It is common for companies (who don’t comprehend a blog comment is akin to having a conversation) to hire people to write manual comments on blogs all over the place in the hope an unsuspecting reader will click to learn more about the company product.
You may zoom-in by clicking the above screen shot.
Despite my replacing Akismet with the Growmap Anti-Spam Plugin two months ago that requires commenters to check a box before submitting a comment, the plugin only prevents automatic comments and not manual comments. The above company can still promote their product or whatever they want as long as the box is checked.
In an effort to combat a rise in this manual spam, I am (re)introducing comment moderation which used to be in place here. Effective immediately, everyone’s first comment requires my approval. Subsequent comments should be automatically added. Italics are emphasized depending on the nature of subsequent comments; if they are viewed as spammy, they will be marked as such and removed from public view through either enhanced WordPress filters (some of which are already in place) or server blocking.
In the past, IP addresses from known spammers have been blocked from adding subsequent comments — but all it takes is a clever spammer to reboot his or her modem for that internet protocol address to change. As such, IP blocking will be observed over time.
In an argument to moderate comments, Rubab Saleem writes:
It is hard to recognize spam whether in URL or in IP. Comment spam has not only evolved from random words support each other but with a link with the “proper” anchor text to something that seems to be written by a human. Even if i know they are written by human i would be reluctant in approving those.
The future is unknown. For now, this blog’s comment policy has been edited to indicate comment moderation is in place. It is my hope that through a combination of GASP, WordPress filters, and IP observation over time, only comments that are true comments (and, yes, that is subjective) will appear and everything else will not.
About Ari Herzog
I think it was an interesting point that Rubab Saleem made about comment spam has evolved. I think comment spam is always going evolve, which is why I believe anti-spam methods must continue to always evolve too. I like the approach you’re taking in order to stop the rise of manual spam.
I’m sure with the combination of anti-spam methods you’re using you will achieve your goal of only seeing comments that are true comments. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this matter.
A comment moderation policy should always be in place if you can not or do not have the time to manually check all comment’s website urls which you’ll link to from your blog post.
Ari,
It amazes me how many high traffic blogs I go to that do not moderate their comments. I understand that once your readership grows it can be time consuming to moderate…but I think that is part of the responsibilities of a successful blog.
Don’t you want control over who you are linking to?
Heh. I don’t consider this a high traffic place. Why do you?
Well I guess the traffic is all relative, but believe me Ari, compared to my blog…this blog is the traffic super highway! lol
I know I am gaining popularity though because my spam count is on the rise. =)
Hi Ari,
I really liked the pointers and the resources in this article. Til now my spam comments have been very little in comparison to some people`s blogs. Akismet is grabbing most of the spam and I get about 3 or 4 manual spams a day so I guess I`m not at the point of needing to implement all of these techniques. But I`m glad to konw the resources for when I do. As Chris said- the more popularity the more spam so I guess getting spam is good for our egos? lol
All the best,
Eren
I can’t say as I blame you – i don’t get a lot of comments on my blog, but it does amaze me the sheer “front” of some of the commentators who think its acceptable to just post anchor text links of 4 or 5 of the sites they are promoting.
Might I suggest that 1) you link such comments to your blog and not your website? That’s one way to draw in readers, and 2) consider you only began that blog at the beginning of the month. Things take time to grow; I started this in 2007 (and I had blogged elsewhere in 2004 so had some readers to bring with me).
I have to agree with you Ari, and this is something every blog owner should be doing. It’s a shame to see so many educational websites get torn apart by spammers.
At any rate, I sure hope my first comment makes it
You’re here OK. Thanks for your first comment. I await more insights from you.
Comment spam is such a pain. At the end of the day all it does is lower the quality of the blog on which it’s posted. Why these automated fools feel that their comments will benefit their business is beyond me.
It is a very good step to stop spam comments. People often use blog commenting to promote their blogs or website without taking active part in discussion or to make any valuable comment related to the discussion.
Tell me if I am wrong Ari, but I believe I replied to the comment in your image, telling the author how rude and spammy and unrelated their comment was
All in a days work!
Anyway, fine by me this new one comment approval system, if it works, great!
Good Luck Ari
Yes, you had — before I got the chance to mark that as spam and delete your reply as well.
Yeah, I guess it would have looked rather odd without the initial comment!
Ah yes – that was the online gaming comment, that offended the next commenter. Had to go and apologise to her twice. Still grateful to you for explaining those bland comments, which look, politely, like spam. After your feedback I delete them too!
Hi, Ari. I understand where you’re at and wouldn’t mind my comments being moderated. We all have to be cautious now on the comments we get on our posts. While we can trust those that we get from people we already know in the blogging community, there are really others out there who will do whatever it takes just to spam.
Good luck with all your efforts.
You should be set from now on, sir. Only the first comment is moderated — unless future comments are spammy, attacking others, etc according to the comment policy.
I completely agree with this policy and have it on all of my sites. It’s amazing how much spam I get in the form of comments such as “This post is great and saved me TONS of time” on blog entries about nothing that can possibly save the reader any time. These are obviously either manual spam comments or auto comments. Very annoying.
You might consider this strategy: If the comment is half decent but you think it is spam, you can delete the link but leave the comment. That way they do not get what they came for…the back link.
Thanks Jim, I’ve been doing that too… With CommentLuv, I’m able to click a link inside the wordpress dashboard to “remove the luv” if the link is spammy.
I moderated my blog beginning from the first post. We have much of these “nonsense” phrases. I learned that when I ignored them , they did not stop. (Never, ever). Every day there was another silly comment. So I accepted the first one and removed it the other day. Not very nice, I know, but it helped! I got rid of these “comments”. They never appeared again.
it’s good to put comment on moderation to avoid spam,but you should also consider good comments especially if they like or appreciate your blog.
I would prefer to read comments from people who disagree and don’t like things, vs everyone echoing each other that they like the same thing.
Your blog = Your way.
All comments are moderated on my blog because it is easy for spammers to “be nice” the first time round and then spam the h*ll out of your blog.
I also use Cookies For Comments so it block most of the automated spam. You can set a minimum delay before a comment is considered as spam, ie. you could set a 30 seconds delay and any comment posted within the first 30 seconds of the person arriving to a page -> spam comment (“do you want me to believe that you read a 400 words post and wrote your 50 words comment – with links – in less than 30 sec? I don’t think so”).
Earlier I didn’t think it was all that important to moderate comments until I received one wherein the “reader” was more “interested” in my picture than my article! Really embarrassing because other readers thought I actually approved the comment!
The bottom line is, 90% of people who comment on blogs do it for a backlink back to their blog.
Webmasters who make comment such as great article, thanks for sharing are not as common as they once was. Spammers are getting clever,has a webmaster myself I only accept comments that add something of value to my post.
If a comment is from a site that is selling weight loss drugs or something else like that, that people consider to be a spam site. If they have put the effort in and you can clearly see that they have though hard about their comment, then why shouldn’t I accept the comment.
Blog owners should apply this to there blogs. Off the topic comments won’t do them any good anyway. Plus it encourages people to leave quality comments instead of just a simple “Hi” or “Great blog”.