Take a look at these 5 “to be moderated” comments that I had in my moderation queue:
The first 3 seem natural, however, the other two are obviously spam comments that got by Akismet. Now, the interesting thing about the comments by John Taylor is that they seem like they could of been written by a human. Although, the bot owner is obviously too stupid to set a delay for each spam comment, and two of the same comments were dropped on two different posts – in the same minute.
The first one seemed legit, and I almost pushed “Approve”, however, When I don’t know about whether a comment is legit or not, a quick search on Google usually clears the confusion up.
Results for: “I follow your blog for quite a long time and must tell you that your articles always prove to be of a high value and quality for readers.” - 189,000 results.
What do all 5 of these spam comments have in common?
- They all got past Akismet’s spam filtering plugin, which means that spam isn’t as easy to detect anymore. A nice, warm fuzzy comment about how high quality your blog is might just be a way to get a backlink to a spammers site.
Conclusion:
- It doesn’t take that much of a genius to figure out which ones are spam and which ones are not, just make sure that the comments being said are actually intended.
- If you use a “Top Commentator” or “Recent Commentator” plugin, make sure that the comments you approve have URL’s that aren’t spammy looking. Failure to do this may result in loss of rankings in Search Engines and a loss of trust in your blog’s audience.
What are some of the ways that you combat blog comment spam? Does it prove to be effective?
37 Comments
If a comment generalizes and doesn’t mention anything specific I’ve talked about in the post, I’ll do a search for the comment in quotes in Google and I’ll usually find quite a few of the same comment that other blogs have approved. I’m “lucky” enough that I don’t get very many comments to begin with so it doesn’t take up too much of my time to moderate them this way, but it still irritates my behind.
Well, the sad part is that it won’t stop anytime soon.. They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work.
wow! John Taylor even have a gravatar!
Yes, this spam comments are really getting tricky, and quite a nuisance on what is supposed a pleasent blogging experience for us.
John Taylor definitely looks legit, most spammers don’t use a gravatar. (Perhaps I just said something that I shouldn’t of).
Just one of the drawbacks of running a dynamic, community driven blog I suppose.
No, he’s a spammer for sure. If he isn’t he bookmarks a lot of blogs with the same line.
LOL – Imagine if all of those comments were genuine.
there are many who dont like to get their pics displayed, thats the only reason i do not use gravatar
i’m not a Spammer .. hehe
I only moderate, because I hate the capchat word verifications on other sites, so I don’t use them. If I start getting seriously spam comments, I may have to consider it though.
I share your feelings about Captchas (I think I even wrote a post about them).
Moderation, although usually time consuming is the better way to go. Keep it up Aria!
Actually I do believe that akismet actually caught John Taylor on one of my blogs. After a bit of thought I deleted the comment rather than spammed it, as I still wasn’t 100% sure. Seems I should have hit the spam key. Next time.
I also got the last jerk. What the hell sort of comment is that anyway? BTW, thanks for leaving a comment on my Load of BS blog.
Brad, if I may make a suggestion, you may want to install a ‘subscribe to comment’ plugin so that people can track the posts they are interested in, and just so you know, I have subscribed to your blog.
The last one is pretty retarded.. Although, being as curious as I am about most of my commenter’s, I clicked through to the NLP site! It was about some brain surgery thing or something – A poorly designed affiliate site.
Lesson learned.
Which comment plugin would you recommend? I like the one on your site that tells you the reply to your comments only…
Yep, that one is the one I prefer. That way if people get tired of the conversation they can unsubscribe at a later date. Some plugins don’t seem to do that.
You mind giving a link?? I’m gonna head over to your blog after I finish writing this to do a little digging, but if you could give a link, that would be superb.
I would of got back here a lot quicker if I was subscribed LOL. This is the link to the plugin I use.
I think I got it installed now.. Care to subscribe??
Spammers are always going to be there, so might as well join it IMO. I did a search on that “quote” and I found only 68 of the same results in Google.
-Mike
Hi Mike,
Here is the google query that I used: http://www.google.ca/search?q=I+follow+your+blog+for+quite+a+long+time+and+must+tell+you+that+your+articles+always+prove+to+be+of+a+high+value+and+quality+for+readers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Nice article, I wonder what you think about my dogterd website blah blah… I sometimes quite like getting spammy comments.
Googling spam to see how prolific it is – why didn’t I think of that! Some people act like spammers though – short “great article I have bookmarked this” type comments can be found everywhere.
It sucks when people abuse the entire “Blog Comment” system. Google is a way to find out if you are being spammed!
Welcome to the blog Jonny, Thanks for the visit!
oriefvilm sounds so forlorn. I guess that’s a passive aggressive way to get some visitors, eh?
haha! Suicide “Sympathy”. – Whatever works right?
Nice to see you again Cardio!
I won’t agree with you Brad. Its quite hard to trick Akismet and get pass through such a tight filter. If akismet finds any comment to be spammy it always block the URL that is being used in the comment and catches it as soon as it is entered in the comment section. Secondly, though I am not sure, but they also track IP address.
Not sure how they passed in your case, as far as my blog is concerned it always gets caught in the spam filter.
I never knew that it blocked the IP address of the spammer.. are you sure about that??
Sort of makes the “WP-Ban” plugin less useful!
Your comment didn’t get caught in my spam filter, so I’m unsure if you always get put into it..
I have to delete so many comments,sometimes it’s boring
Consider yourself lucky then.. Getting bored deleting comments is more fun than not getting any comments to delete.
Try to use other spam protection plugins along with akismet.
but there is always one that escapes….
Sigh, there are always that “ONE” that escapes
Your posts are really relevant to me ! Its teaching me alot as I am trying to start a blog now myself! Please do continue posting!
Will do my best, Nicholas! Welcome to the blog.
I’ve been getting WAY more SPAM than usual lately and while Akismet stops most of them, a few still get through. Usually if a comment doesn’t actually address the post (and isn’t from a regular reader) I’ll delete them. It’s all you can do really, SPAM is here to stay it seems.
Even if the internet didn’t exist, people would still just mail you their promotions instead of emailing you them. As long as humans exist.. There will be SPAM!*
* Perhaps that was a little dramatic.
If the spammer says something related to your post, what difference does if make.
are these spammers a robot (or software) posting comments automatic ? or people getting paid to spam around with hardcore urls into comments
i have few niche blogs and i dont know how spammers get this blogs from ? i havent advertised or submitted those blogs to any dirs yet as they are pretty much new with fresh content. but still dont know how spammers know about it and get spammy comments on it
Spammers seem to be getting very clever and its getting more and more difficult to stop them. They always find a way to get in somehow. It is good that we can check out in google but its lot of time to check each and every blog comments.
Mabe there are other ways …
For Bloggers Who want to Stop Writers’ Block
I think how smater they are it’s also spam, why not comment qualitier?
Out of the ordinary angle in this article though I do not say yes in everything you publish but largely very well defined. Added you to my favorites and tweeted to my contacts.
I really impressed after read this because of some quality work and informative thoughts . I just wanna say thanks for the writer and wish you all the best for coming!
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