Fighting Blog Spam

Almost everyone who starts a blog, eagerly awaits for his or her first comment. It might happen a week, two weeks, or even a month after you start your blog. Nevertheless, eventually you will get your first comment. Thrilled that finally something you have said has generated a response–that something you have written was not only read, but was deemed worthy of a response–your excitement might dim considerably if the comment begins, “Find mortgage rates …”

You have just been hit by blog spam.

Blog spam, also known as comment spam and splog, is becoming more popular as more and more people find the joys of blogging. While it starts slowly, within a few days or weeks a new blogger can find their comments flooded with advertisements for car insurance, home mortgages, Prevacid, Viagra (male and female), and more.

At the root of blog spam lays Google. Google does not encourages, supports or promotes it. Instead, they happen to have a very popular search engine that displays websites based on their web ranking. The higher you are ranked, the better place you will have when someone searches for your key words. Links from other sites helps boost the sites ranking, which boosts the sites placement during searches, and eventually results in more hits to the website.

That is why blog spam occurs. The people want a link to a website with the right anchor text to help their search placement. Once it begins, it does not take long before it becomes a nuisance and you are tempted to kill all commenting on your blog. There are other options, however, that will allow you to eliminate blog spam while allowing others to post relative comments.

What is the solution? Thankfully, many blog hosts have begun to integrate spam-fighting devices into their programs. This will probably not be available with free hosts and is not always initiated when you begin your blog.

I thought that by requiring users to enter their email address and registering I would be protected from spam. While I am sure it cut down, I soon found myself receiving several new posts a day, all of them with email addresses. I soon found myself looking for something more.

Most blog hosts have built-in tools to help its users prevent comment spam in the form of plug-ins. The plug-ins can only be installed if a user registers with WordPress and enters their individual API key on the user page.

Akismet (http://akismet.com/) is one such plug-in that runs hundreds of tests on the comment before marking it with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. It is free for personal use. After receiving about two to three spam comments a day, I installed this plug in on my own WordPress blog. It has worked wonderfully.

Often you might need to install more than one type of plug-in, as most work differently and catch different types of spam. For example, some will analyze the websites of any links in the comment and assess whether or not they are know offenders. Others allow you to create blacklists of known domains, phrases, and IP addresses. Unfortunately, these can backfire. If, for example, you chose to blacklist a certain three-letter word that means “butt” because you find offensive, you might also prevent people from using words such as “assistance,” “passionate,” and “assassination.”

You can also install plug-ins that requires users to go through a captcha system before being able to comment. Captchas create an image of randomly generated characters that the user must then correctly identify. While they are virtually crack proof, they are not user friendly, especially for people with vision problems or dyslexia.

So which is the best system? There is no one best system. It is a matter of trial and error until you find an effective system that blocks the spam comments without blocking legitimate ones. To find one that works with your blog host, go to their FAQ section. There is usually a question posted there on how to eliminate blog spam that will give you specific information. These programs will require some set up by you and are not part of the default settings of most blog hosts. Thankfully, once they are set up, they require very little work to maintain.

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