You’ve taken the time to read and leave a comment. Your comment might even have a message saying that your comment is in moderation. Then a friend tells you that you were in the spam folder. What happened? Why does your blog comment keep ending up in the spam folder?
Occasionally I get the questions from people asking why their comments keep ending up in the spam folder in WordPress. Most of these people asking the question aren’t spammers. They leave legitimate comments that add value to the post. I truly understand the frustration for a lot of them. So, why does this happen?
Well, it’s not personal. Some sadistic blog comment entity doesn’t have it in for you. This can happen because of a few things:
- You may have accidentally been marked as spam on another site. Some people just get a lot of comments, and after reading and moderating so many, accidents happen. This is not a very common occurrence, but I have made this mistake before, and have had to correct it.
- Your IP address has been blackisted. You can go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check and check your IP.
Being blacklisted can occur if you’ve or someone else has been sending out a lot of email, like newsletters, and someone happened to have a horrible enough day to flag your email as a spammer. Yes, some people are jerkface enough to do that.
Sometimes it could also be if you’ve been hacked, and the hacker used your web hosting to send out loads of emails before you or your web host could catch it. Actually, there are a few scenarios with a similar result on how your IP address can be blacklisted, but you can usually get it removed. That link above can tell you if you’ve been blacklisted and even give you information on how to get removed. 🙂
Hi Nile,
This has happened to me only once with a blogger I always visit. I figured I was hacked. It drove me crazy until she had contacted me and told me the problem was on her end. Her regular visitors on her WordPress blog have been ending up in her spam folder. Phew..
It is things like this we do need our friends for!
Thanks for the reminder,
-Donna
hey nile , thanks for the information you provide and the direct link to check blacklists. iam happy that iam not blacklisted . thanks again .
Hi Nile. I don’t think my comments have ended up in other peoples’ spam boxes – no one has ever told me that. I did have problems with people I know ending up in my spam list, but software solved that problem. I got hacked last fall, and all my plugins went ‘poof’ from my site, and I had spam like you wouldn’t believe. It took forever to get it all cleaned up. I think that GASP does a good job of keeping spammers away. I looked at the blacklist site, and so far, so good. Thanks for providing this information.
All the best,
Leslie
Forgot to add my twitter hat
Nile, at first I felt you were learning towards being evaluated prior to approved. I have to review hundreds of comments per day. It is something I know must be done by me. I cannot subcontract out, I wish sometimes I could?
Yet, most people do not register with Gravatar? It is free and takes a few minutes to setup your profile. It allows all of us to know something about you, as a person. You are learning about me and other writers? By reading our blogs. It only feels comfortable, knowing we can learn something about you?
Another reason you are rejected from posting. The wave of people dropping links and have nothing to say about the article and it’s message? That puzzles me, and makes my time wasted. You may be doing what you believe is marketing your products. Yet, it insults me and shows not character!
Now, I felt you were going somewhere on those lines of not being able to get your comments published by the author. I was wrong.
Thanks Nile for allowing us to understand how one becomes listed, rejected and put to shame. Hey, most never have anything to say about the post and are just dropping non-related links. I have researched non how to follow IP’s and location a true identity of a person, who drops links on my blog. Hey, can you say over 10,000 per week? I only approve 3 or 4 post a month. Besides our family within B3?
I don’t often check my spam folder because it’s usually accurate and there’s so much of it. It’s good to know where to go if you think you’ve been blacklisted. Thanks Nile.
Thanks so much for clearing this issue up for me Nile!
Because I for one, was definitely starting to wonder if perhaps there was some sort of sadistic
blog commenting entity, that had it out for me!LOl!
Now that I know better, I don’t feel so bad! There is just so much to learn and that’s what studying
effective Internet marketing techniques and strategies so darn fascinating!
Hi Nile
I don’t think I have ever been blacklist on anyone’s blog, but I do get a lot of spam comments on my own blog. On mistake many people does, is to put in backlinks to their own blog or products. That is a good way to end up in my spam folder. On the other hand, if you have a Gravatar when you leave a comment on my blog you will have a bigger change to get your comment approved.
You may, but you still could have a gravatar and be in someone’s spam folder. I’ve seen it plenty of times. For me, I get a lot of comments every day, and a lot of spam. I really have no time to sort through the spam folder, so sometimes those comments are deleted.
Hello Nile. I do know for a fact that some of my comments have ended up in other peoples’ spam boxes and had to call them out on this.
I did click the link to check my IP address and they all came out clean HUM?? This has been a good lesson for me though and I do check my spam every few days and Yes occasionally I do come across a comment that is not spam.
Thanks for sharing.. Chery :))
Good information, Nile.
I’ve never had this issue myself, but several of my clients have and it hasn’t been the easiest matter in the world to resolve. A lot seems to depend on how helpful your hosting service provider is.
This should help get to the bottom of the matter more readily. Thanks.
I have not had such a case, but its good to know this stuff, so that when it happens then I’m more than ready to tackle it. Thanks for sharing !
I don’t think I end up in people’s spam folders and my IP address is clean. I have had some people I know end up in my spam box from time to time and I wonder why. Your post probably answers that :).
Hi Nile and thanks for sharing this valuable information. I just checked my IP on that blacklist checker and I was surprised to find it listed on a few websites. I am not really sure how and why. I will have to look at that and see what happened.
That’s good information. Sometimes I will mark a spammer’s comment as spam (as in, I will do it manually) if the comment is really vague (i.e. has nothing to do with the post and just makes some flattering comment about your website), looks like it was translated into English using Google translate, and has some bizarre email address.
Thanks for letting us know that, Nile. What I don’t understand is why people’s comments end up in MY spam folder. It doesn’t happen often, but I always check it first before emptying it, just in case.
Blacklisting has become so easy and is SO annoying. I HATE when REAL spammers will report your IP. Hmph.
Hello Nile. This was so helpful. I didn’t realize that having someone mark my comment as spam could then get me “blacklisted” preventing me from leaving other comments and having potential issues with logging into chat rooms. Wow!
Is it true that spammers can black list you as Heather mentioned? If so, that’s ridiculous.
I just checked the handy link you provided and much to my surprise it looks like I may have problems with three of the sites listed. (The rest I’m fine on thank goodness.) What next steps should I take?
As always, thanks for your help!
Karen
Pretty simple, we only need some technical knowledge to understand and use this. Thanks!
Really cool post, thanks for sharing. We sholud explore our thinking in words this will really helps you in the comment approval 🙂
Hey Nile,
Akismet is to blame for much of this. I still use it and it does good to stop spam but it also sends a lot of good comments to the spam queue. I try to check the spam list and unspam those comments that have been wrongly sent there by Akismet. Unfortunately that ratio is like 1 : 1000 and am sure no one else will do so.
I guess the best way to get out of the spam trap is to leave genuinely good comments so that you get a lot of un-spams from many other blogs, and hopefully that will send out some signals for good karma back to the anti-spam plugins,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
This keeps happening to a friend of mine when she visited my blog and I had no idea why! Thansk for sharing this post i will send her over here
Hello Nile,
Thanks for the valuable info. Although I know about the mistake about spam but blacklisting IP is quite new to me. I have 2 question regarding this.
1. How Email marketers work without getting blacklisted?
2. If it happens, how to recover IP from blacklist?
Waiting for your reply. Have a nice day.
I think sometimes a comment will go in the spam folder because of the words in the URL left along with the comment. We’re lucky it’s so easy to clean up our “unwanted” folder, would be awful if we had to sift through them all ourselves.
I didn’t know this was something that happened but I guess it makes sense. I was just going through the spam comments in my blog too, in case a real person may have gotten lost in the shuffle but could not find anybody.
Either way, it’s good to know you can correct the issue… and to be careful not to get blacklisted. I guess the most important thing you could do is act like a normal human being 🙂
Hi Nile, I didn’t know how it can happen to that your blog comment keeps ending up in the spam folder. Thanks for the info!
Great blog, btw, will definitely come back!
Nile, I have not had this happen to me but I’m so glad you provided information on how to correct the issue if necessary. Thanks so much for the good Info!
i think if we put a valueable comment on any article an any blog than it’s not give in spam folder. If any mistake send our comment in spam than it’s only mistake.So always put more words in comment box.
Great round ups, really enjoyed your article. Thanks for sharing on Why Your Blog Comment Keeps Ending Up in the Spam Folder. It’s really useful and helpful for us.
Hi Nile,
Once I was accidentally marked as spammer in Akismet but after i have contacted them in email they solved my problem . I think this happened because I use a public IP and some users might have spammed using the same ip before. Thank you for this awesome post
There are several bloggers who comment on my blog regularly who always end up as spam on my blog. Perhaps I should let them know so that they can investigate if they’d like.
Thanks for the info on being blacklisted. Good to know my ip address looks like it is in good shape 🙂 Every so often i notice that my comments are awaiting moderation on blogs that i frequent. Could be because i go to the coffee shop often and comment there. Do you think that commenting from public internet can hurt your email address?
If your blog is coomentluv enabled then you will get spam comments than genuine comments. But still your views are quite impressive. Thanks for this nice post.
Hi Nile,
I have seen that when you comment on a blog post that is few months old and that blog is using akismet plugin, then that comment is marked as spam.
Also, when you use post/page URL instead of your main domain, akismet may marked it as spam. In that case you need to email to its team, they will send you a link so that you can comment and the issue can be checked.
Hi Nile,
I’ve never experienced being thrown to the spam folder? I think the best way to avoid that is by not putting in links without permission, or being overly spammy in comments that could be triggered by certain keywords.
I know an IP address can also play a role in it, especially if it’s from countries or locations known to have strong ties to spam content.
I hope you have a great weekend Nile!
~ Don Purdum
Hi Nile,
This just happened to me this week. I was notified by a blogger that I was in his spam box. A good thing I came back to this blog to refresh my memory.
But to make a long story short, it was at his end. He doesn’t have a WordPress blog and things were all screwy for him.
Thanks again.
-Donna
Hi Nile,
This solved my doubts regarding the blog commenting issues. Thanks for the amazing blog its learn me a lot’s of new things.And also .
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There are several bloggers who comment on my blog regularly who always end up as spam on my blog. Perhaps I should let them know so that they can investigate if they’d like.Thanks so much for the good Info!
You always have awesome information! I know people sometimes can’t figure out why they show up in the spam area. Your post is informative and I shared it on twitter and g+.
I seem to have problem posting comments to some CommentLuv based WordPress site at home. I tried to post comments again on another CommentLuv WordPress site outside of my house with a different IP and it works. Right now I am trying to post this comment again outside. Hopefully this is going through as well. My ip at home is not flagged as spam. My home’s IP is on the PBL “blacklist,” but according to spamhaus, this is not actually a blacklist and it shouldn’t affect.