One of the greatest advantages the Philippines have in the world of BPO is that we got really cheap labor and we’re relatively very good in English. That’s why we’re one of the top suppliers in the call center industry. And it doesn’t stop there.
According to the latest entry by Akismet in their “State of Web Spam“, the anti-spam service points out our exceptional skills in written English:
Human-posted spam has been on the rise for some time. Low-paid workers are hired by “SEO†firms to post comments on blogs and forums, advertising their clients’ web sites (typically small local businesses). The workers generally operate out of internet cafes and universities, particularly in India, South-East Asia, and Turkey. The quality of comments varies, with the best written spam usually coming from SE Asia. There are now sophisticated marketplaces set up specifically for hiring manual workers to do this kind of spam.
They didn’t really mention the Philippines but we all know that among the countries in South-East Asia, the Philippines is the top English-speaking country.
I’ve known a lot of SEO sweatshops being operated in some key cities in the Philippines, including Cagayan de Oro, Davao, Cebu City, Legazpi City, Bacolod and Iloilo. They’ve heavily trained employees to write very sensible and relevant comments in blogs and forums that that get past spam filters.
I’ve encountered a lot of these human-powered spam since last year in my blogs and they sometimes pass manual review — the comments are sensible and well written but the accompanying links usually gave them away.
LOL! Spam comments are definitely a bummer. But not all commenters spam sites. Some of us do read the post and offer our insights.