In the last week or two I’ve noticed an increase in the number of spammy comments I’ve received on my blog. Perhaps the amount of spam is going up or that people are getting sneakier. Or perhaps my readership is growing and so spammers are more likely to target me.
Here’s a sample comment I received recently:
Howdy, i read your blog occasionally and i personal a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you avoid it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much recently it is driving me mad so any assistance is really much appreciated.
At first I didn’t think anything of it; I thought it was a legitimate comment. But it had showed up in my spam filter and so I did a quick search on Google for one of the phrases from the comment: “i personal a similar one and i was just wondering”
It turns out that there are 200 other entries in Google from someone placing nearly identical comments on other peoples’ blogs.
Here is another spammmy blog comment that I received today:
This is actually my very first time here, truly great looking blog. I discovered a lot of fascinating stuff within your weblog especially it’s discussion. From all of the comments on your content articles, it seems like this is really a very popular website. Maintain up the great function.
How do you deal with spam?
How do you guys deal with this? I routinely go through my spam filter and approve comments that look legitimate. But it’s becoming more difficult to determine what is legitimate and what is spam.
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
Nick
simply by gut feel. We have to approach comments on our site, and the real spam is obvious. The second example you cited would not have been caught frankly, excepting that it sounds unlikely (in our case!)
That's basically what I do and it works most of the time. But once in a while you find one that you're just not sure about.
Although my reply here will be short, it is not meant to spam your blog
IMHO, it is your decision what gets published on your blog and therefore you can delete whatever you like. It is already a great service that you allow links in your post for the stumbles and also stumble our sites. The me too post that you find on many blogs are annoying – not only to the blog owner, but also to his visitors who could get p…..off because of declining overall quality.
Of course. It's your blog and you should be free to edit as you wish. I've heard comments of "free speech" in other places, but this is you service and your business. If you think comments add value then that's great. There are loads of comments which don't add value and you should be free to remove them for your readers' benefit.
Very true. I believe in free speech but I am not required to be a platform for your free speech. I pay for the domain and hosting and therefore I get to control the content.
Damn right. I think the general consensus here is that people are happy for you to delete comments, and that you seem to be trying your best. It's tough. Email seems pretty well sorted these days (well my filters seem fine), but user-generated content is a real issue. You want a community without people taking the mickey.
I'd advise you do what causes you least effort. You should be focusing on content and not policing comments. So if it looks suspect, delete it. I wouldn't bother with any real investigation.
I certainly want to do what will require the least amount of effort but I need to find a balance between that and doing things that will help build a community. The more of a community I have the more money I will make off of advertising.
It certainly is my decision. I just don't want to throw away legitimate comments.
I have faced same problem with you Nick, I have several blogs and almost every days i got spammer. So I read every comments and also try to search on google, and if i found it i'll delete that comments, because if I don't do that they will coming every day with different url, email and also IP address. I think they are just people who paid for leave a comment because i found same comment with different url in my blog.
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Nick,
I am finding that the opposite is true. Once you have been blogging for a while, I think you get pretty darn good at separating the spam from the legit comments. You use a captcha here which does a lot of the work for you.
I also adopt a policy of zero keyword usage in the name link. You should too. Afterall, you already use the Commentluv plugin which is more than generous enough compensation for thoughtful comments. If people need to have keywords in their name as well as a link back to their last blog post with Commetluv, then I think it is pretty safe to assume they are spammers. The really don't give two bits about your site. They just want the link juice. We all want link juice, but let's be reasonable.
Leaving a comment that is off topic, not thougtful and does not contribute to your post is the same as them asking for a handout. By approving any links from those people, you are encouraging them to keep doing ti to you. It is better to always error on the side of fair reciprocity.
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I've considered doing this but for now I'm going to allow keywords in the comment name section. It doesn't really bother me.
However if someone leaves a lame comment with no value then it will be deleted.
I too have several sites and determining legitimate commenst could be aproblem. Based on your examples above, it seems both are general comments which could be used on any site so they may be posted by bots or software.
I would say that a legitimate comment should be related to the content of the post and any others like general comments, unrelated, etc are spams.
That is what I'm finding. If the comment doesn't reference the post on my blog in any way then it gets removed. Generic crap will be deleted.
I use Akismet. Since I activated this plugin, I haven't yet experienced a comment that wasn't spam getting pulled by the Akismet. Not saying it couldn't happen, but I wouldn't waste a lot of time checking the comments. If I'm going to check every comment I might as well disable the plugin and just moderate all comments.
If the comment is from Discount Puma Sunglasses and it says, "You make good content. We read this always." or something like that, and Akismet says it's spam – that's because Akismet recognizes the IP.
I know what you mean about the uptick this week, looks like I had eighteen spam comments last night. None in English, not even broken English.
Trust your filter, Nick. It's supposed to save you time.
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Thanks for the tips!
My site is Drupal-based. Some suggestions to handle spam for Drupal: http://www.communitybandwidth.ca/phillipadsmith/f…. I've not implemented all these at the current time simply because volumes don't warrant it, but I have a plan should it get worse…
Those suggestions may be a wee bit out of date now! Might be best to post a question to the Drupal forum to get the latest tricks.
Phillip.
On a forum that I run, I noticed that most spam is where the comment doesn't actually add to the discussion, but is placed to add links. So I made it so that their signature doesn't show up until they have 10+ approved posts.
It seems that some spam is based on keywords and may be picked out of a selection of common responses from a database by the spam bot.
For blogs I use Akismet and don't check the spam queue like Tammi mentioned earlier.
Andy
That’s a really good idea about the forum!
I put a captcha up and get less comments now but I can relate, some comments I know are spam but sometimes I allow them anyways. I give in sometimes to the ones that say how great I am, BTW you are a great blogger Nick.
Thank you. That comment made me laugh.
Last night i found several sites that offering services to leave a comment on dofollow blogs, we just need to pays $5 to get 50 comments. I think this is the answer Nick.
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Yah there are a lot of those services out there.
I get a lot of spam comments too, but the one I get is always something like this:
" Great site, I was browsing google and saw your site so I clicked over. You are really building a great site with a bunch of fantastic content. I can't wait til you update again so I can read your RSS feed that I just subscribed to"
I don't know if these people are really that dumb, but don't they think I will know when I never got an RSS feed subscriber that day. And I hate it when they say nothing about the article I just wrote, it annoys me.
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I totally agree. However they know that many blog owners get very few comments and are often grateful for any comments at all. This is especially true when the comments praise the blog owner.
The phrase that springs to mind is that "if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck". I'd delete anything which feels out of context (say anything mentioning ducks!), and looks like it could just be boilerplate text added to any old blog.
Comments have to be approved on my site, and this far I've been happy to approve all I've had. But then I simply don't have the volume Nick's getting!
Oh, better go and check my approval queue!
Nick, just noticed. No Capatcha on this thread/site…
I decided to remove the caption and do a little experiment. I'll be writing a new post about this shortly.
Hey I agree with you. No capatcha gives problem especially it is more advantageous for robots and bots or you can say automated systems. They automatically post the comment and many times they use the common words.
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I have been to sites that publish SPAM and there is no DOUBT that is what it is. the blatant our site sells…I was surprised when I actually made a 3 paragraph reply on topic, and I was sent to SPAMMERs hell (blank white page). I cannot figure how this site decided what is or isn't SPAM. I guess if I was off topic, then maybe it would have gotten published. lol
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It seems kind of crazy doesn't it?
Yes, I have noticed more and more comments that are sneaky… to say the least.
I generally check the posting against which the comment was made. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious that the comment is spam because the comment itself is totally inappropriate, e.g. "I have recently started a blog, the information you offer on this site has helped me greatly. Thank you for all of your time & work" featured on a page that was about cheese! Alternatively, if I am not sure I search for the comment in the same way you did.
Some of the comments are so terribly generic that it is obvious that they are spam.
Hi Nick,
I think a comment is usually spam if the comment has nothing to do with the post or it doesn't build off of the other comments. It's usually always something generic like "great post" or "this looks interesting, thanks for the information". You have a pretty good method of determining if they're spam or not.
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Thank you. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out which comments are spam.
Hi;
First, "requiring" email is not really a good idea for posters. If you have a comment spammer problem and cannot stop it, probably also there are email scrapers also on the same site – how does a person know email "not posted" is also not accessable to a harvestor ?
The solution to stopping spammers is really easy – a capcha for the easy ones and a random question as well that a person can answer but a spam bot cannot. Checkboxes are not a good idea because the answer is obvious, it is usually always checked for access, easy for a bot to know. Another good idea is the invisible hidden form field filter – readers cannot see it and a bot will always fill it in, when filled it denies access.
After the fact use AWStats to monitor visitors and projecthoneypot to check ip's, then block the spammers IP or if obvius multiple ips's block the range using htacess or IIS ACL. Another thing that seems to greatly reduce spammers is to use countrytoip lists and block China, Russia and Ukraine entirely. Spam will drop signifigantly. For email spammers – add Vietnam, Korea, Romania, Belarus and Brasil.
If using Apache server modrewrite has some excellant rules that will automatically block countries or check ip's against a httpbl server.
> First, “requiring” email is not really a good idea for posters.
This is a standard part of WordPress blogs and most people are used to it.
> how does a person know email “not posted” is also not accessable to a harvestor ?
WordPress doesn't display the email and most of my readers have blogs and the know their email won't be displayed.
> The solution to stopping spammers is really easy – a capcha
My readers hate captchas and are less likely to leave comments.
> Checkboxes are not a good idea because the answer is obvious, it is usually always checked for access, easy for a bot to know.
The checkbox I use one that is generated with JavaScript and is pretty effective.
> Another good idea is the invisible hidden form field filter – readers cannot see it and a bot will always fill it in, when filled it denies access.
Yes that is a good option.
Hi there
I have been getting lots of generic and identical comments on my blog recently, i.e "great resource!", "my cousin recommended this site and she was totally right!" etc from multiple authors, so I am assuming it is spam. What is the purpose of this spam? The comments seem to be harmless enough so I just don't get it? Are they for track backs to their sites? Viruses? Any info would be greatly appreciated, I'm considering just turning comments off at the moment. Cheers!
Each comment that is left gives that person a back link to their website which will help them rank higher in Google.
After making my blog do follow and listing it one of the do follow blog directories, my spam comments increased a lot. I get comments like
"I have big fun read this post. I need to see more about this subject.. Appreciation for creating this good information.. Anyways, I’m planning to subscribe to your rss and I hope you make useful posts again rapidly."
Actually mine is a Christian wallpaper blog where I share wallpapers..minimal information or written content is added as stress is on pictures. This comment is too general for that.
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Spammers will often post the same comment on as many blogs as they can, hoping for traffic and backlinks from high ranking sites. Search engine spiders follow this "bait", which boosts their Search Engine Rankings. Some spammers use software to track down suitable blogs and automatically submit identical generic comments.
These may also be "spun" by the software, (ie synonyms or various keywords are inserted/ rotated) so the posts won't be seen as "duplicate" content. Spinning often leads to the "broken" english typically seen in this type of spam.
Oh well, at least if it's funny, your readers might get a laugh out of it before you delete it. If it becomes frequent, you may want to block the offending IPAddresses, or use "nofollow" tags for posted links.