel singer by the name of John P. Kee. So, if anyone out there wants to help me take over as the king of “John P”, just link to my blog using my name (”John P.”) specifically and it might even drive me to the pole position!

Either way though, number two isn’t bad out of 46,800,000 results!

Oh, and incidentally, it looks like if you just search for “John” now, I’m about 12th from the top out of 141,000,000!

That is just crazy! It looks like I’m right after Senator John Edwards and singer John Mayer (whom I’m a big fan of), and before Senator John Kerry, popular columnist John Dvorak, and singer Sir Elton John. Amazingly I’m even ahead of John Travolta, and Johns Hopkins University (which won’t make my sister in law very happy).

Anyway, thanks to all of my loyal readers and the thousands of Web sites that have linked to me!

You know, I think of myself as a pretty prolific blogger. With over 1,100 posts in under two years, its hard to find others who can match my output. So would it surprise you to learn that even with multiple anti-spam measures in place, there are 100 Spams posted to OMB for every post I write!

That’s right. Akismet alone has saved you guys from reading over 100,000 spam comments, so a big huge thanks goes out to Matt Mullenweg and the gang over at Automattic for offering this service.

Today I added a new Gift Ideas section on the blog (just look up at the top) because I thought it might be helpful to share things that I’ve found which would make for birthday, anniversary, wedding and other gifts. I get a lot of catalogs, and I do a lot of shopping in general, so as I come across cool things I’ll add them into the Gift Ideas page.

The underlying technology behind the Gift page is an Amazon Shop. Any affiliate can set one up, and most people would usually do it to try to earn a little cash. Please remember, I donate ALL proceeds from OMB, so I didn’t set it up for that reason.

So, check out the new tab, and remember we’ve got it the next time you’re pressed to come up with a gift idea for that someone special.

Well, it’s been 11 months since my 500th post, and 18 since the inaugural post. Clearly it’s taken me almost twice as long to get the last 500 out as did the first 500. But hopefully everyone feels like my quality has improved.

I would like to once again thank ALL of my loyal readers. I never would have guessed that I’d be getting 15-20,000 page views per day a year ago, or that I’d have thousands of regular readers, but I can tell you that I really appreciate the fact that you all keep coming back.

As I’ve stated before, I’ll continue to give all of my advertising revenues to charity, or return them to the reader community in the form of member contests.

After a year and a half, and 1,000 articles, there is just one favor I’d like to ask of you all. Nothing pleases me more than seeing the subscriber count grow, so if you could help me spread the word to just a couple of friends or co-workers by suggesting they subscribe, I sure would appreciate it. And if you have any suggestions for ways I could improve things around here please don’t be shy about dropping a comment to let me know.

Thanks again!

Well, maybe not yet… but it could be if you help!

You know, about two months ago when I got nominated very, very late in the game for the Blogger’s Choice awards you guys all came together with a bunch of votes in a period of only a few days. The problem was, the voting had been open for an entire year, but we were only in on it the last week of the year.

Well, I just found out that the 8th Annual Weblog Awards are accepting submissions up until Jan 11, so if any of you guys want to see One Man’s Blog in the running now would be the time to do some submitting. (Shameless plug duly noted.) After the 11th they are going to narrow down the submissions and pick just a few that will be open for voting for some period of time thereafter. It sure would be something if OMB somehow scored a major upset and made it onto the list!

Now I know that with 70 million + blogs out there we’ve got like a one in a million chance, but as Lloyd said in Dumb and Dumber…

“What you’re telling me is, we’ve got a chance!”

As far as I can tell, the categories most befitting this blog would be “Best American Weblog”, “Best-Kept Secret Weblog”, or the elusive “Weblog of the Year” - of which I’m certain we have no chance at winning. But heck, I guess this is really about mobilizing your reader base as much as actual blog quality, so in the end doesn’t that really mean this is a vote about YOU, my dear readers, and not me?

So, if you can spare like 3 minutes to throw a vote my way in return for the 950 posts I’ve put out in the last year and a half I would really appreciate the gesture!

If you don’t have time, it’s no big deal really! I just appreciate the fact that you guys keep reading and commenting on my crazy ramblings day after day. In the last year I’ve gone from around 100 to 1000 regular subscribers (as reported by Feedburner), and an average day around One Man’s Blog means at least 10,000 readers - so again… Thanks!!!

Folks, a while back I had turned on the full e-mail feed so that you guys could read the entire articles without having to click through to the site. Unfortunately when I upgraded to the most recent version of WordPress it changed the way the feeds are handled and turned off the full e-mails.

Well, good news! I found a plugin called Full Text Feed and hopefully that is going to take care of the issue. So, please help me keep an eye on things as from now on those of you getting e-mail updates or subscribing via RSS should be able to read the whole thing.

By the way, I also found another plugin called Dual Feeds which might be more appropriate for some folks.

I recently completed the upgrade to WordPress 2.3 and thought it was about time I gave some credit where credit is due. So, the following is a complete list of all of the plugins that are in use here on OMB.

Perhaps others will find these plugins of use as well, but more importantly I want to thank the hard work of all the developers that make OMB what it is.
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I know you guys normally notice this before I do, but I was filtering through the spam here on OMB with FireFox when I noticed the SearchStatus bar was reporting we’re back up to a PR7. It’s not quite the PR8 we used to know and love, but it’s better than the downright insulting PR4 we suffered with for a couple of weeks.

Anyhoo, now my previous rant seems a little silly. But I do wonder if someone saw it and corrected things (mostly) as a result? It’s impossible to know what to do to appease the Google Gods. I’ll just keep sending random offerings of frankincense and myrrh.