How to Control Blog Comment Spam Without it Being a Time Suck

Don't you hate it? All those spammy comments that contribute nothing to your blog and are clearly being submitted by bots or people being paid a nickle a comment because they think they're going to get some kind of fabulous link juice?

I received a question the other day from Yoon:

I am finding that my blog gets inundated with spam type comments that has been taking my assistant on average about 10 hours a week to review all of the comments and delete spam vs post real comments. This seems like high maintenance. Is this normal? Or are we doing something wrong that's creating unnecessary work?

Unfortunately I don't know what blog platform Yoon is using or what plugins so I'll give a general response.

If you're using Wordpress as your blog platform, at the very least you need to have the Askimet plugin installed. That will filter quite a bit of spam out of your comment stream.

You can edit your Comment Settings to hold comments with more than X number of hyperlinks (a common tactic of spammers) and also hold comment from those who have never commented on your blog before.

(click the image to see it full size)

I also use the Premium version of Comment Luv on my Wordpress blog at DeniseWakeman.com. There is an option you can enable that puts a number of protections in place against blog comment spam: warning if there are too many hyperlinks, too few words in the comment, minimum number of seconds spent on your site, and a checkbox to declare they are not a spammer. 

Using both of these systems has dramatically cut down on the amount of spam I get and the time I spend reviewing and moderating comments on my Wordpress blog.

TypePad is another story. This blog is built on TypePad. And, I'm innundated with blog comment spam on this site. Supposedly they employ strong spam protection but so much gets through that I now have to moderate all my comments.

I have all comments sent to me via email so I can see at a glance what's spam and what's legitimate. I only approve legitimate comments and every so often take a few minutes to delete all the junk. Not perfect, but I don't waste a lot of time on it.

What system or plugins do you use to combat blog comment spam? I promise if your comment is legitimate I will approve and post it! :-)

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Comments

[Louise Myers Graphic Design]

Valuable tips on comment spam, Denise! I've been using Akismet only and have found it to be pretty accurate. I rarely see a comment that I consider spam get thru, and only once found a legitimate comment removed (the commenter had used a keyword as their name, so to Akismet that was spam - but I knew her).

My big question - if this perhaps gives you an idea for a future post - is about pingbacks. I find it difficult to take the time to check the site and decide if I should approve them - so unless I see something from a site I know, I generally just delete them. Not sure how useful they are - one of those things I don't quite "get" yet!

[Susan]

Denise, what do you recommend for a Wordpress blog that has Akismet but is receiving thousands of Trackbacks?

[Donna Merrill]

Good information especially since Googl's crackdown. I am super careful these days about comments. I usually know the people who come to my blog. I have a good Wordpress plugin that works well with spam. But lately, I have to be careful about their commentLuv. If it is connected to a sales site, I either block it or just delete the commentluv.
Thanks for the heads up
Donna

[Denise Wakeman]

Susan, under the Discussion Settings on your blog, you can uncheck the option to get ping and trackback notifications and that should take care of it.

[Boris Mahovac - Linkedin to the MAX!]

Denise,

I rely solely on Akismet. It has filtered thousands of spam with only an occasional false positive, and no misses, as far as I can remember.

Additionally I have a setting that allows a comment author with a previously approved comment to post new comments without being moderated.

These two things allow me to only have to deal with replying to actual comments and not having to worry about spam.

[Alana Price]

Denise, what are your thoughts on Disqus? It seems like one of the most popular commenting systems out there, but I don't really know anything about how they deal with spam, just that they're really interactive.

[Linda Daniels]

Thank you for the post Denise, I have tried several different Captcha plugins on our Wordpress blog but they all seem to be lacking in one area or another. I have not found the perfect one yet. I would also like to hear your thoughts on Disqus.