WordPress blogs have always had an issue with spam comments. It seems over the last few months there has been an influx of unwanted spam comments. Of course all spam comments are unwanted. There are some simple steps to combat spammers from attempting to add their irrelevant backlinks to your WordPress posts.
Let me give you the definition of spam comments. Comment spam or blog spam is the act of automatically posting random comments with the intent to promote commercial services by building irrelevant backlinks. These backlinks will potentially increase traffic, search engine ranking or page authority for the site that is linked.
You can manually remove spam comments, but this is time consuming, annoying, and inflate your database which can bear large loads on your server. But there are a few simple ways we can all relax and have spam comments caught at the door.
Install And Activate Akismet
Akismet is a plugin that is installed when you first install WordPress on your hosting account. Make sure you set up Akismet immediately. Akismet, by Automatic, is a free spam filtering service. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating blogs, and then using those spam rules to block future spam. Make sure you activate Akismet when setting up your WordPress blog. It really helps.
Install WP-Ban
You can ban ip address in your htaccess file, but for some non techie people that can be a bit of a challenge. An easier way to ban ip addresses is with the WP-Ban plugin. Occasionally if I see the same ip address in my spam queue, I will copy the address and add it to the plugin. My most frequent spammers were:
91.201.66.205
184.106.242.128
212.248.233.180
91.201.66.204
173.224.216.62
89.28.114.111
91.214.45.63
109.230.217.208
205.200.78.138
64.32.25.130
91.201.66.6
89.28.114.111
204.45.121.98
109.230.217.22
46.73.72.52
212.67.153.53
Now I block these spammers from even accessing my blog. They now get a page that looks like this:
I added an ad to the page, you never know, I may be able to make money off of the spammers.
You can also close comments on older posts or add captcha to the end of your posts. Captcha annoys other bloggers that want to comment on your site, so you may see reduced comments by using this.
About Jessica Benton
Have to agree with Justin. Akismet is good but you end up having to check hundreds of spam emails a day, just in case a genuine comment got marked as a spam. I use AntiSpam Bee which automatically discards all automated/bot comments. I use Akismet as my “secondary” filter.
Works really great and I only have 1-2 spam to check every few days or so and no one has ever complaint for not having their comments posted
Michael Aulia @CravingTech.com recently posted..SteelSeries 7H USB Review
Have you ever tried the plugin that Justin suggested? I have seen it on blogs where you have to check that you are not spam before submitting the comment.
I see so many bloggers using it but AntiSpam Bee does not require commentators to tick or fill CAPTCHA or do anything
it works behind the scene
I wrote about the plug-in about 2 years ago. Can’t believe I’m still happy with it
Michael Aulia @CravingTech.com recently posted..Win a CM Storm Spawn gaming mouse
Going to check it out!! Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it.
I had too many false positives with Akismet, and had to weed out about 10 good comments per week improperly sent to my spam folder, as a result I primarily use the Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin for WordPress which never gives false positive and does a great job of blocking bots.
Justin Germino recently posted..Why you shouldn’t avoid blogging mistakes
Nice suggestion for an anti spam plugin. I have seen the plugin but did not know the name. Now I wanna check that out!! As of now, I dont have hardly any comments get caught in Akismet.
I need to add the WP plug-in. Thanks
I’ll definitely try the WP-Ban, I have the Askimet activated, but I’m still getting a lot of spam, so i’ve resorted to manually approving my comments. Thanks for the tip.
For WP-Ban, you can customize your own message that the people you block see.
I just had to say how much I enjoy your blog. I don’t comment much, but you have such great info! Ha, I hope you do make money off of the spammers.
Tracy@bookroomreviews recently posted..Groupon Deal Get 20 Amazon Card for 1000 Hurry!