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Jul
21
I’ve been receiving a lot of comment spam recently in the form of one sentence comments that might (or might not) apply to my posts.
Usually, the comments appear on posts in the archive and contain elements in common — such as smiley faces — that make me think that someone or some entity is trying to gain some sort of SEO advantage by leaving the comments and a link to their various websites.
I try to catch spammy comments and mark them as such to help Akismet learn of new spammers, but I have been getting a handful of such comments daily. Usually the comments come in overnight, so I assume they are being done from someplace overseas during their local daytime hours.
The comments aren’t necessarily bad or spammy in themselves. It’s just the fact that they are linking to spammy sites. I don’t want to encourage the spammers to continue leaving comments that I have to remove on a daily basis.
Should I keep marking the comments that are half-way on point as spam?
Should I break their URLS and keep the comment that might make sense, but that doesn’t add much to the conversation?
Is there some sort of WordPress plug-in that might help with the situation?
Let me know by leaving a comment if you’ve experienced the same issue and have found a way to counteract the situation.
Comments
10 Responses to “What is the best way to stop comment spam?”
Generally speaking we mark it as spam… If the sites are spammy then chances are it’s a bot that put together something that sounds that it might be on topic
Not to mention when they bring up the Russian mafia… haha
If it isn’t bringing much to the table in terms of a discussion either is there a point to have the comment? Other than to bring up comment numbers… but that goes back to the good old debate is what’s the point of comments if its a one time thing and the person doesn’t come back…
Hi Kristin,
I’ve been marking them as spam so that Akismet learns to mark them as such.
The one line comments don’t bring much to the table, so I don’t feel bad about marking them as spam. If it helps Akismet, then it helps others.
I don’t necessarily need a high comment count made artificially high by a hundreds of spam comments. I’d rather have a robust and real conversation with real people.
Here’s an example of the spammy comments to get an idea of how they look:
Hey that was my comment you just showed. :^D jk
I installed disqus which also has akismet and have been loving it. Seems the spam with that combo has been working well for me. Time will tell though.
Hi Joe,
I’ve been seeing Disqus being used more and more. I might have to try it out to see if it does the trick.
I’m not getting slammed too bad — all of the comments come in overnight, so I just clear them out in the morning.
But, I don’t want to end up having hundreds every day — that’s what I think might happen until Akismet and Bad Behavior learn who’s bad.
I did take a look at my Bad Behavior logs — it’s been blocking a lot of bad bots, so maybe I’m getting the brand new ones.
Yea those sound a lot like spam comments… Akismet is great and has done a great job at preventing additional spam comments on ours…
Oh goodness Disqus drives me insane… I understand that its GREAT to control comments but at the same time it wont let me login half of the time and turns me away from commenting… Just my thoughts (I’m very vocal today apparently).
Agreed on the high comment count, getting the discussion going is the most important thing!
Wow this is such a great resource, I cannot believe you give it away
Sorry Chris, could not resist.
Give WP-Mollom a try!
Hi Brooks,
LOL. I like it.
Hi Dries,
I’m going to have to check out WP-Mollom to see if it will do the trick.