Spam on your blog means a few things. On a positive note, people are finding you and that’s a good thing. It doesn’t sound like such a good thing when it becomes a pain to manage but one thing is for sure, your blog is valuable enough to make spammers want to utilise your site. They’ll post trackback spam and bogus comments filled with hyperlinks to their adult websites. You can’t let it go on but there are things you can do.
But what is an internet marketer to do?
If you are using WordPress for your blog, consider using the Askimet plug-in. This will catch a big portion of your spam and save you considerably on moderating time. You can also set your your comments as moderated only which will stop the spam before it’s published. You can quickly view the comments and manually approve the ones you want to let through. You can set up some blogs so that commenters are approved automatically after they have one approved comment but be careful about this because some crafty spammers can take advantage of this loophole and post one useful comment only to come back later and try to post spam on your site. You might need to de-approve some commenters.
All in all, you want to be choosy about who is allowed to link to your site because association with certain kinds of sites can bring your own search engine ranking down. The good news is that search engines seem to be finding your site and people think it’s valuable enough to try and capitalise on your success!
(Image courtesy of sxc.hu)
About Sean Rasmussen
Hi Sean,
Yes, I use Akismet and find it to be really good for weeding out the spam. It’s a constant problem but at least the spammers give me a bit of a laugh sometimes with their names and what they’re selling.
It’s a bit like the unwanted mail in the post box … Thank good for every abuse of the possibilities there is someone coming up with a solution !
Just as well I am using this fantastic tool.
I am getting a fair amount of spam lately and from some pretty nasty sites. Usually there is a whole page of links. I’m afraid I don’t see the lighter side of it
Hi Gee,
I hate Spam too but on the other hand it means that your blog is getting noticed, which is a good thing.
Same here Gee. Sometimes I need to scroll the mouse wheel a few times to get to the end of the comment. I do see that sometimes the same IP address tries a few times – I think to myself, if I didn’t approve the comment yesterday what makes you think I am going to approve it today…
Cemil
I know what you mean. How do they get so many links in one document
I treat spam as sort of a compliment and a bit of light humour. But perhaps that is because I am not inundated with it, and have Askimet installed to do most of the heavy filtering form me. Some of the comments are really quite funny, trying to sell all sorts of stuff, and posting generic thankyous for my wonderful posts.
Getting spam comments is definitely better than getting no comments at all.
Just make sure you don’t approve the ones that are linked to Viagra type sites Tom
Askimet plug-in is a handy tool. I didn’t realize the trick spammers were using: To get approved first and than spam a site. Thanks for this info Sean. It’s certainly something to watch out for.
On my Blogger site I moderate the comments. The amount of spam comments varies in direct relation to my adding new content and the article landing on the first page of Google.
I’ll be self-hosting some more blogs in the future most like using WordPress so I’ll have to familiarize myself with the Askimet plugin.
So if I’m getting lots of spam comments then at least the reputation of my blog is growing with the spammers. Somebody likes me.
Well, that is certainly seeing the glass half full! I only get spam on one UWC blog and i have akismet installed. I just periodocally remove them as I have never seen one that is relevant.
Hi Sean
I never thought that having spam on your blog would be good news but in light of your reasoning yes there is a positive if it’s showing that people like your blog!
While building my blog I attracted heaps of spam. Thanks to the YOTA forum, I was advised to install an Akismet plugin and it worked like magic. I have had no problems.
Thanks for the advice on some sneaky commenters, I will look out for them.
I also use Akismet, but occasionally a spam gets through and sometimes I have to read it twice before realising that is spam, thanks to the trash button it dosen’t see the light of my post
Thanks to handy plugins like Akismet I have the spammers sorted and like Rita those pesky spamites don’t see the light of my posts either. Will keep an eye out for those neaky ones
It is a pity that people want to waste their time on spamming. It is such a pest and so useless. Having such a great plug-in like Akisment is brilliant and really helps lessen the load. You piqued my interest about spamming being good – so if you are being spammed you must be doing will for the search engines!
I have just started some blogs….and amazed already at the spam which Akismet has been picking up! Some of it is really just nonsense and in different languages and just…..NONSENSE!