I’m not opposed to relevant guest posts on a topic-based blog, but when it’s obvious that they didn’t even look at the site and are just robo-spamming blogs that maybe matched a keyword or something…?

I mean, stuff like this:

“I read your article https://speedforce.org/2017/11/crisis-earth-x-conclusion-review/. Your readers might be interested in checking out our resources on machine learning and AI.”

Really?

I can’t imagine enough people would bite for them to get their link-backs and up their page rank, but then spam has always been a scattershot approach.

@mrennen@mastodon.social suggested that even if the technique isn’t effective anymore, spammers might be selling the “service” of getting linkbacks to gullible sites that want the exposure.

Could be. There always has been a strong overlap between spammers and scammers.