How to Deal with Comment Spam?
Comment Spam has become a big issue on Balkhis as it is growing rapidly. Even though most people say Akismet does the job, well it does do a job by reducing the thousands that it had, but if the amount is really high then it gets passed akismet. The situation is so bad on Balkhis that if I don’t login for five hours on wp-admin then I have over 50 spam comments. Which is getting pretty bad. Well, so I decided to take an action which cut down the comment spam by a good amount.
So I have mentioned before in my posts that Akismet can do the job, and with Spam Karma it makes the blog very strong. But there is another way that will cut down your comment spam.
That my friend is adding an external no follow in your single pages. If you noticed many big blogs like Problogger, Shoemoney and others are doing that. While talking to John Chow, He also recommended me to do that. But I was being nice and therefore I kept the do follow comments on the comment page. But now I can’t be nice anymore because this is getting ridiculous.
So on every page you comment, it will not be a followed link. But you must remember on most blogs, it is still not a follow link. All Top Commentators are still a follow link, so they get the most out of it. This way I think it will help both the blog and the top commentators because now the spot is worth more.
There are multiple SEO Advantages to do this also because now you are limiting the number of external links on pages that have a lot of comments. I am sure you are eager to know how to add an external no follow to your wordpress blog. I will say if you are getting comment spam, this might be something that you should consider.
First go to the file: /wp-includes/comment-template.php
Find the word external, and add nofollow tag after it. Pretty simple eh. The number of spam decreased significantly. Want to know by how much? Today I only have 13 spam all day.
If you are tired of spam, then take this option.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
I don’t remember u following comment links before
I’ve actually been really lucky with spam – I don’t think I have has 1 spam comment in the last 2 weeks, in which over 100 comments were approved
Akismet lets the odd ones through, but does the job well enough for my needs at the moment.
I would get so sick of having 50 spam every few hours
[...] addition there is a great post over at Balkhis on comment spam that you might be interested in. I Love Social [...]
I have been getting hit pretty hard with comment spam also but I find that askimet filters them pretty well.
Askimet works extremely well for me, sometimes it even blocks comments that I wouldn’t class as spam, so I unblock them most of the time.
Punishing readers for spam… Trend of the year.
I am not even using any plugins, I just take bunch of spam, process it, get common elements (their links are very alike and often repeating) and blacklist those parts. Works like a charm.
I bet it can be a pain in the A$$ since you are getting more and more traffic everyday!
Great post! That def sucks 50 or more a day. Hate spam its every where its like people don’t want to get things done the right way. Oh well I’m still holding it down for the truth. Take care and keep the good reads coming! Great plugin btw.
Ryan
that’s quite a lot of spam. :O quite understandable for you to take this action.
It may occur in the future.But for now I will stay totally Do Follow. Do a follow up post in a month or so to let us know how it has affected your traffic.
I will definitely update you guys in a month or so…
I didn’t know you were dofollow in the first place
Hardly anyone is anymore, we still get spammed though, because spammers just don’t care, most are just scripts.
i don’t have many spam comments, but i can’t compare my blog with yours.
Leaving the top commentator as the only way to get a do follow link is a good measure and i totally support it. Having that many do follow links in a page could potentially bring more harm than good, spam comments being one of the bad things….
Yep, that’s exactly what I’m doing – if they wanna spam, they’re gonna have to spam a lot to get a link
– and then I delete that work and they don’t get a link, so it’s pointless for them.
I got a valuable comment the other day but the link was from like Pharmacy Drugs …………… so i just stripped the link from it and said it was from jason (the name in his email)
I agree with you Hugo, having the top commentator plugin is a great way to show appreciation for your visitors and also give them an incentive to participate on your website. It increases the comments and the comments also benefit you because they can get you visitors from the search engine.
I only have 1-2 spam every week or so on my Akismet O_o must be missing something here..
Well I do have a captcha plug-in (or you could try installing WP-SpamFree if you don’t like captcha disturbing your readers).
I also have the anti trackback spam plug-in that I talked about here (http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs/stop-those-trackback-spam.html)
I get around 10 a day I think, I don’t really find it annoying either, its just part of blogging, there will always be spammers.
lately i also deal with many thousand comment spams to my other blog. and when I installed the Akismet, thanks God, my headache was gone.
Hello Balkhis,
Your blog comments were not a no-follow before this post. I have been subscribed for two months here and noticed that your comments were always a no-follow. Your article says that you just changed it to a no-follow today. Are you sure you changed it today? A lot of other commentators above agreed that it was a no-follow already. :p
I am pretty sure I changed it .. because I know when I was checking it was a follow link….
Interesting, I’ve toyed with this back and forth many times, but I just don’t feel the need to nofollow my readers. Most are regular commentors so I show love. I do like the fact that top commentors is still no followed, as I see this trend on many blogs, which is something I may look into possibly in the future.
Either way, it’s good to see your progress and I’ll be interested to know how it all works out.
Do some find it really necessary to use more spam filters than askimet?
Askimet seems to do a good job for me – it weeds out comments in the triple digets some days. If it goes to askimet it is just deleted as there are too many to go through.
Then any comment that does get through is moderated.
On a trial basis, I did install a plug in about a month ago that allows commenter links to be followed after they hit a certain number of accepted comments. I thought it would be nice to give a little something back to visitors. So far so good with it.
Bruce, Akismet did point out the spam comments, but it was catching about 50 comments every 5 hours… Now if I just delete all without checking to see if there were any genuine ones. My readers would be upset that their comment was deleted. Therefore, I took this move which has cut down my spam from almost 200 a day to 36 a day….
well the post was nice and i do agree with other people that it sucks…….
We must admit that we are not gods to know everything. For me we can turn negative into positive thing. For example instead of bad mouthing a spammer. Why dont we try talking to them in a nice way. I remember one time a commentator always posting in my blog. What i did is ask him why he’s doing that and i found out that he’s a newbie. I teach him the do’s and dont’s in commenting at the same time i gain a new friend:) After all we are here to socialize and expand our reach:)
Askimet works wonderfully for me, once a week or so I go through and double check that it hasn’t caught too many legit ones.
Great tip
Akismet works for me too, but sometimes, it traps legit comments with too much link on it. I’m considering to use captcha comments plugin.
Captcha works in preventing spam, but it pisses off your regular readers because they have to type it in every time they comment….
I guess spam can be a real scourge, so this is a good strategy you have adopted here.
Making the links no follow is a great way to reduce spam because a lot of people just post for the pr juice but having it no follow, they won’t get it
I used to allow the follow tag for comments and top commentators, but just way too much spam. So, I have the follow tag for the VIP’s in my blogroll and that is working good for me.
When I get a blogger who is active on my blog and their site is related, I add them manually to the blogroll. I am allowing a total of ten spots and the most active people get the positions. But, they have to go through my screening process.
If they become not so active, they can lose their place in the blogroll.
So far, it is working and I have people who are active and that contribute to the blog. This has cut my spam down a lot, and I am very happy. I would rather have related traffic, than a bunch of non-related traffic made up mostly of spam.
Well, its practically difficult to control comment spamming and also manually moderating comments can be an option but when you have relatively heavy traffic coming to your blog, then you really have to think about something that can stop your blog from being spammed and bombarded with comments that hold no authenticity at all.
True, lucky to have Akismet installed. Each day, not sure how many spam(bots) actually trying to put in this and that comment which is totally none related to the post.
Yeah…spam is getting ridiculous nowadays. I have to delete around 30-50 spam list on my other blog. Now, I just lean on Akismet to kill the spams. But I think I should consider the way you suggested here. It’s easy and simple way to reduce spam attack.
Whats your opinion on people using the name field for all its worth. Opinions vary but I’m cool with it. I hope you are as well bc my real name is Adam
What about results? Do you have less spam comments now?
I bet it can be a pain in the A$$ since you are getting more and more traffic everyday!
Great article. Nice blog. Keep it coming. Mike