Comment spam is a pain in the butt. It’s a sneaky method of spammers who want to use your website to get backlinks and sell their dodgy wares. Here is how to avoid it.
Posted by Simon Stapleton | Posted on 20-08-2010
Category : Blogging, Fundamentals, Wordpress
Tags: comment spam, comments
Comment Spam is a Pain in the Ass.
It consumes time and energy just dealing with it – that is – reviewing each comment and deciding if it spam, and then tagging it as spam.
If you’ve suffered it, you’ll know what I mean.
Thankfully, there is a WordPress plugin that removes 99% of spam – Akismet (http://akismet.com/).
So first of all, if you don’t have Akismet, then install it today. This will cure the burden of this problem. Download the plugin, place it (unzipped) into your plugins folder, and then enabled it in your plugins manager. That’s all you need to do (well, except upgrade it when WordPress tells you there is an update.)
Akismet stops, on average, 150 spam comments on my blogs, EVERY DAY!
Next, if you don’t have comment moderation enabled, then you really must do, immediately. You don’t want spam finding it’s way through and making the hard work of your blog a mockery.
There is more. Don’t forget that once you approve a comment, the commentator can add more comments without you needing to approve them!
Some spammers are clever. They write comments that are not blatant spam, but instead give you a compliment or incentivize you to approve the spam. Doing so opens doors for a follow up of spam!
My advice is, if in doubt, don’t approve. Mark it as spam.
The signs of a potential spammer are:
- The commentator addresses you as ‘webmaster’
- You’re given a compliment without it specifically saying why
- You’re offered link-backs
- Very generic comment that could apply to any blog
Something else to try. Take the body of the comment you have doubts about, and Google it. Search for the comment, and use quotes around the comment (so that Google searches for the whole string, not just the component parts.)
Here is an example.
Today I received this comment on my blog:
Hello webmaster
I would like to share with you a link to your site
write me here xxxxxx@mail.ru (full email address edited)
Now I do a search on Google using “Hello webmaster I would like to share with you a link to your site write me here xxxxxx@mail.ru
What did I find?
I found 10 sites with this comment for all to see! That’s 10 blogs without comment moderation, or possibly naive bloggers.
Preventing comment spam is a cinch once you have the tools and some wisdom to hand. Don’t let these scumbags destroy our livelihoods!