Comment spamming is the cancer in the blogosphere. “Gaming the search engines” by posting irrelevant comments blogs to increase their own site’s ranking in SERPs is the despicable act of low life from hell. And, as of November both the website linked in the spam comment, and blog that allow comemnt spammers to post their crap will suffer the penalty. Detailed information is given in a recent Google Webmaster Blog post Hard Facts About Comment Spam and in a video featuring Matt Cutts, of Google.
What is Google doing to combat the effects of comment spam?
What are bloggers doing to combat comment spam?
- Here at wordpress.com we have Akismet which stops about 90% of spam comments and every blogging platform has software in place to combat spam.
- All bloggers can choose Comment Moderation.
- There is effective spam filtering software available for self hosting bloggers.
- Captcha – Simple math questions – No-follow links.
- Malcolm Coles is using Backtype to spot comment spam.
- Kristi share her experiences and provokes a discussion in Akismet, Spam Filters and Comment Moderation.
- This is my contribution How to deal with spam effectively. See also my comment policy (excerpt below).
- Moderation: To ensure that nothing distasteful such as, but not limited to, spam is automatically posted to the blog, comments are moderated.
- Link limit: This blog is setup to automatically hold any blog comment with more than two links in the moderation queue, which may delay your comment from appearing. Any blog comment with more than two links may be marked as comment spam and deleted.
- Commercial links, post links, signature links, etc. : Including a link to your “personal” ie. non-commercial blog and/or website is acceptable (all usernames are linked) but all links are subject to review and may be removed prior to posting. Provided the bloggers commenting are actually adding something to the discussion I do not remove their links. However, if I believe that they are just link dropping in an attempt to divert readers to their own blog post(s) or to game search engine results then I do not feel the same way. I delete the links. Example: Anchor text – If a keyword is entered into the name field rather than a name I will either break the link and post the comment or I will delete the comment.
- Comments on old posts: Comment boxes will remain open for up to 30 days following post publication, however, you are welcome to submit your responses to any older post at any time by using the Contact form below.
What you doing to combat comment spam on your blog?
Related posts found in this blog:
Can I turn off Aksimet, or view the spam it blocks?
Keith
January 9, 2010
I use Akismet for spammers. I disagree with the captcha and no-follow part. My last two sites I built and still operate are do-follow and I don’t get any more spam on a percentage basis than I did before I changed my comments to do-follow.
Furthermore, any captcha or sign in comment apps (disqus etc…) are a turn off for me (I don’t comment on blogger sites that only allow you to sign in with blogger, google, or wordpress ID’s either) and I think that you should make it as easy as possible to comment on your site to encourage interaction and conversations.
Just my opinion on it….
timethief
January 10, 2010
@Keith
On this blog I have Akismet. On my worddpress.ORG install on my other domain I have Defensio and won’t hesitate to recommend it. They are both excellent.
I don’t object to the math question but as I’m visually challenged I have a very hard time with the ones where they try to hide letters and numbers. Some have caused me to enter 2 or 3 times until I could actually see well enough to get the sequence right. They are a definite turn-off when it comes to leaving comments.
The way I view this is the same as you do ie. make it as easy as possible to comment. However, even though I have good spam filters there are still a few comments that slip through. I turf them out of the moderation queue and into “spam bin” or remove the links in accord with my comment policy.
Thanks for the visit and the comments. :)
dreamsburnred
January 10, 2010
My main blog is also do follow, and as such so is friend.
I use Conditional CAPTCHA for WordPress which can detect blog spam, if Akismet says Whoa, Spammer recaptcha will ask them to see if they are human. If they pass the test then it goes into spam, if it fails the comment is nuked. If users can’t load recaptcha it falls back on simple math captcha. So it all works.
Naturally wordpress.com is permanently no follow, and only can use Akismet.
timethief
January 11, 2010
Hello there. I missed answering your comment – sorry. :( That sounds fine with me. The aim is to get rid of the spam bots without deterring readers from leaving comments.
JP
February 3, 2010
I just started using a plugin called Bad Behavior which analyzes activity patterns and blocks potential spammers before they even load your blog (which also saves bandwidth). So far it has blocked 1200 access attempts in about 36 hours. It also blocks proxies, bad headers and refers from bad neighborhood sites.
You can also sign up for the honey pot project which submits blocked requests to Project Honey Pot and helps trap even more spam by attracting spam bots to the pot you set up on your site.