DISQUS

Online Marketing Blog: 10 Spam Stopping Techniques For Your Blog

  • Solomon Rothman · 2 years ago
    I think it's on old debate that luckily has already been solved effectively. Akismet takes care of all my spam problems. If the number of caught spam gets too high, I'll install a captcha. Not much else to say.
  • AndyBeard · 2 years ago
    You are missing out on one vital side of the equation, because on this blog you have subscribe to comments installed, and it is a business blog.

    If an email originates from your domain, you are responsible for it, thus you have to comply with CAN-SPAM

    I have been noticing a number of blogs that also due to increase comments are exceeding their hosting email quota, and thus emails are being eaten or discarded.

    Your readers will find this recent post interesting
    here
  • Paul O'Brien · 2 years ago
    Perhaps a little off topic but not completely

    Your suggestions seem taylored to WordPress so have you posted a comparison of WP and Blogger or know of where one can be found?
  • Glen · 2 years ago
    Great post, im sure it will be helpful to many
  • Michael Visser · 2 years ago
    Hi Paul, I hope I can help you here.

    The benefit of using WordPress over Google Blogger as a blogging platform is that you have complete control over the customization - plugins, templates, css - on your server (via FTP, WebDav, RDC or local access). The simplest reason though is that by hosting a Wordpress install it is part of your website - http://www.website.com/blog/ - and contributes to your company or personal sites organic ranking.

    I'm happy to write a more detailed report if you wish. WordPress is the way to go though!

    Cheers.
  • Brian Auer · 2 years ago
    As soon as I got comment spammed for the first time (not even one week after launch) I told WordPress to only publish comments from users that have a previously approved comment. That way I don't have to approve every single comment, and I can mark all the spam as... spam.

    I don't know if marking comments as spam actually helps anything, but I've noticed that my spam has been dropping consistently over the last month or so. I was getting 100 per day at first, but now I only get 5 or 6 per day. Plus, I don't even have the Akismet plugin activated. Go figure.
  • Lars Koudal · 2 years ago
    My mix of Bad Behaviour and Akismet resulted in a lot of false positives on my main blog, and I turned them off shortly after receiving a few e-mails complaining they were bad mouthed by my comment plugin.

    I ran into Angsuman's Comment Guard plugin and was accepted into the beta-program.

    The plugin is nice and unobtrusive, and it has resulted in no false positives as far as I can see so far.

    That was my 2 cents :-)

    Cheers
  • Mama Duck · 2 years ago
    I used Spam Karma for quite a while, but it started letting a lot of stuff in of late, so I switched over to Akismet and it's working well for now. Bad Behavior actually blocked the Googlebots to my site and caused a huge drop in traffic for about a week until I turned that off. I'd love to see Bad Behavior tweaked though, because I love the idea behind it.
  • Michael Goldberg · 2 years ago
    I have played with a few, Akismet seems to be the best suited for me.
  • Everyday Weekender · 2 years ago
    Great post!.. Spam will always be around - but its always cool to hear about new ways to help prevent it!

    ;)
  • Oli · 2 years ago
    I have just had a nightmare with spam over the past few weeks (www.grasscircle.co.uk/blog) I was literally getting 100+ spam comments a day - installed Akismet and my prayers had been answered - not one since!

    It really is the biggest threat to blogging and without these anti-spam tools we would be doomed!
  • Thomas McMahon · 2 years ago
    Thanks for the comments on the Bad Behavior scripts. It sounds like they block to much. As for Akismet and Spam Karma, does anyone think they get worse over time? I'm not sure if spam is getting smarter or if the plugins are missing more. Just a thought.
  • AndyBeard · 2 years ago
    Well I have written about the Akismet collective intelligence in the past. Just like email filters if you don't pull comments out of the sin bin, it can cause a gradual knock-on effect.

    Spam Karma, what collective intelligence it uses (an IP gray and blacklist) only places a minor penalty, thus if it wasn't for other factors, the comments would still appear. But spam posts generally trip other filters such as time on page, javascript etc, and you end up with fairly effective control for everything other than manual spam.
  • seobrien · 2 years ago
    Michael, Michael Visser

    I'd love to see a post, giving folks the opportunity to comment and criticize

    "You have complete control over your customization" Is that still true with the new blogger? What can't I do?

    I've also redirected blogger to my domain so how is that different than what you're suggesting; I'm at http://www.seobrien.com
  • Senjaya Khoo · 2 years ago
    Excellent! Your Perfect Way to block spam and get their KARMA! So spammer please stop spamming, because world hate you!
    I've experienced be spamming from adult content, so I'm using link down to 2 links only, helpfull...
    THANKS
  • Jack · 2 years ago
    My blog is only small, so comment spam isn't an issue for me. If it was, I wouldn't care. If people want to spam, let them. Personally, I have enough faith in my readers to trust them not to click dumb links.
  • Solomon Rothman · 2 years ago
    Jack - interesting reply I haven't heard that one before. The problem with comment spam though, is even if your visitors don't click on it, it can be really unpleasant and vulgar like hard **** . I don't want my visitors to have to see that when what they really want is to read about search marketing and bs comments are distracting. Luckily we have some great anti-spam tools now.
  • sohbet · 2 years ago
    you guys tallking abaut stop spam but evry one give one page me too this is not spam?:)) so funny
  • leo · 2 years ago
    Thanks for all the tips. Actually I don't use much plugins, only what's necessary to avoid eating-up server resources. Overall, I use only around 4 or 5 wordpress plugins in my blog.
  • Jomo · 2 years ago
    My favourite method is the maths captcha. I find the image captchas sometimes unreadable. I've gotten the word wrong many times when using it!
    With the maths captchas, it's best to keep it to single digits only eg. 4+8. Don't make it to tricky so your users have to get a calculator.