Why so much SPAM on my blog?

14 years ago

It happens all the time. 50% of the comments I got on a relatively new blog (one week old) was SPAM.

How did I deal with it? I activated the plugin known as Akismet. If you haven't done so already, please activate it. It does require a little bit of a set up (an API key), but after adding that, the SPAM comments reduced to less than 2%.

Hope that helps!

P.S. As for why people spam comments, it's a link building strategy to gain links from related websites.

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DukkyMan

14 years ago

Wordpress has helped me out with this, as you can label comments as Spam, which at least somewhat helps to prevent the same ones showing up in the future.

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davidjames42973 14 years ago

Yes Akismet is awesome! I would say that 99% of the comments to my website are spam. It's gotten so bad that I don't let any comments through, even if it's relative to the site...
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- Shannon Herod 14 years ago
  
  spambots are horrible when it comes to blogs. But, there certain things you need to do to protect your blog. The first would be to activate the askimet plug-in.
  
  That will help a lot. But, recently I've noticed a bunch of comments that are fairly relevant but very generic. The spammers are getting smarter. So, I'll look at the comment and if it's generic I might leave it pending on the URL it's pointing to. If it's pointing to a relatively spamming URL I will delete it.
  
  If the URL is leading to a site that is relevant to why someone would be posting on my site I generally leave it.
  
  Talk soon,
  
  Shannon Herod
  
  Thanks
  
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~kev~

14 years ago

Get the ReCaptcha modification for wordpress - that will stop the majority of the spam bots.

To use ReCaptcha, you will probably have to sign up for an account on the ReCapthca site, but its free.

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Rikki_Fawkes

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ShaneBoyd

Just a silly question here. Why is there so much freakin' spam on my blog. I have my posts set up to where I have to moderate them to be accepted.

Why can I not attract normal readers? Why do SPAM bots appear out of nowhere?

I use a WordPress theme currently and the blog has really only been active for about 2 weeks consistently.

What gives?

Thanks,

Shane

P.S. -Here's the blog in case you're curious. This is not a direct promo. I just wanted you to see that it's not an overly attractive or great blog, but yet I get tons of spam on it. www.shane-boyd.com

Ha! I have the same problem - set my comment settings to "always approve" and I get sent only spam comments with spam links. If you don't have many readers, I would almost recommend turning off the comment function.

I've not tried it, but I found a WP plugin that adds CAPTCHA for the comments here:

WordPress › WP Captcha-Free WordPress Plugins
Perhaps this would be a good start...

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Rikki_Fawkes

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ShaneBoyd

Just a silly question here. Why is there so much freakin' spam on my blog. I have my posts set up to where I have to moderate them to be accepted.

Why can I not attract normal readers? Why do SPAM bots appear out of nowhere?

I use a WordPress theme currently and the blog has really only been active for about 2 weeks consistently.

What gives?

Thanks,

Shane

P.S. -Here's the blog in case you're curious. This is not a direct promo. I just wanted you to see that it's not an overly attractive or great blog, but yet I get tons of spam on it. www.shane-boyd.com

P.S. - nice blog, by the way - very consistent, not too flashy, not too commercial, clear text... very good!

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actionplanbiz

14 years ago

i use si captcha plugin. go check it out its free

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sbucciarel

Banned 14 years ago

I use two plugins ... bad behavior and wp-spamfree. That eliminates most of the spam.

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theemperor

14 years ago

Another vote for Akismet - brilliant feature and has virtually eliminated spam on my blogs.

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rosetrees 14 years ago

I guess those bots are programmed to search for anything in the MMO niche.

I put up 4 test sites recently for an offer. One has a mmo theme, the other 3 don't.

The mmo themed one gets daily spam comments. The others have had nothing.
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- yves 14 years ago
  
  Unfortunately because a lot of so-called marketers believe that they will get some sort of reward for posting an incomprehensible sentence on your blog followed by a completely unrelated spam link.
  
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Sour

14 years ago

Delete your footprint at the bottom of your theme. It'll typically say something like "Powered by Wordpress". Bots are searching that phrase, and spamming any blog that has it. If you remove it, I'm sure you'll see a good reduction in the amount of spam you're receiving.

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SEOFocused

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ShaneBoyd

Why can I not attract normal readers? Why do SPAM bots appear out of nowhere?

looks like you are getting hit by automated bots that are posting comments with tools. if you manage to get into one of those lists, you are domed and will go through hell of a time to clean up spam comments.

i used to have the same issue with smap and since i installed a captcha plugin, all the bot spam went away as bots cant post bypassing captcha. i c you are not using any caprtcha plugin so give that a try. good luck.

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usearchme2

14 years ago

I read somewhere that 80% of all blog comments are spam !

Enable akismet and your spam issues should clear up, before I had akismet I was drowning under a sea of spam too !

Woc

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tpw

14 years ago

+90% of the comments on my blog are spam too. Of course, none of that spam sees the light of day... I recently logged into the blog to find 188 comments pending... 187 were deleted...

I believe it is because our blogs are good enough to be on the radar of the comment armies... The only way to beat them is to be unworthy of the effort...

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Dan C. Rinnert 14 years ago

Originally Posted by tpw

I believe it is because our blogs are good enough to be on the radar of the comment armies... The only way to beat them is to be unworthy of the effort...

Not true. As soon as your new blog sends out a ping, the spambots head its way.

I have a blog that's been under construction for a year or so. All I did was play with the design. The only post on there is the "Hello World" default WordPress post.

And it gets hammered by spam.

Not that any of it sees the light of day. I don't even have Akismet activated; I just have moderation on.

The spammers don't care about quality, PR, content, age of site, popularity, search engine rankings, etc. All they see is a blog ripe for spamming.

Believe me, I have blogs unworthy of the effort. The spambots don't treat them any differently than the quality blogs. The better blogs do get more spam, which I think may be because they get hit by people getting paid to leave spam comments. It's the automated spambots that aren't picky.
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Giggle

14 years ago

My general rule is that I delete all comments from my blogs since 95% appear to be spam

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ShaneBoyd 14 years ago

Thanks folks. Looks like Captcha and the Akismet are on my 6 things that I have to get done tomorrow.

The blog is kind of my next step in the IM world by the way. I post articles consistently. I put together a free report to build a list with. Now I blog, post articles and re-purpose content.

My next step is to put together a WSO. Not for nothing and please don't take this the wrong way, but I think a WSO would be a real good test run.

If the product I put together totally sucks, then I'll find out real quick.

Anyway, got off track there for just a moment.

I found a good blog a few weeks bag. Her blog is Clicknewz by Lynn Terry. It's worth checking out. I've learned a lot from her blog.

Peace,

Shane
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David Louis Monk

14 years ago

I can remember my first spam comment on my blog. It read quite well. It was not until I clicked the URL that I was take to a site which was all in Russian.

I then noticed a lot more more coming from Russia and now it seems like China. Akismet does a good job of filtering these out.

I think Internet Marketers who are paying Philipinne workers or the like to post should train their workers well and get good quality links back placed on relevant blogs.

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JayPeete

14 years ago

Unfortunately it is a part of the game Shane. What you really don't want to do is create a blog post talking about this problem. I did and that post gets 20 times the spam comments that my other posts get.

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Jamian

14 years ago

I have the same experience in my wordpress sites, and that spams bothers me, eventhough, my Akismet plugin is activated. That's why I manually eliminate those spams everytime I log in to my account.

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Johnny

14 years ago

All my blogs have Akismet plugin installed. But one fine day, I discovered some of these blogs have hundred of comments. I have to spend sometimes clearing these

After this incident, I have installed the captcha plugin as well.

So far so far ...

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abednego

14 years ago

I was under the impression that bots were getting good at reading captcha? has anyone who installed the plugin still received a decent amount of spam?

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alfredthomson

14 years ago

you can keep the comments on moderation. keep checking which are good comments or which are spams...

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Why so much SPAM on my blog?

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