Comment spam is definitely something a lot of bloggers encounter, no matter how few or many people visit. Some are geniune spammers, some are newbies who do not know any better, and some are just plain out of the loop. Yeah, that was not very nice, but hey – it is true.
Obviously if a comment is about selling something not even closely relevant to your site is flat out spam. Comment spam focuses mainly on comments that are not relevant to the blog or may seem like it in a way to get a backlink.
Example: “Your site is nice” by Deidre (who has a url attached to that anchor text to a Viagra site. Name is just random for this example.)
The problem is that regular people also may just leave such comments too. The key is to looking into your posts and making sure that it is relevant. Obviously if someone said “your site is nice” in a blog post such as this, it is not relevant and should not be approved, whereas if the blog post is about the site itself, then the comment would be more appropriate.
Occasionally I have a people leave a comments to smear campaigns toward certain popular and influential people on a post that was unrelated to what they had to say.. Though I am not sure if it was a sock puppet of the real blogger (a person under another pseudonym), it was marked as spam.
It is important to moderate comments to keep the topic on track and make sure your visitors are not confused. In allowing comment spam, you could be deterring potential comments from new or regular visitors because it detracts from the value of your blog.
For the commenter, this is not conducive to their blogging platform, and in the case of WordPress, the content management system picks up the comment as trackback and it has no real value. Taking care of comment spam is as simple as looking through comments and especially through most blog platforms, you can mass delete spam. Even though there are plugins to help weed through spam, there will always be a few that get through, so it is important to keep on top of them.
Of course, there are plugin you can use to reduce spam, but there are some that will slip through those cracks.
What kind of comment spam have you gotten? How do you take care of it? Any interesting comment spam experiences?
I get lots of comment spam. :/ My favorite one is “i will tel all my frends on twitter about this post. it is good.” And then link spam to some commercial type site that indicates zero connection with the post signed by the name of a company, where the Twitter comment they made doesn’t ping on the post. That’s a pretty obvious spam comment.
Thank you so much for this post! I just created a new health blog and it is like spam HELL. I literally have 600 comments that I have to address. I was about to post this question to my Facebook friends because the spam is out of control. GREAT post!
i agree with you that this is a great post but wouldn’t it be great if the spam blocking plugins are shared in it and maybe more practical ideas of finding how to find spams. you know the author of this post is really capable of doing that, may be in another post.Cheers.
I get thousands of spam comments. Thank goodness for askmit. The dumbest ones are in Polish or Russian and run for a whole page. Seriously why do they think these will get through. The other dumb idea are the ones that kind of insult your site and suggest improvements.
Nice site design you have here. I’m going to look around some more.
OMG, I know exactly however feels. I wanted people to post to my site because I figured it would help keep the site lively. So, I set it for do follow. Nothing but spam.
So, on my new site I went ahead and set up spam blocker and no follow. I still get spam. Boo!
Really great point Nile. I’m glad to say I do not get much spam, but I have gone to reviewing each post before it’s published. It takes a little more time but I want to keep the few spammers who do get through out, as well as people who try and leave their own little personal ads – nothing bugs me more than to have someone comment and it’s obvious they either skimmed or never read the article at all.
Hello Nile,
My site gets a heaps of Spam comments I have Akismet in place which catches pretty much all of it but I have noticed that it can be over zealous sometime I have to fish out comments which should not be in the Spam but end up there! What do you use yourself to manage Spam on your site Nile? 🙂
Hey there Nile,
I had a huge problem with comment spam. As a matter of fact, it became so bad, I was forced to change the comment system I was using. And so far that appears to have cured the problem.
Besides the blatant spammers I was getting what I call the “I think I’m slick” spammers….
You know he folks who are only looking for a back link or some free traffic by leaving a comment that adds nothing to the tread. You the “I like your post” folks.
I do also get a lot of comment spam even though I use akismet plugin. All I am doing is to heavily moderate the comments on my site. As in every comment should be approved by me to make sure it is relevant to every post I have.
Hi Nile.
I just started a new blog and am already getting comment spam. I think I installed the akismet, but I’ll have to check.
At one time, I got so fed up with it all I stopped blogging altogether. I remember one guy trying to see me some kind of software so that I could do that kind of thing, but I told him to hit the road.
Anthony (two posts above) metioned changing his comment system. I’m not sure what that means, but I’d be interested to hear more about it.
Thanks for the information.
Nathan
through these comments are not meant to spam, it now includes many of the comments spam to my website
Yes, you need to take care of the comment spamming bots and even spamming individuals. It will effect your blog. Make use of Captcha, use math verifications. you can also make use of the banning of IP’s of those who spam. This definitely is a serious issue you have covered.
Nice one.
Spammers are so obvious; the ones I get the most include their links and openly talk about their product. My thought is always how much time they waste; it takes me about 5 seconds to delete them, so they do not waste my time. Thanks, your post helped me to manage spams with a different attitude; it is part of the industry, we just have to learn how to reduce them. Thanks Nile
I’ve been stumbling across a few blogs lately that have over 6,000 comments of similar rubbish such as “i like your blog, i bookmarked it” etc… im sure pretty soon google will start catching people out by implementing methods that detect when the comment is spam. For example comments with certain words may be considered spam.
I use Akismet as well as the Growmap Anti Spam Plugin (same one as this blog is using). I hardly see any spam get through.
I get a fair amount of spam, even though I have the proper plugins that usually file them as spam and I have the choice to look them over and decide what I want to do with them. There have been several times when good bloggers comments go to spam and I wonder why. It’s usually the same people to. What do you make of that?
I appreciate your thoughts on this topic. It always amazes me why some people want to mess things up in this way.
Have a great day and keep the informative posts coming,
Lynn
Hi Nile:
I use 2 plugins to deal with spam: askimet and GASP. They don’t get them all but they get 99% of them.
Lately, I have found a lot of comments from people with the same IP address but with different comments and e-mail addresses. This really confuses me and I am wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them before. Should they be considered spam even if both comments are relevant to the post?
Kevin
Great post, Nile! I know that I have definitely seen some of these problems. When I first started blogging, my first few comments were spam, but I decided to start to learn the difference a little bit more between a legitimate comment and a fake. There are still times when one slips by, but I couldn’t agree with you more about how vital it is to keep quality comments rather than a big number on the page.
Lately i have been getting too many spam comments on my blog. I use disqus as the comment plugin on blogger. After some changes in spam policy , now all is well with my blog.
I use Askimet too, but it still doesn’t stop spam from piling up. I have just installed the GASP plugin and hoping to monitor if there is a reduction in the numbers. We’ll see.
There is so much blog spam going on at the minute. I’ve been visitng blogs and seeing 6k+ comments of the same rubbish “great blog” etc etc, its insane.
I love spam comments! I have Akismet and CommenLuv enabled to weed them out into my spam folder. I do have to rescue the occasional real comment and delete the occasional spomment that escapes the net, but those two programs mostly work.
I collect the choicest spomments and post them on Twitter under the #spomment hashtag and have a Spomment of the Day page on Facebook.
High entertainment value, absolutely free. 🙂
I have always been attacked by a blog comment spam. it is still happening even though I have been using akisment or captcha. Perhaps the problem lies in the version I use wordpress. Maybe you could give some advice for me ..
lol.., i remamber when i am newbies for blogwalking or just backlink hunter, i always say “nice blog”, “great article”, its looks so stupid for me now. but when someone visit my blog and comment like me, its makes me angry. and after that, i tray to pending all comment and delete some spamer, and using captcha to fillter “robot spammer software”. thats made me open my mind, “if i hate spamer, why i do that (become spammer)” and from thats i learn about how to appreciate a written blog, because they need reader who reads and discusion (i also like to), not just visitor. 😀 that is funny & valuable experience for me.
I wanted this article from so long. 🙂
you are gr8 🙂
Biggest one is Hey great post. Then they leave a link back to their website. Generally, comment spam is obvious. When it comes to building back links the spammers take the easiest road and offer very little to the readers.
I hate spam as much as anyone else. I use WordPress CMS for my blog and i have installed Akismet spam filter. Akismet seems to do its good pretty good with the odd comment being wrongly filtered
Niles,
My favorite spam is “I has been looking all over for a blog like this…” Really? The first time I got this kind I was flattered then I realized that it was a spammer and I deflated, lol.
~Allie
I too get a lot of spam comments But I’ve activated comment moderation to protect my blog. Anyways, Nice article.
Well in My Opinion Akismet Spam Prevention is the best tool for preventing spam Comments! Due To Bulk Spam Submissions it is quite Hard to Identify the original comments!
Sometimes I see spam coming in a less noticeable form. Someone makes a good comment using all the proper guidelines in order to get auto-white-listed on site by Akismet and once they get approvals – they begin to spam.
I hate it as it makes it hard to separate people interested in your topic from those who blatantly spam your blog.
I want this article. I appreciate your thoughts. Have a great day and keep the informative posts coming. 🙂
yeah, i have a problem too with how to deal with comment spam. sometime the day look so hard when i have to choose where is the comment spam and where is the real comment. thank a lot for the tips.
nice article on spam i was looking how to remove the spam from my site your article give me the right way how to do it thank u very much keep it up!!
Spam comments are one of those evil things that comes synonymous with blogging. I remmber building a wordpress blog and left it on instant commenting. A few months later, there were 33 thousand comments on it, every single one of them were spam. Good article.
I’m personally a fan of “Spam Free” WordPress, combined with Askimet.
I hate it as it makes it hard to separate people interested in your topic from those who blatantly spam your blog.
these type of issues are always think to be concern for every blogger. I think working on this particular issue can reduce these spam when we do some strictness on that and i hope it will work awesome after that.